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Apple’s apparent lack of innovation and questions about leadership
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Ever since the introduction of the iPhone, Macworld and WWDC have been disappointing for their lack of new and exciting product introductions. This may be my personal view, but it does seem to be a somewhat widely held view as well. I wonder if the bar was set so high at Macworld 2007 as to invite disappointment in following years, or if there truly is a slowdown in the innovation coming from the company.
Considering the WSJ last week mentioned how SJ was not able to digest protein for most of last year, it invites the question: is the lack of innovation due to an absence, both physically and energy-wise, from Mr. Jobs?
Thoughts?
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Ever since the introduction of the iPhone, Macworld and WWDC have been disappointing for their lack of new and exciting product introductions. This may be my personal view, but it does seem to be a somewhat widely held view as well. I wonder if the bar was set so high at Macworld 2007 as to invite disappointment in following years, or if there truly is a slowdown in the innovation coming from the company.
Considering the WSJ last week mentioned how SJ was not able to digest protein for most of last year, it invites the question: is the lack of innovation due to an absence, both physically and energy-wise, from Mr. Jobs?
Thoughts?
Anyone who thinks the pace of innovation has slowed down just isn’t paying attention imho. The time they’ve been spending on refinement rather than glitz will pay dividends for years to come. I would remind them of this interview originally published in Business Week iirc.
?Things happen fairly slowly, you know. They do. These waves of technology, you can see them way before they happen, and you just have to choose wisely which ones you?re going to surf. If you choose unwisely, then you can waste a lot of energy, but if you choose wisely it actually unfolds fairly slowly. It takes years.?
?One of our biggest insights [years ago] was that we didn?t want to get into any business where we didn?t own or control the primary technology because you?ll get your head handed to you.?
?We realized that almost all - maybe all - of future consumer electronics, the primary technology was going to be software. And we were pretty good at software. We could do the operating system software. We could write applications on the Mac or even PC, like iTunes. We could write the software in the device, like you might put in an iPod or an iPhone or something. And we could write the back-end software that runs on a cloud, like iTunes.?
?So we could write all these different kinds of software and make it work seamlessly. And you ask yourself, What other companies can do that? It?s a pretty short list. The reason that we were very excited about the phone, beyond that fact that we all hated our phones, was that we didn?t see anyone else who could make that kind of contribution. None of the handset manufacturers really are strong in software.?
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I don’t mind being wrong…,I just hate being wrong so FAST!
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DawnTreader
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Ever since the introduction of the iPhone, Macworld and WWDC have been disappointing for their lack of new and exciting product introductions. This may be my personal view, but it does seem to be a somewhat widely held view as well. I wonder if the bar was set so high at Macworld 2007 as to invite disappointment in following years, or if there truly is a slowdown in the innovation coming from the company.
Considering the WSJ last week mentioned how SJ was not able to digest protein for most of last year, it invites the question: is the lack of innovation due to an absence, both physically and energy-wise, from Mr. Jobs?
Thoughts?
I dispute the premise Apple products lack innovation. Turn back time just a few years and one sees the slow pace with which Apple released new versions of the iPod following initial introduction. It took a couple/few years for the product to find critical sales mass followed by a virtual explosion in iPod model introductions.
Second, Apple has been hard at work building the developer eco-system for the iPhone. There’s little use introducing features that can’t be quickly monetized by product partners.
Third, in reducing the price on the 3G iPhone, Apple is demonstrating a high degree of pricing control in its market, making it much harder for competitors to release smart phones at attractive margins.
Fourth, the updates to the MacBook Pro line are impressive and almost astounding when coupled with price reductions.
Fifth, we have no idea what Apple has in the product pipeline in terms of revolutionary products. Eventually, Apple will offer its own answer to the netbook fad and I suspect it will be a solution that will capitalize on the surge in developer activity for the Mac and iPhone/iPod touch.
My professional background is finance and I see a high degree of ingenuity and skill being applied at Apple to exploit ancillary product resources and revenue, create viable and lucrative markets for peripheral makers and software developers. From a financial standpoint Apple’s innovative culture is hard at work and working at an amazing pace.
