Note: This piece sprang from a discussion I had with Leo Laporte and Andy Ihnatko on MacBreak Weekly yesterday. Both Leo and Andy stated their cases far more eloquently and with far more experience than I could ever hope to sum up, so check out the video below for the entire conversation. I go over some oft-repeated ground here as well, but I think it bears repeating in this context.
When it comes to Apple and innovation, there are two equal and opposing lines of thought. The negative sentiment is that Apple is no longer that which dented the universe in eras past, that it has lost its sense of innovation, is no longer capable of producing Mac-, iPod-, and iPhone-class disruptions, and is now simply coasting on the momentum of ecosystems past. The positive sentiment is that Apple is still at the height of their power, pushing out manufacturing breakthroughs like the iPhone 5, interface reboots like iOS 7, and bold new computing designs like the Mac Pro. So which is it?
Both. Both sentiments express true things. Apple is as it's always been, one part brilliant timing made vulnerable by price and focus, but resilient by culture. And that's what causes the perceptive dissonance.
The Mac shattered paved over command lines and made personal computers more fun and more approachable. The iPod and iTunes destroyed the disc and brought digital music into the light. The iPhone and iPad flipped the table on the lazy, user-unfriendly smartphone and tablet market and made personal computing more personal, accessible, and mainstream.
These major innovations were never year after year, however. The Mac was 1984. The iPod was 2001. The iPhone was 2007. They also each represented a movement into a massive consumer electronics business. Personal computers. Mobile devices. Mobile computers. They required prescience and patience and perseverance. They sat upon the ruins of Lisas and Newtons and ROKRs past, and they laid the foundation for entire lines of Macs and iPods and iPhone/iPads future.
Yes, Apple'sr focus on margins mean they can be undercut by cheap, which can be undercut by free. Yes, Apple's focus on a few products at a time means they can be blotted out by many options, which can be blotted out by floods of options. Yet free can be beaten by valuable, and floods by coherence. Disruption is cyclical.
That Apple has had so many revolutionary products, however, creates an expectational debt for more, and for faster, that's impossible to fill. What other massive consumer electronics businesses are left for Apple to disrupt in a similar manner, and of those, when is each one ready for Apple-style disruption. And of those, how many can Apple engage at once?
On the stage of D: AllThingDigital, Steve Jobs taught a master-class in Apple's go-to-market strategy. He explained how tough it was for the iPhone, and why it wouldn't yet work for an Apple television. He had prescience. He was patient. Apple would persevere. That disruption would wait until the timing was right, and if it was never right, Apple would be just as proud for never doing it.
Jobs failed with Lisa before getting the Mac right. He failed with NeXT before nailing it with OS X and the iMac. He held off on doing the iPad in favor of the iPhone, and then released the antecedent as the descendent. And Tim Cook, like Jobs before him, is still pulling the string on Apple TV and the living room.
Wearables - the confluence of traditional products like watches with informational delivery systems that include communications from the world around us and biometrics about ourselves - could be another such market. It may not be as big as the phone or tablet market, but right now, what is? And rumors of Apple entering it are at roughly the same stage as rumors were about the iPhone in 2006. Can Apple do it this fall? Could they do the iPhone in 2005 or the Mac in 1980? Were they willing to, given the products they could have launched compared to the ones they took their time to launch? Did they have to?
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Malin Akerman
Mila Kunis
Eliza Dushku
Adriana Lima
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