Steve Jobs passes away.
Tim Cook, master of the supply chain, blankets the planet with iDevices, releasing new ones simultaneously in multiple countries worldwide, killing the buzz for new products with over saturation. Gone are the days of Steve Jobs' carefully calculated tech-lust inducing product launches. Tim Cook understands manufacturing...he does not understand mystique. There have been no waiting lines for Apple launches since Tim Cook took over. No lines; no buzz. No buzz; no lust. No lust; no Apple, as we've come to know it.
Quality control takes a hit, as Apple's vendors struggle to keep up, not with the demand of previous smaller scale staggered launches, but with the sheer volume of Tim Cook's massive worldwide launches.
Stocks drop on reduced hype, and word that Apple's vendors are being overworked and underpaid in miserable conditions.
Amidst the trend of bigger smartphone screens from increasingly popular manufacturers, Apple begrudgingly, stubbornly lengthens their screen by a little with the iPhone 5. It's seen by some as a stumble in the race.
iPad 4 is announced to little fanfare. iPad mini is a hit, despite being new on the outside/outdated inside.
2012 sees Apple spending far more time on litigation than innovation, as it scrambles to protect its aging property, reminiscent of a fading rock star who is more interested in protecting his old songs than making new ones.
Rumors of a cheaper phone emerge for 2013, with photo leaks. This despite Apple's previously firm stance as a strictly luxury brand. Again, post-Jobs Apple chooses raw sales figures over mystique. Rumors of a follow up phone to the iPhone 5 are strangely lacking any photo leaks, perhaps either because interest is waning in these secondary iterations, or because Apple has fallen behind schedule and has nothing to leak.
Apple fires the man who made iOS easy for anyone to intuitively use without an instruction manual. They put the person charge of designing hardware in charge of reskinning the entire OS, making it simultaneously trendy and unintuitive. Apple is now officially following the lead of UI designers on other platforms instead of breaking new ground. Former users of iOS will have a slight learning curve...new users will have a harder time distinguishing an iPhone from an Android phone, and the learning curve will be steeper. The new OS favors visual style over the ease of use and familiarity that the iOS brand has carefully nurtured over the previous versions. Tiny details are obsessively tweaked in the beta releases, while larger issues of general usability are completely overlooked.
Rumblings from Apple's board of directors hint at misgivings about Apple's ability to innovate at competitive speeds.
Carl Icahn, known vulture, begins a high altitude circling...
Apple will not collapse overnight. But they will collapse, some day, somehow. The story of how it will happen is actively being written. As they continue to morph from a company that makes things everyone wants, into a company that makes things everyone already has, from trend setter to trend follower, giving profit priority over innovation, the path of their demise will slowly come in to focus.