Apple has the highest net cash balances among companies in its primary markets, is free of debt and is generating cash at a breathtaking rate.
Where do you see a lack of innovation or a slowing of the pace of product development?
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DawnTreader
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Ever since the introduction of the iPhone, Macworld and WWDC have been disappointing for their lack of new and exciting product introductions. This may be my personal view, but it does seem to be a somewhat widely held view as well. I wonder if the bar was set so high at Macworld 2007 as to invite disappointment in following years, or if there truly is a slowdown in the innovation coming from the company.
Considering the WSJ last week mentioned how SJ was not able to digest protein for most of last year, it invites the question: is the lack of innovation due to an absence, both physically and energy-wise, from Mr. Jobs?
Thoughts?
Anyone who thinks the pace of innovation has slowed down just isn’t paying attention imho.
Agreed.
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capablanca
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A partial list just since October of ‘07:
Leopard and now Snow Leopard contain multiple innovations which in sum are sufficient to make OSX years ahead of any other operating system on the planet. Porting OSX to a handheld device was innovative too. Only Google is even in the same league, and they are behind.
Apple products did not get green by accident; it required innovation.
SDK.
The manufacturing innovations enabling the aluminum cast bodies will pay dividends for years.
The iPod Touch is one of my favorite innovations of the last decade.
The supply chain innovations though out-of-view have enabled not only efficiency, but amazingly smooth product transitions world-wide.
The App Store needs a lot of work, but it is surely innovative and industry leading.
Which smartphone has the best battery life? Which portable? This did not just happen; it required innovation.
And I am eager to see what innovations will come from the purchase of PA semi, among many others that will be rolled out in the coming months and years. Innovation is what Apple does.
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BillH, thanks for the Bweek quotes, those are interesting. DawnTreader, thanks for the abbreviated history of the iPod and the other considerations.
The thought I had in my mind when writing this topic was, in addition to generating a good discussion, I remember in presentations past we would see tons of data on how dominant iPod and iTunes were, followed up with vast new content on iTunes, new products, and SJ being basically a badass. More specifically, last years iPhone model didn’t seem all that impressive, there was no Macworld this year, and yesterday’s announcements were good, but no massive wow factor (although admittedly, had SJ been up there in good health presenting, I may have a different perspective). Massive innovation at this point would seem imperative given increased competition from other handset vendors (versus somewhat easier time in mp3 mkt back in the day) and Microsoft increasing its focus. I understand the pricing argument and am all on board, I think my apprehension is due to whether this iPhone model will still be kick-ass by spring of 2010, when inevitably other co’s will be out with some decent stuff.
Also, regarding the laptop price cuts: was the move an offensive or defensive measure? Clearly it would be better for the firm to go on offense and see a large market share opportunity, especially ahead of Windows 7 release. But I also wonder if this move was not in response to MSFT advertisements, and new consumption habits post-balance sheet carnage. It is the latter possibility that unnerves me.
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I would say that what peoples/analyst don’t see is that Apple innovate…..slowly. They normally lay brick by brick what they need in order to at one point get a new products/services that is a game changer.
Each small step is an innovation that took alone don’t seems to be so great but, put them together and you have innovation and a new game that others don’t even have on theyre radar.
For the last few keynote I was more interested in what was not put in the limelight. This is where Apple is skating. When they show a new products that other will try to imitate they already are laying out the foundation for the next version / device.
Normally if you look back at old keynote and listens to what SJ or others have said, you can see that they give hints. We don’t always realize it but they are there. You can see how they have put together pieces by pieces what they needed.
In the last keynote I see hints in the following
Apple keeping old hardware (iPhone and MacBook) when in the past they would only retire the old version. I’ll bet that they see last year Hardware from them as better then the competitor actual products. THey can then control pricing/features comparaison. nice move
The opportunities for the new control of external device by the iPhone. There is a reason why they push that in the keynote. They have there what can diferenciate the new iPhone from the Pre and BB… that are still trying to figure out out to create an appstore.The renaming of the MacBook to Pro….they need people to make a difference between the current line up and what is coming. I bet something that is not name macbook.
