This is bull.
I have been a fan of Apple for over two decades. Only recently, I have started to be disappointed in Apple. It is not me, it is them. They are a different company then they were just a few years ago.
I'm a fan and follow Apple very closely and I've noticed a change as well. It's palpable across my industry. Creative professionals feel abandoned. If I had to pinpoint the time I started noticing the change, it was when Angela Ahrendts joined Apple in May 2014. Interestingly, this was also around the time they bought Beats which was no more than a celebrity brand name that makes overpriced, low quality headphones. This is when they began a transformation into a luxury fashion company.
Since then we've got pink MacBooks that are only as fast as iPads. We've got iPad Pros that aren't really Pro unless you draw and have a $170 crappy keyboard accessory. The cost of the iPad (Pro), iPhone Plus, MacBook, and MacBook Pro have all increased. We haven't seen any updates to the Mac Pro. There has been a major focus on superfluous things such as emoji, watch bands, and $300 books. They've killed the Thunderbolt Display, and they're about to kill the AirPort and AirPort Extreme. We've got these strange designs like the iPhone battery case, the Magic Mouse that charges on the bottom, and whatever that horrendous LG monitor is that Apple is now selling. We've got downgraded functionality and piles of dongles. Meanwhile, Apple has done jack crap to improve their services and Siri AI. In the background, Apple's internal Car program has been in turmoil. I get the sense that they bet heavily on the car and now they're not sure what to do going forward aside from doing something with AR. Meanwhile, Jony Ive seems like he's checked out while he works on a bunch of outside projects and attends luxurious fashion events.
They've simply lost their way. This was inevitable. We deluded ourselves for years that it would never happen. That Apple was somehow immune or different. And in many ways they were different, and still are different. Much of that was attributable to Steve Jobs. We saw the same slow decline after he left Apple in 1985. Here are some excerpts from the history of Apple on WikiPedia that I'd like to talk about and how I see them reflected in what is happening today.
1984–91: Success with Macintosh
The first Macintosh, released in 1984, was the first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse.
In 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh, the first personal computer to be sold without a programming language at all.[43] Its debut was signified by "1984", a $1.5 million television commercial directed by Ridley Scott that aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984.[44] The commercial is now hailed as a watershed event for Apple's success[45] and a "masterpiece".[46][47]
I see this as the huge initial launch of the iPhone, even though the iPod could be argued as the thing that kicked off their recent success. The infamous Oscar "Hello" advertisement. It was a big deal and everyone was talking about it.
The Macintosh initially sold well, but follow-up sales were not strong[48] due to its high price and limited range of software titles. The machine's fortunes changed with the introduction of the LaserWriter, the first PostScript laser printer to be sold at a reasonable price, and PageMaker, an early desktop publishing package. It has been suggested that the combination of these three products were responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market.[49] The Macintosh was particularly powerful in the desktop publishing market due to its advanced graphics capabilities, which had necessarily been built in to create the intuitive Macintosh GUI.
Original iPhone and subsequent development of the App Store that really made it take off.
In 1985, a power struggle developed between Jobs and CEO John Sculley, who had been hired two years earlier.[50] The Apple board of directors instructed Sculley to "contain" Jobs and limit his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from his leadership role at Apple. Sculley found out that Jobs had been attempting to organize a coup and called a board meeting at which Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties.[48] Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc. the same year.[51]
Steve Jobs passed away and Tim Cook took over.
After Jobs' departure, the Macintosh product line underwent a steady change of focus to higher price points, the so-called "high-right policy" named for the position on a chart of price vs. profits. Jobs had argued the company should produce products aimed at the consumer market and aimed for a $1000 price for the Macintosh, which they were unable to meet. Newer models selling at higher price points offered higher profit margin, and appeared to have no effect on total sales as power users snapped up every increase in power. Although some worried about pricing themselves out of the market, the high-right policy was in full force by the mid-1980s, notably due to Jean-Louis Gassée's mantra of "fifty-five or die", referring to the 55% profit margins of the Macintosh II.[52]
Apple has been positioning itself as a luxury brand since Angela Ahrendts joined in May 2014. Many products have seen higher price points and only steady improvements. Things are becoming somewhat stagnant.
