Absurd. What was in Apple's future right before their clamshell ibook with an Airport card in it showed up? Before the iPod showed up? Before the iPhone showed up? Before the MacBook Air showed up? Before the iPad showed up? WE DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE.
The future is in the future for you and for me. However, for some of the Apple designers, that same future started three years ago or six months ago. You and I don't know what they're working on, but it probably has nothing to do with an iPhone.
Is someone still tweaking the next idea for an iPhone? Almost certainly. More ideas are also forthcoming for next iterations of the iPad, and all the other stuff we know about, plus a lot of stuff we've never imagined that we might enjoy, or need. Meanwhile as globalization continues, more people begin to enter the consumer class and drive demand for all manner of products, including mobile computing gear. I daresay there's room for multiple brands of all that stuff. It doesn't hurt Apple to have some competition, either.
The iPhones are now in the stage that's called "iterations of released product." So are shuffles and nanos and anything else they haven't decided to kill off yet. Doesn't mean some insanely great iPhones can't still emerge. Definitely doesn't mean Apple will croak if it decides to whack the iPhone some time. I was upset when they whacked the Powerbook 170 but I got over it, and so did Apple!
Be honest: in 1999, did you spend a whole lot of time wondering how great Apple's 2010 iPad rollout would be? Yeah, me neither. I was sitting in front of a tangerine clamshell, all wound up about the possibilities presented by that Airport card.
Whatever you think of each iteration of a released product, it is different and can fill a different niche market with a great brand. Will each one of them boost Apple's profits like a rocket taking off for Mars? Nope. Does each one sell? Yep. And each one helps keep that brand right out there, baby: This is Apple. This just works. This is elegant. This is functional. Apple services what it sells. Apple throws in stuff you didn't expect (Genius playlisting that gets better the more you use it, for example).
I will never, never forget showing a five year old kid a couple of functions of the original MacPaint program on a 512k Mac, and then walking out to the kitchen for a few minutes to see to the prep for a meal later. When I came back, the kid had discovered functions I didn't even know the program offered. Right there I realized that Apple had turned personal computing on its head by making the software interface so intuitive. A five year old teaching an adult computing professional how a graphics program worked. The whole paradigm of personal computing was changing faster than anyone could grasp, but that kid got it, and defined it, all in one.
Today I still celebrate that moment from back in the mid-80s. I was looking at a change in how the future would be shaped. People whose imaginations had not yet been stomped on would be creating the new stuff. I felt like I had jumped on a rocketship that was just taking off, and that I would mostly be a passenger because I was already "a grownup." But I was sure willing to go along for the ride, and it has been amazing to take that ride with Apple products all this time.
And today I say that no sane person bets against Apple being able to come up with another great idea, or against their bringing another elegant and highly functional implementation to market. Apple designers don't have a track record of having hit just one ball out of the park. Somehow they have managed to stay hungry, and to crave creating products that properly marry form to function, and they've done it again and again. That hunger, and the discipline to pursue a best implementation, are what has made them so successful.
