Tim Cook on iPhone's Future: 'There's So Much Left That We Can Do'

[rymc02]

I’m not sure why there is this big push that Apple (or any other company for that matter) needs to *replace* the smart phone.
Of course, some technology pieces come and go, but not all.
Nothing’s replacing the refrigerator, the car, the television, the door handle, the toilet, the desktop, the laptop, the speaker or the bed any time soon.
So why there is this grasp for a device that’s just going to make the phone, a communication paradigm that has existed since the 1800s, completely obsolete seems a bit strange to me.
Even completely flawless augmented reality glasses are likely not going to replace the smart phone. There are just some interaction methods that picking up the small handheld thing is always going to be preferred.
If anything, the smart phone is just going to diversify the same way other technologies did into different form factors of smartphone as time goes on. We already have slab phones, folding phones, and flipping phones, eventually we may have rolling phones.
Just like how the refrigerator diversified into the mini refrigerator, the refrigerator and freezer combo, side-by-side double door refrigerators, etc.
Or how the computer diversified into desktop computers, towers, all in ones, laptops, tablets…

 

[aknabi]

Trigger warning: Steve Jobs comparison incoming.

Steve: Saw the hockey puck and knew where it was going
Tim: Sees the hockey puck and knows how to improve margins on it

 

[rymc02]

I think we are reaching the final stages.

There’s full under-display. Wireless charging replacing cables. Satellite network calling etc. Beyond battery cellular WiFi increments. I don’t think we’re there, but we are definitely late mid-life.

 

[JosephAW]

Time for a Mac Mini Neo, iPhone Neo, iMac Neo, Apple Watch Neo, Apple TV Neo, Studio Display Neo, Vision Pro Neo, iPad Neo, AirPods Neo, macOS Neo for Intel, A.I. Neo 🤔

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Whether there is or isn't "so much left to do", what do you expect him to say -- that they're done innovating and they can't think of a single darn thing to do? Of course he's going to lead you to believe that they have a whole bucket of cool things to do! They just need to find good people to actually implement them (like Apple Intelligence).

 

[datsdatcharlie]

We can make a phone without bezels!!!

 

[Sandstorm]

Every word that ever comes out of Tim Cook sounds like pure “LinkedIn speak.” I understand he’s a CEO, and that on the other end of the spectrum we have insufferable douches like Musk, but can’t we have someone at the helm of Apple who’s a bit more normal/more human?

 

[Smith288]

You realise the Unicode Consortium comes up with new emoji, not Apple, right? What do you expect them to do? Ignore new emoji? Make a generic placeholder for ‘emoji not found’ when someone sends you a new one?

So what youre saying is even these featured additions to iOS arent even Apple's incremental updates which is more of an indictment on apple's lack of true innovation.

 

[Ctrlos]

I can see where you’re going with this, but Apple Watches are still very much tethered to iPhones, so they’re an extension of the iPhone.

I like my Apple Watch because it vastly reduces my screen time and doomscrolling, as it’s not an interface that promotes doomscrolling.

But it is, for the most part, still an interface for the phone. Bothto get you to buy both, but also for a more valid technical reason - the phone is the computer, it does the grunt work and heavy lifting - because of it’s larger size, it can have more battery, more memory, wider connectivity, more processing power.

It makes sense that the much smaller watch offloads as much of the actual storage, computing and wider connectivity to the phone.

We may end up directly interfacing the the Watch more than phone, but you’re still using the phone. It’s just there maybe more options to think of the iPhone as more of a Mac mini than MacBook.

Or another way to look at it, an Apple Watch is more like AirPods / iPod combined than an iPhone. It still needs the phone as a “base station”.

As an aside, this was one of the issues with the Vision Pro, trying to replicate all the processing in the device, rather being the tethered to a base device. An you still need a Mac to use MacOS (which is hard to move away from if you trying to get a lot of work done).

At one point the iPhone was still a satellite device for the Mac. Now its at the centre. How long before we move past that?

 

[Smith288]

Every word that ever comes out of Tim Cook sounds like pure “LinkedIn speak.” I understand he’s a CEO, and that on the other end of the spectrum we have insufferable douches like Musk, but can’t we have someone at the helm of Apple who’s a bit more normal/more human?

If you actually listen to Musk, he speaks like an autistic kid talks about dinosaurs or trains. A ton of words with not much meat. Like Tim Cook but different.

 

[Happy_John]

It feels this way across tech. There isn't a whole lot of head room left. Whether its cameras, TVs or computers there isn't a whole lot of area left to innovate that will make any meaningful changes or improvements to how 99% of us use them. All of them are more than good enough to last for the better part of a decade.

