Exactly! I'm so sick of people complaining that Apple isn't innovating but they point to Samsung as someone who is!? What a joke. Spec bumps are not innovation. You could argue that NFC is, but that was most likely a push by Google that Samsung played along with. Either way, it hasn't been very successful.
Anyway. With Google doing all their R&D in the public eye, people know they are working on cool stuff. Apple works behind the scenes, so people look to rumors to figure out what they are working on. If there are no decent rumors, Apple must not be working on anything.
Or perhaps Tim wasn't joking when he said they were doubling-down on security
Actually that is what I was saying too. In fact, I quite literally said that; guess that poster didn't read the whole paragraph. NOBODY is innovating. All I said was, someone needs to, and I don't care who it is!
NFC isn't innovating, it's a decades old technology that has been long since miniaturized and there is a debate going on whether or not it can become a consumer product or not. There's no innovation there, it's just a case of whether or not to put it in there.
Heck, back in the 1990's I had a Mobil 'paypass' that was mounted in my back windshield and was tied to my credit card. Whenever you pull up to the pump, a light comes on telling you it connected and you can start pumping. Was a little thing the size of the palm of your hand, they also had a keychain version. That was NFC technology! It's not new. It's just being considered in a new industry. Now mastercard is using the technology (under the same name) in a broader sense with lots more merchants, but, it takes me less time to swipe my card at a terminal than it does to hold my NFC enabled card or key fob over the sensor!