Apple doesn’t innovate any morE
“After a decade of innovation, the company’s well has run dry,” declared Howard Gold of the Wall Street Journal after Apple’s last earnings call. It’s a common complaint, and one that’s often countered by pointing out that Apple’s biggest innovations have come several years apart – it’s not fair to demand a game-changer every year. This is, of course, true, though it is ignoring just how fertile the mid-2000s were for Apple: there was a major new product category or fundamental shift coming every year, from the Mac mini in 2005 though the Intel switch, the iPhone, the Apple TV and finally the MacBook Air in 2008. Then came the iPad and Retina displays two years later in 2010. Since then, you could argue the iPad mini and Mac Pro are big additions, but largely, Apple has released products that iterate on what’s already there. The question is whether more new product categories are what’s needed to sustain the company, or whether it can keep growing by improving what’s there.
Sometimes you feel that there’s an air of frustration or impatience behind claims that Apple doesn’t innovate any more. Products such as the iPhone and MacBook Air were so exciting when they were introduced – they were barely believable! People want to see that again, and when that comes dressed up as analysis is where things go awry. Does analyst Trip Chowdhry from Global Equities Research seriously believe that Apple “only have 60 days left to either come up with [an iWatch] or they will disappear”, as he told CNBC? “It will become a zombie, if they don't come up with an iWatch.” Those 60 days expire on 19 May 2014 – two days before this issue of MacFormat goes on sale – but we’ll assume that Apple is still a successful company. Regardless, it really feels like what Chowdhry and others want is for Apple to turn existing ideas (like the watch or TV) into products with iPhone levels of impact. Rene Ritchie of iMore laments that this won’t happen: “There isn’t a business as big as the iPhone, not for Apple, not for anyone, and there won’t be again.”
Hopefully, that isn’t true – perhaps a huge opportunity lies outside the computing industry (much like the way Nintendo has announced it will move into health products to expand its business, for example) – but even if it is, it’s no harbinger of Apple’s doom, because every year, Apple dramatically improves its existing products. There is innovation to be found in battery life, convenience and usability, and ignoring that is what Apple’s competitors get wrong. And it’s why the company doesn’t just throw out any old watch or TV concept and call it a finished products – look at the scathing reviews of Samsung’s Gear Fit.
“I think for Apple, the pressure is to get it right,” Carolina Milanesi, of consumer insight firm Kantar WorldPanel, told CNBC. “It’s not so much getting in quickly, it’s getting in there the right way… It’s not in Apple’s style to rush things, especially when its part of the bigger picture.” Perhaps that’s the real innovation, in an industry that’s happy to throw any old product at the wall.