Apple: A Year after Jobs

It's been a year since Steve Jobs passing. In that year, Apple has released some ground-breaking products like the iPhone 5, the New iPad, MacBook Pro with Retina Display and the soon to released iPad Mini. They've also had some highly publicized failures, such as Apple Maps. So a year later how do you think they are doing? Do you think anything would be different if he were still around?

 

Would hardly call any of their recent stuff groundbreaking except for the rMBP. The iphone 5 for example, while still a good phone in its own light, was a) already supposedly designed and planned by jobs a year in advance, b) a small, iterative update to the 4s, c) poorly received by a large number of apple fans who were expecting the moon delivered.

On the hardware side I feel they are still coasting on jobs designs, you can see it in the MBA and the ipad where their physical appearance is once again unchanged. They did a good job with the rMBP though, apple hardware engineers can still make good stuff without guidance, but I think that you are going to see a slow transition to more mainstream standards - the hdmi port on the rMBP is a great example of what I mean. Without his weird topdown tight control apple hardware will realign itself with the market, maybe we'll see less thunderbolt and more usb3 for example. And the lightning connector on the iphone5 sort of seems like they wanted to transition to microusb style plugs but without losing their control over accessories ($$).

Software they are going to a terrible dark place. Apple maps would have never seen the light of day in its' current state, jobs hated half-assed solutions. 10.8 gets into all this social media integration nonsense embedded in the OS. Regressive software updates abound, for example the airport extreme utility lost DDNS functions this past april. iOS feels, looks, and performs like a stale mobile OS, in a world where it's biggest competition (android) has made incredible leaps and bounds - now anything new that iOS does is just playing catchup to android and more and more people are realizing this. Apps on iOS aren't even better than android anymore, they both have excellent stuff, mediocre stuff and terrible/buggy stuff.

The stupid, ridiculous lawsuits need to stop. It seems as if they took one of jobs' quotes out of context and literally (that apple will go to thermonuclear war over android), and now that he's gone, well, there is no taking back or correcting or putting that quote back into context. Any idiot knows that rule #1 of nuclear war is: don't have one, because everyone loses.

 

I think Apple is doing okay... and I do feel the iPhone 5 is more than a small update. I don't think a year ago they had that in-cell display technology to a point where they could mass produce it for the margins they wanted and working on balancing the power of the CPU, the requirements of LTE and extending battery life is not an easy task.

I'm not really in that mindset that each new product release has to be a major aesthetic change from the previous one... Apple is known for sticking to iconic designs (except for the Nano ).

And while I enjoy the openness of Android... the stability of iOS (or staleness depending on your point of view) lends to its popularity.

I look forward to the iPad Mini as I think it's a good market niche and I wonder if Apple is ever going to consider a phablet product like the Note II.

 

I think Mountain Lion is the best version of OSX ever. Let's not forget that. And while the rMBP is not the right laptop for me for many reasons, it's probably the best example of the laptop-as-a-luxury-good concept on the market (and priced to match, and selling like hotcakes). For all the grumbling of Android and WP8 fans about the only-incremental improvements of the iPhone 5, people still lined up for hours to get their hands on them.

Apple is doing just fine.

 

Apple is doing great. So many people are fond of Steve they see the past in rose-colored glasses and somehow think everything was perfect when Steve was there... He did his job right, and Apple will keep strong... he didn't want it tied to him, he wanted it to be strong on its own, which he did. Apple hasn't had any more problems this last year than they've had in the past.

 

Exactly, rose-colored glasses about the Steve Jobs era. There were hiccups then too. People are acting like Apple Maps is sign of impending doom, but IMO it's a more minor issue then antennagate. There are several mapping apps in the app store, you can navigate to google maps, and apple maps is easy to improve over the next 30-90 days (unlike a hardware design issue).

I like joking about the Apple Maps thing, because it's kind of hilarious, but in the grand scheme of things it's no big deal. My mom was worried about getting an iPhone 5 and upgrading iOS on her iPad 3, and I told her to quit worrying about Apple Maps and just do it.

 

Apple is doing just fine, in fact quite well with all of their products when compared to what the competition has. In fact in regards to being well-rounded with the plethora of products and software they have there is no other tech company that has so many current products that are successful. Sounds more like you have personal issues with Apple. Your facts aren't accurate.

 

I think Apple is doing alright for themselves. Granted, most of the products they have released since Jobs' death were designed/programmed under his supervision. Apple might not be winning everyone over with Apple Maps in iOS 6 but it is still a solid mobile operating system. It doesn't have the flashy interface of many competitors but iOS has always been a solid performer for me on my iPads and iPod touch whereas my Droid X drastically showed its age one year after owning it. Mountain Lion is really a great OS and I have had nothing but positive experiences with it. I like being able to update Facebook without actually having to open my web browser to do so, same with iOS 6. The main issue is not with what Apple is doing but rather outside perception. People were expecting the cure to cancer with the iPhone 5 and, instead, Apple offered a nice update to their lineup. It isn't a big step above the iPhone 4S but that wasn't a big step from the iPhone 4 either (which wasn't that big of an upgrade from the iPhone 3Gs). Every little problem that the iPhone 5 has is being blown way out of proportion simply because it is a popular product from Apple. The purple lens flair is just ridiculous. My Droid X has orange lens flair when I take pictures with the Sun off to the side but people didn't blow up over that. My Sony point-and-shoot digital camera produces foggy pictures when the Sun is slightly out of frame yet people didn't expose that all over the news.

