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Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

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Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#21

Post by brobdingnagians »

sigzero wrote: post #9
techsocial wrote: post #2

I like this part: Apple is milking its essentially captive audience. I hesitate to call it “loyal” — these are, essentially, people who look with trepidation at the idea of moving years of photos and other data to a different system. My wife gnashed her teeth when she got one of the new, wildly overpriced iPhones — but she just can’t imagine switching to Android.

I hear you. I decided this last summer to move out of "Apple Land" to Android. Didn't know much about it but I just didn't want the walled garden anymore. I have moved everything over. Got the Pixel because I wanted "stock" and "updates" and the camera. Haven't had any issues. Next step is moving my wife over as well. It's been a pretty good experience.

My first smart phone was an iPhone, because it was the cool thing to do and nicely integrated everything, but I wanted to dip into app programming and couldn't justify $99/year for experimentation, so when my iPhone died, I just swapped to Android. If it had been more open and at least let me easily program for my own phone at the time, I probably never would have switched.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#22

Post by jimbokun »

askafriend wrote: post #15

I think people in the mainstream media and even most people period just don't understand innovation cycles. They expect novelty every year, but they don't realize that revolutions are created by consistently great evolution over a long period of time. We're nearing the top of the S curve with regards to the smartphone business. Upgrade cycles are getting longer. Phones are getting as powerful as laptops and people ar…

"I think people in the mainstream media just don't understand innovation cycles."

I think this very article shows the author understands this phenomenon well, he just doesn't use terms like "S curve" to describe it.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#23

Post by ummonk »

techsocial wrote: post #2

I like this part: Apple is milking its essentially captive audience. I hesitate to call it “loyal” — these are, essentially, people who look with trepidation at the idea of moving years of photos and other data to a different system. My wife gnashed her teeth when she got one of the new, wildly overpriced iPhones — but she just can’t imagine switching to Android.

Weird. I recently moved from Android to iOS, for privacy reasons as well as wanting a phone that would be supported with software updates for a long time.

I've really really enjoyed the switch. Admittedly, it helped that I got the iPhone SE which hadn't been discontinued yet; I might have been less happy with the newer X-series phones, particularly given the sticker price.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#24

Post by xiphias2 »

I look at Tesla as the next Apple. There's not much room for fast innovation in the smart phone space, but cars are outdated, and self driving / electric cars with better robotic manufacturing methods give an opportunity for new entrants to appear. It's too late for Apple though at this point to manufacture the full hardware (and also behind Waymo in self driving software).

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#25

Post by Theodores »

techsocial wrote: post #2

I like this part: Apple is milking its essentially captive audience. I hesitate to call it “loyal” — these are, essentially, people who look with trepidation at the idea of moving years of photos and other data to a different system. My wife gnashed her teeth when she got one of the new, wildly overpriced iPhones — but she just can’t imagine switching to Android.

I wonder if Apple have a demographics problem looming. The teeth-gnashing wife probably has had iPhones since the beginning and her reasons for not wanting to switch are understandable enough. She can also look after her phone and not need so many replacement devices.

But the kids who didn't get on the Apple bandwagon when iTunes was a groundbreaking exciting thing with an Apple ecosystem that made it all work wonderfully?

I suspect that the kids who expect parents to pay for everything might be burdened with commodity Android devices that cost a lot less than the deluxe Apple phones. Lose the phone too often and it becomes a distinctly mid to low end commodity Android device. If that happens then they get to be outside the Android ecosystem and grow up not needing Apple. Meanwhile, the parents just don't replace their phones often enough as what they have is good enough.

Apple can't produce a low-end device as this would cannibalise their premium sales so they are stuck in the realm of hardware and need to push this services model on their customer base.

As time goes on an a phone is just a commodity 'hand rectangle' with little class value. Having the latest and greatest doesn't make you one of the cool kids any more than having a fancy laptop makes you special. There are no queues outside the stores on launch day anymore and there is no returning to that.

A further problem that Apple have is the amount of markets affected by currencies that have gone south or are protected by tariffs. This affects their competitors too, slowing down the upgrade cycle. The UK is a significant market for Apple and after the Brexit vote the pound lost 20% of value making the latest and greatest iphone cost a pretty penny. Unless you are rich enough for these things to not matter then you do have to ask what you are getting for paying five times as much for a fancy iPhone rather than a similarly sized screen on an Android budget device, particularly when signal strength/battery is a huge part of what the product is.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#26

Post by jimbokun »

jiveturkey wrote: post #12

Admittedly I'm not even going to read the article to see if the headline is just clickbait. The premise is absurd. Apple still sets the bar for innovation. The fact that it is also incredibly good at monetizing its efforts does not take away from that fact.

You should read it, it's more about how everyone has a phone already, and there are fewer must have improvements to drive new sales, so revenue growth is coming mostly from services instead.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#27

Post by alsetmusic »

askafriend wrote: post #15

I think people in the mainstream media and even most people period just don't understand innovation cycles. They expect novelty every year, but they don't realize that revolutions are created by consistently great evolution over a long period of time. We're nearing the top of the S curve with regards to the smartphone business. Upgrade cycles are getting longer. Phones are getting as powerful as laptops and people ar…

I think that you are correct. I also think that journalists look for attention-grabbing headlines. I haven’t read the article, but the headline makes me think that the author saw the movie The Founder, where a McDonald’s co-founder leverages the real estate market as the primary profit generator, and thought, “I can apply that to Apple.”

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#28

Post by ilovecaching »

rhacker wrote: post #19
ilovecaching wrote: post #13

Eh... I mean Google's entire business model is to essentially rent you out services in exchange for your personal information. Also, I contend that Apple's "invention" has been to repackage computing in a premium package. Smart phones, music players, tablets all existed before Steve flashed them on stage, he just made you want to use them by making them sexy and cool, which wasn't that hard, because the early days of…

I don't think something like the iphone specifically existed before its debut, but I could be wrong.

Yes, check out the LG Prada. It was actually thought at the time that Apple had copied that design.

Microsoft also pushed tablets long before Apple ever did. Like I said, Apple repackages things.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#30

Post by roymurdock »

askafriend wrote: post #15

I think people in the mainstream media and even most people period just don't understand innovation cycles. They expect novelty every year, but they don't realize that revolutions are created by consistently great evolution over a long period of time. We're nearing the top of the S curve with regards to the smartphone business. Upgrade cycles are getting longer. Phones are getting as powerful as laptops and people ar…

The copy editor put a click-bait title on the article to get more hits/views, but if you read past it you'll find a fairly even and uncontroversial analysis. It's not an op-ed piece whining for more innovation as the title might imply

The author emphasizes how Apple has created an ecosystem with its iPhone, but that it needs to extract more value from the services provided to that ecosystem to make up for declining sales of the devices themselves (instead of continually raising device prices)

Authors for these publications rarely if ever write their own headlines

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