The reality hasn't hit yet as iPhone sales are better than ever but as this economy starts to backslide I do think it's going to begin. If things get bad enough to start hurting the upper arm of the K-shaped economy we are in, that's when it will start to get bad for these companies. That's when phone sales fall.

On a side note, I think that's why companies are so desperate to chase AI. It is the first "new-thing" in a generation and they all desperately want a piece of it, sacrificing 100's of billions in investment to will this thing into existence.

Fully agree - the "meaningful change" won't be AI, that's just chasing a "magic new product to sell" and, financially, AI is turning out to be a disaster - it cost far more money to run than people are paying for it, so running costs are being paid by investors, not consumers. That's not sustainable.

The next "meaningful" change will most likely be a better battery technology. Other than that, there's not much that is still out there, excepting new, cheaper and cleaner energy sources themselves.

Everything else seems to be about miniaturizing and improving/optimizing existing tech and tech processes.

 

[capamac]

And we call it ‘Genmoji 2.0!’

AR AI emojis, too.

 

[Happy_John]

We can make a phone without bezels!!!

After a point, that's a bit pointless, as you still need to be able to actually hold the phone in your hand. There's always going to be sides on a 3D object.

 

[Smith288]

Fully agree - the "meaningful change" won't be AI, that's just chasing a "magic new product to sell" and, financially, AI is turning out to be a disaster - it cost far more money to run than people are paying for it, so running costs are being paid by investors, not consumers. That's not sustainable.

The next "meaningful" change will most likely be a better battery technology. Other than that, there's not much that is still out there, excepting new, cheaper and cleaner energy sources themselves.

Everything else seems to be about miniaturizing and improving/optimizing existing tech and tech processes.

For AI, i think the money is in localized AI. Not enough people want to generate videos or images but do like AI to proofread, analyze, give ideas. This can be done quite easily on an iPhone or relatively current OS

 

[Happy_John]

At one point the iPhone was still a satellite device for the Mac. Now its at the centre. How long before we move past that?

But think about that - if you watch is not tethered to your phone, it will be tethered to the cloud ( realistically, it will need to be tethered to something bigger) - which means you don't actually have as much control of data etc as you do by being tethered to a device you own ( ultimately the cloud storage verses NAS argument, but for wearables / ultra-portables, and, as said before, your watch will be a lot more expensive and probably heavier with far worse battery life, because a lot more will be being done on device.

And ultimately, I don't do all my computing tasks on my iPhone, even if I technically bought, because it's easier and more convenient to do certain tasks on a laptop or desktop than on a phone. The same is true with phones vs watches.

I'm not going to want to write documents and watch video content on a watch.

Ultimately, all these devices are tools, not toys or collectables. And it's better to have a range of tools for a range of tasks, rather than owning just one tool for every task. Again, this is, in my mind, a problem with the Vision Pro - it was built to do everything on device, but it doesn't effectively replace other devices for all tasks. tethering would have cut down the need for all task to be on device, and that would have cut down costs.

 

[Winterpark]

I don't have much really to say, because most of you have already said it. But here, I'll say I have been extremely disappointed in everything iOS since 18. That applies to iPhones, iPads, and watches. LOVE my Macs, but even those seem to be heading down the iOS path. Unless something radical changes very soon, including Tims departure, I'm most likely moving on. Hate to do it, but I cringe every time I pick up my 17 PM !

 

[turbineseaplane]

"I interviewed Tim Cook (What he told me matters)"

Jesus, we're really scraping the barrel of human attention span and critical thinking aren't we?
I mean, isn't the world, political landscape, tech-oligarchy and widespread real world ******tification enough?

"CEO said a thing" is the laziest and most useless form of "journalism", I totally agree with you.

 

[ReliableSource]

I can see where you’re going with this, but Apple Watches are still very much tethered to iPhones, so they’re an extension of the iPhone.

I like my Apple Watch because it vastly reduces my screen time and doomscrolling, as it’s not an interface that promotes doomscrolling.

But it is, for the most part, still an interface for the phone. Bothto get you to buy both, but also for a more valid technical reason - the phone is the computer, it does the grunt work and heavy lifting - because of it’s larger size, it can have more battery, more memory, wider connectivity, more processing power.

This is the way I can see it going; the iPhone being the sort of main hub device that handles heavy processing that other devices with less room can't handle. It's already that way with the watch and AirPods, and the Neo proves how capable the phone silicon is now, let alone where it'll be in the future. So maybe they're able to get some AR glasses that work decently as an extension of the phone because they just need to power their own HUD and the phone does all the real processing. And over time all the secondary devices will become more and more powerful and capable, and eventually I'm sure something will overtake the iPhone as the hub the same way the iPhone overtook the Mac (at least for me it did, I'm sure I'm not alone there though).