The biggest complaints out of anything Apple has released over the past year revolve around Apple Maps. Some of them are deserving while others aren't so much. I get the feeling that, much like the lens flair "issue," people are trying to find issues just to have something to put on their tech website/reddit post. Yes, Google Maps is better but it didn't offer nearly as many features under iOS as Apple Maps. Turn-by-turn navigation and Yelp integration are two big things that weren't available with Google Maps for iOS. Apple has already started fixing some of the issue with Apple Maps. The main problem is that Google Maps have been around for a long, long time. These same problems were in that as well but Google has had more than enough time to fix them all and gather gobs of data. Apple still needs a long time before they can catchup but I have a feeling it will happen within a year or two. I personally haven't experienced anything negative with Apple Maps as it has been able to find everything I search for on my iPad while offering live navigation.

All-in-all, Apple has been Apple over the past year. They continue to release good products with a few misses here and there. That isn't anything different than when Jobs was at the helm and Apple is going to continue down the path that he laid out for them. Things are definitely going to be different but Jobs made sure the right people were hired so that Apple continues to push out products and services on the same level as before. Like I said, not everything is going to be an instant hit (remember MobileMe?) but they are still making good products. The iPhone 5 is a solid phone, Mountain Lion is the best version of OS X in a good while, and the iPad still remains the best tablet on the market.

 

Towards the end of his life, Steve Jobs was alive but not really running Apple due to poor health, so Apple lost his leadership sometime more than a year ago. But there's a lag between losing him and when you see the results as an outsider, and the lag depends on the length Apple's internal product cycles. So between those two factors, it's not that clear yet what the long term impact will be. Recall that when Jobs left Apple the first time, the company carried on successfully for years before losing its way. Here is how I see the last year:

Plusses:
+ iPad 3 was a hit, Android still buggy on tablet platforms, so still no serious competition in tablet space
+ Retina MBP was a home run, introduces a new generation of notebook displays

Minuses:
- iPhone is getting stale, 4s was a weak upgrade, so was 5
- Some products in dire need of major update (e.g. Mac Pro, iTunes)
- Maps

Questionable:
* Litigation becoming as important to business strategy as innovation
* Direction of Mac OS X: focus seems to be on convergence of iOS and OS X rather than making a better desktop/notebook OS
* Marketing seems to be losing its edge (since the Siri ads)

Overall I think Apple is still in a really strong position, but they seem to be resting on their laurels a bit in some product categories.

 

You're saying all of this as if it's a bad thing.

iPhone is getting stale? I don't think so. I would much rather have a stable running product with a minimal bloat of additions that need minor updating than dealing with a bloated Mobile OS with a instability such as the experience one gets on Android. Funny how a few people say iPhone is getting stale without mentioning anything that would make it better. The iPhone's inception has made it much easier for the competition to build the RIGHT smartphone so it's easy to add a few features that the iPhone doesn't have allowing bystanders to call the iPhone "stale" .

Litigation has been a major "business practice" amongst major corporations long before you were born. It's not "becoming as important as innovation", it's been. Apple is a very high profile company with amazing products that many of their competitors try to imitate. It could be any company such as Bose, Sony, Bowers and Wilkins...etc..who's products are being highly imitated and on some levels downright copied on a constant basis, you would see them in the public suing a lot as well. Just because you don't see a lawsuit in the news doesn't mean it's not happening and everybody is sleeping together nicely behind the scenes. Don't make this only about Apple.

OSX is going in the right direction converging with iOS. I've been a Mac user since Mac OS 8 and OS X has been a great OS but the problem is people stay with what they know..(Windows, sadly) because they are either too lazy to learn something new or they just don't want to or can't give up their software. iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad are in the hands of too many millions of people so it makes perfect sense to build their desktop OS inline with their mobile. At least it's not done stupidly like Windows 8 which only belongs on a mobile platform but it's being pushed into desktop PC's.

Apple's marketing? What's wrong with the Siri ads? I think the one with Martin Scorsese was brilliant and funny. I don't see Google or any company with Android phone doing ads using Google Voice. Please come up with a solution rather than just criticize. Apple and other companies are not perfect people so I would like to think they would accept suggestions on ways to market. If they don't then it's their loss.

 

I honeslty think that apple is better without steve jobs(no offence, i truly respect the man) Is just that he somehow got to the point of being completelly selfish and started monopolying the entire company.

 

Apple has in some sense a reasonably straightforward gig for the next years - keep issuing new versions of the macintosh, iPhone and iPad lines that incrementally take advantage of the newest tech as it is introduced. Joni Ive can keep producing stellar industrial design for years to come.

Where Jobs will be missed is in two areas. First, is maintaining the big vision. Lesser mortals will be prone to drift in the product line. Second, is coming up with the next big thing. Apple has gained its success through repeatedly introducing disruptive technologies that just blow everyone away. Will Cook be able to come up with that kind of direction? It's too early to tell.

 

There's always the possibility that Apple will suffer under the weight of its tremendous expectations and the intense scrutiny that they face from the tech world at large - it's somewhat telling that AAPL is riding closer to $600 than $800 a month after the release of the iPhone 5, an event that observers had conjectured would propel them near the $800 mark, because such a shortfall is in part explained by those weighty expectations.

There's also the chance that Apple fans will grow disillusioned with the direction of the company simply because Jobs is no longer at the helm. Every move will be unduly slightly as a divergence from Jobs' divine plan.

But realistically, Apple has always had peaks and troughs just as any company is prone to do and they've exhibited the same penchant toward unilateralism that they've done since the very beginning. If the bloom is off the rose at this point, it's purely perceptual.

Either way, I use Apple products (a Macbook Pro, the iPhone... and soon that delicious iMac) because I enjoy them, not because I enjoy the company. I wish them well, of course, but I'm not all that concerned about how they maintain in the shadow of Steve Jobs.