> When their app store faces anti-trust, and everyone already has an iphone and the next igadget is 5 years away, how do you generate growth?
I'd suggest this is the definition of being out of ideas, as the way they grew last time was they invented the iPhone, and then the iPod, and then the Airbook, Apple Watch, and AirPods. Then there was the mini tracking device to help you believe every other product wasn't already a tracking device.
Imo, the negative inflection point was the AppleTV launch where it was just a bunch of celebrities, and for Cook to stay at the helm, he needs to deliver a Jobs level win. Enterprise may be his "second envelope," as I think it's a safety play.
Reframing your question as, what can they re-invent next? That's hard to answer without being that level of design thinker. Cook's team is designing products for a very different world than the one Jobs did. The aesthetics, aspirations, and even power means different things now, as they say, what got us here doesn't get us where we need to go next. The enterprise product is going to be huge revenue wise, but innovation wise, I think it's treading water.
Maybe the smartest thing to do is to turn Apple into a company that doesn't need to run on genius anymore, and fork a design driven ventures division with a mission to get exposure to early stage brilliance instead. What Jobs did was bring artists to tech, but that whole play was predicated on a bohemian/creative class that doesn't matter the same way anymore because their rarity and scarcity was an artifact of geography that is no longer a factor. This bringing something from one place to another aspect of Jobs' vision (and cultural arbitrage) breaks down when that physical distance is no longer meaningful.
The distance to bridge with products now is intellectual, educational, cultural, political, etc, and maybe we don't want it bridged now, maybe what we desire is that distance again. The next iPhone level innovation won't be a signifier of joining the middle class of that time, it will be either a barrier to it, or an escape from it.
I think the ousting (quitting?) of Ives is a sign that apple as an aesthetic force is ending, and the return to "logical" macs instead is a sign that they're reverting going too far. Its an acknowledgement that they have to do more than make pretty devices.
I see a very similar path to luxury car brands for luxury electronics. A mix of status, comfort and performance. I wouldn't be surprised if the "pro"/"pro-sumer" line of devices diverges even more into the future so that we have $2k iPhones. Similar to how car companies have $200k+ cars, and $75k+ cars that effectively don't compete with each other and let them invest in more expensive efforts, that serve as flagships. Alternatively, go the racing-car route, and invest in high-end engineering efforts that way. This could be similar to your "forking" idea in that they get exposure without subjecting it to mass scale.
Smart. This raises an interesting question. Cars do one thing well, and we've turned them into extended rooms of our homes, so a $200k car can make sense. What is the thing personal computers/mobile devices do well for us as users that we can just dial it up and charge 10x for it?
I don't know. Mine cryptocurrency? A fancier and more flattering filter bubble? An AI named Cyrano that identifies people and gives us tips for manipulating and blackmailing them? Spitballing here.
> that we can just dial it up and charge 10x for it?
Maybe you don't get 10x but like cars we can use more expensive materials, more expensive parts (cameras, cpu cores, screen quality).
Materials:
Apple's base model apple watch is aluminum, while the higher tier is stainless steel. They also lock the neutral colors behind the higher price (which i think is annoying because color is not price dependent to make).
Performance:
Think about Apple's $5k monitor - the "Pro display XDR" from a few years ago. Today, apple sells the $1k iPad pro with a "XDR display" based on the same tech. They figured out how to build it, then later figured out how to scale down the price and scale up the process.
I'd suggest this is the definition of being out of ideas, as the way they grew last time was they invented the iPhone, and then the iPod, and then the Airbook, Apple Watch, and AirPods. Then there was the mini tracking device to help you believe every other product wasn't already a tracking device.
Imo, the negative inflection point was the AppleTV launch where it was just a bunch of celebrities, and for Cook to stay at the helm, he needs to deliver a Jobs level win. Enterprise may be his "second envelope," as I think it's a safety play.
Reframing your question as, what can they re-invent next? That's hard to answer without being that level of design thinker. Cook's team is designing products for a very different world than the one Jobs did. The aesthetics, aspirations, and even power means different things now, as they say, what got us here doesn't get us where we need to go next. The enterprise product is going to be huge revenue wise, but innovation wise, I think it's treading water.
Maybe the smartest thing to do is to turn Apple into a company that doesn't need to run on genius anymore, and fork a design driven ventures division with a mission to get exposure to early stage brilliance instead. What Jobs did was bring artists to tech, but that whole play was predicated on a bohemian/creative class that doesn't matter the same way anymore because their rarity and scarcity was an artifact of geography that is no longer a factor. This bringing something from one place to another aspect of Jobs' vision (and cultural arbitrage) breaks down when that physical distance is no longer meaningful.
The distance to bridge with products now is intellectual, educational, cultural, political, etc, and maybe we don't want it bridged now, maybe what we desire is that distance again. The next iPhone level innovation won't be a signifier of joining the middle class of that time, it will be either a barrier to it, or an escape from it.