This policy began to backfire in the last years of the decade as new desktop publishing programs appeared on PC clones that offered some or much of the same functionality of the Macintosh but at far lower price points. The company lost its monopoly in this market, and had already estranged many of its original consumer customer base who could no longer afford their high priced products. The Christmas season of 1989 was the first in the company's history that saw declining sales, and led to a 20% drop in Apple's stock price.[53] Gassée's objections were overruled, and he was forced from the company in 1990. Later that year, Apple introduced three lower cost models, the Macintosh Classic, Macintosh LC and Macintosh IIsi, all of which saw significant sales due to pent up demand.
I see this as the rise of Android. They saw declining sales four years after Jobs left, and Apple today is seeing it five years after he died. There was also a big drop in their stock price. Apple hasn't really brought out lower cost models yet, unless you count the iPhone SE.
In 1991, Apple introduced the PowerBook, replacing the "luggable" Macintosh Portable with a design that set the current shape for almost all modern laptops. The same year, Apple introduced System 7, a major upgrade to the operating system which added color to the interface and introduced new networking capabilities. It remained the architectural basis for the Classic Mac OS. The success of the PowerBook and other products brought increasing revenue.[50] For some time, Apple was doing incredibly well, introducing fresh new products and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.[citation needed]
We may see this period with the iPhone 8 if it is a significant redesign. Or the perhaps iPad if they can actually update the software to make it better for productivity.
Apple believed the Apple II series was too expensive to produce and took away sales from the low-end Macintosh.[54] In 1990, Apple released the Macintosh LC, which featured a single expansion slot for the Apple IIe Card to help migrate Apple II users to the Macintosh platform;[54] the Apple IIe was discontinued in 1993.
1991–97: Decline, restructuring, acquisitions
See also: Timeline of the Apple II family
The Penlite was Apple's first attempt at a tablet computer. Created in 1992, the project was designed to bring the Mac OS to a touchscreen display - but was shelved in favor of the Newton.[55]
The success of Apple's lower-cost consumer models, especially the LC, also led to cannibalization of their higher priced machines. To address this, management introduced several new brands, selling largely identical machines at different price points aimed at different markets. These were the high-end Quadra, the mid-range Centris line, and the ill-fated Performa series. This led to significant market confusion, as customers did not understand the difference between models.[56]
There is confusion among consumers over different products and strange naming. This would include things like the iPad Mini 2/3/4, iPad Air/iPad Air 2/iPad Pro which all look the same. Then you've got odd naming like the iPhone SE which has the same performance as the 6s and 6s Plus. Or the Apple Watch Series 1 which isn't actually the Series 1 because that would be the Series 0.
Apple also experimented with a number of other unsuccessful consumer targeted products during the 1990s, including digital cameras, portable CD audio players, speakers, video consoles, the eWorldonline service, and TV appliances. Enormous resources were also invested in the problem-plagued Newton division based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts.[citation needed] Ultimately, none of these products helped and Apple's market share and stock prices continued to slide.[citation needed]
Apple is doing something somewhat similar right now. First, we have the Apple Watch, and the jury is still out on it's long term success. But Apple doesn't report the sales numbers, so that is telling. Second, we have this car project Apple has been working on that has been floundering in the background. Third, we'll probably get something related to AR because everyone is doing it and the rumors, along with some statements from Tim Cook, seem to point to that.
The bright side is that this time Apple has tons of cash to burn though before anything serious would happen, such as the company going under. They can make stupid decisions and pay their way out of the mess to a certain extent. It just gives them more of a cushion to switch gears and pivot. However, the downside to this is you lose your most valuable resource in the process: people. It's the people at Apple that make it great. Tim Cook is right about that every time he mentions it at the end of a keynote. Losing those people is losing what heart and soul of Jobs is left at Apple. It's those people who instill that same spirit into new people who join the company. It's extremely dangerous and the thing I'm most worried about in the long-term.
