On the one hand: Apple has released (at least) two new "major" consumer "apps" over the past year (Freeform and this). This gives me positive echos of "old Apple"; a company that took the software as seriously as the hardware, that apps like Aperture and Logic were
critical to the Mac becoming what it is, and that they should have a hand in creating not just the platform and technologies, but the actual experiences that drive productivity (and now entertainment) for the people who join their platforms. This can solve a real problem for a lot of customers; I am not one of them, so I'm unqualified to say if it actually does solve those problems, but I'm really happy that it exists.
On the other hand; release is step 1, and given this is based on an acquisition I think its totally fair to be skeptical. I shared this with my dad this morning, who is an old classical music nerd and pianist for the symphony orchestra in town. His first reaction: Does it have a Mac app? (It doesn't). And see, that gap is actually really significant when you think about it, because people like him, in that niche; they are appreciators, for better or worse, of audio quality. Hi-Res lossless, awesome, that's table stakes. He has a Mac Mini wired up to a Schiit Yggdrassil and some amp that weighs 50 pounds and a set of speakers that he drove 300 miles away to "get a deal" on (he paid $18,000 for them. that was a "deal". my mother was not happy about it). Using an iPhone is a complete non-starter. He uses Qobuz primarily, alongside an obscene collection of SA-CDs, and despite this app being 90% there toward being something awesome he could use; he won't.
So I think that's what I mean by Step 1; developing "niche" software like Freeform or Apple Music Classical isn't an obvious step for Apple. They won't get insane metrics for these apps. They won't drive measurable revenue. But I really deeply believe that this kind of niche investment is what separates companies like Microsoft and Apple from companies like Google; as they say about Google, if its not a billion dollar business it won't even get a team. Microsoft and Apple do understand the insane power of network effects, and the power that solving one niche really freakin well can have on bringing customers into the fold of their platforms, and keeping them there. Microsoft for M365 and Apple for their consumer software.
I think that's the era we're entering in software; we've solved a ton of the problems that have "100M users" as their TAM. As an example: note taking. Its solved. It can be iteratively improved, but everyone has their favorite app, we switch every once in a while, and its best for me that that improvement happens within the context of a platform I've already adopted. Large software companies should really be open to moving down the TAM ladder; what problems do 10M people have? 1M? Freeform is one stab at that: diagramming and flowcharts. But we also can't accept these apps having 10x fewer features or 10x less quality just because they have a 10x smaller TAM; software is multiplicative, and potentially exponential now that we have generative AI capable of helping out.