But I don't see anything really overtaking the slab phone form factor for a while, because what else is there? Maybe foldable phones? But, at least to me, anything bigger than I can carry in my pocket is too big, and anything smaller than a slab phone is too small. I like being able to have a big-enough display on me so I can watch a video or look at email or browse the web or whatever, and I like having a pretty capable point-and-shoot camera at all times too, and who knows how long it'll be before they can make those any smaller.

My phone is already the center of my digital world in that it does all the phone stuff and also is the device that manages all my smart home accessories, it manages my watch, my headphones, some day I'd like to see it be able to plug into a monitor and run macOS... So yeah, I agree that there's still room for them to do new stuff with the iPhone.

 

[turbineseaplane]

If they can get an 18-hour battery with always-on 5G cracked

I think they can do one of these two things, but not both.

 

[Happy_John]

This is the way I can see it going; the iPhone being the sort of main hub device that handles heavy processing that other devices with less room can't handle. It's already that way with the watch and AirPods, and the Neo proves how capable the phone silicon is now, let alone where it'll be in the future. So maybe they're able to get some AR glasses that work decently as an extension of the phone because they just need to power their own HUD and the phone does all the real processing. And over time all the secondary devices will become more and more powerful and capable, and eventually I'm sure something will overtake the iPhone as the hub the same way the iPhone overtook the Mac (at least for me it did, I'm sure I'm not alone there though).

But I don't see anything really overtaking the slab phone form factor for a while, because what else is there? Maybe foldable phones? But, at least to me, anything bigger than I can carry in my pocket is too big, and anything smaller than a slab phone is too small. I like being able to have a big-enough display on me so I can watch a video or look at email or browse the web or whatever, and I like having a pretty capable point-and-shoot camera at all times too, and who knows how long it'll be before they can make those any smaller.

My phone is already the center of my digital world in that it does all the phone stuff and also is the device that manages all my smart home accessories, it manages my watch, my headphones, some day I'd like to see it be able to plug into a monitor and run macOS... So yeah, I agree that there's still room for them to do new stuff with the iPhone.

Yep, that's the way I see it too. I wouldn't be surprised if phones eventually have the equivalent of "clamshell" mode - i.e. you can deactivate the screen completely (by assigning the "action button" to do this), so that it's the hub or box that you rarely interact with directly, and it spends most of its time quietly working away in your pocket or bag, almost like an portable iOS version of a "headless" Mac mini being used as a server, but has the option to be used as both a "slab phone" but also as a "PC" when you connect a screen and keyboard. Android has started going down this road, but so far it's janky.

 

[Zenman12]

You realise the Unicode Consortium comes up with new emoji, not Apple, right? What do you expect them to do? Ignore new emoji? Make a generic placeholder for ‘emoji not found’ when someone sends you a new one?

People downvoting you. Lol. They don’t even get how it works when they complain. Apple has no choice but to add them. As a member of the Unicode Consortium, they’re obligated to add what the consortium authorizes. They don’t even do the emojis themselves (although Apple submitted a few for review in the past. Anyone around the world can submit an emoji to be possibly added). Even Android does this, so you can use emojis across different platforms. Some people man…

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

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Tim Cook on iPhone's Future: 'There's So Much New Emojis Left That We Can Do'​

Failed attempt at humor -- for the millionth time, there is a consortium that comes up with the emoji's and it's the responsibility of the OS makers to create their renditions of them. So while the new emoji's may seem worthless, it's not Apple's fault (or Google).

 

[Siliconguy]

If they can get an 18-hour battery with always-on 5G

Sometimes Physics says no.

 

[Happy_John]

People downvoting you. Lol. They don’t even get how it works, when they complain. Apple has no choice but to add them. As a member of the Unicode Consortium, they’re obligated to add what the consortium authorizes. They don’t even do the emojis themselves (although Apple submitted a few for review in the past. Anyone around the world can submit an emoji). Even Android does this, so you can use emojis across different platforms. Some people man…

Apple obviously will release details about what is in an update, it would be crazy if they didn't. It's the "apple community" that bang on and highlight the inclusion of new emojis. It's not really newsworthy, but equally it's all too much of a nothing burger to get incensed about.

 

[satchmo]

“So much left we can do” and proceed to make every generation the most incremental upgrade

I suspect iPhone Fold 1 thru iPhone Fold 20 will be just as incremental.