The pricing of the upgrade to SL. They could have gone with 50 60$. The 29$ is to ensure that everyone will be on SL when Apple need them to be there to use whatever they have coming.
THe use of mobile me to find your iPhone and use of iDisk is again a small step into tying more and more people in the OS X mindset. Maybe we will soon have more web apps as google.
Speaking of that isn’t it the first time that Apple speak about OS X as a global platform at the beginning of the Keynote. Adding all Mac, iPhone and Touch running OS X as a unique Platform. they basically compare the past Mac OSX install base to the current total OSX install base.
So constant small innovations will bring great products in the future…
Just my 2cents
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DawnTreader
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woodward, the price cut on the iPhone and the MacBook Pros were both an offensive and a defensive move especially with the back-to-school season begin.
First, the MacBook Pro price cuts demonstrate extraordinary discipline and pricing control. It’s an in-your-face to Dell and a swipe at MSFT’s ad campaign. Try to find a similarly equipped Wintel laptop at the same price.
The price cut on the 3G iPhone puts Palm in a bad spot and virtually guarantees at least a proportionate increase in smart phone market share in competition with rivals.
The 3G S is a kick-butt phone at an attractive price. Nothing more to be said.
Apple is driving iPhone volume for the benefit of developers and firing a shot across the bow at MSFT. Apple is moving the market away from commodity hardware and premium priced software to one of highly functional hardware at competitive yet profitable prices and software at low-cost and no-cost to buyers of handheld devices. It’s the antithesis of the MSFT model.
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I think the pattern that woodward is reporting is simply a reflection of the ending of Apple’s transition from underdog status with one man (SJ) who knew where he was going, to a dominant player with many people knowing where it’s going. It’s a strange fact of life that companies that dominate their market may eventually become its slave; innovation would lose more customers than it gains, and a dominant player is constrained to absorb the bulk of the actual component supply and the actual distribution capacity in the market. That is Microsoft and Intel’s experience, and before them, IBM’s. Avoiding that fate is one of Apple’s constraints.
Certain PC and cellphone geeks assert that Apple has never been an innovation leader, simply because they don’t ship the newest, fastest, biggest capacity hardware, but this is of course a failure to see the real innovation. I agree with others that the innovation is coming thick and fast; you need to see the big picture; Apple is building nothing less than a new infrastructure for new forms of economic activity.
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Measuring innovation on a yearly basis is like measuring profitability on a quarterly basis: its too short a term to be meaningful, and can be counterproductive if you are so short-term thinking.
Take a slightly longer view, and the iPhone/iPod Touch/App Store/SDK constitute an amazing innovation, perhaps the greatest of our generation.
That said, the tablet is overdue. I am hopeful that is coming soon, and it is going to be another amazing innovation. If 2009 comes and goes without it, I might be more concerned about Apple’s ability to innovate multiple projects at one time.
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John Molloy
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Woodward,
I am glad the others have responded to you in a fair and balanced way. I have only just read your post and see really the original post was yet another fear uncertainty doubt rant.
Ever since the introduction of the iPhone, Macworld and WWDC have been disappointing for their lack of new and exciting product introductions.
I think you have really bought into the way that these event are being played these days. Apple NEVER over promise and under deliver. Generally they do the opposite. So what has happened in the last couple of years is that the rumor world has been doing the over promising for you. Let’s grasp some from the most recent event. The forward facing camera - the 3g network is not yet ready to handle this - under ATT if you get enough iPhones in one place it makes it hard to make calls with just voice. Steve Jobs “non-appearance”. This was not going to happen. When he took his sabbatical he said he’d be back at “the end of June” which part of June 8th is “the end of June?”. So the media spin it as a non-event, carefully ignoring all the stuff that went down.
This is exemplified by the twit who appeared on CNBC yesterday ranting on about the iPhone not being ready for business - because it doesn’t have cut and paste and any methods of integrating with Microsoft business solutions. Did he not watch the keynote - or was he being placed to spout, not only nonsense, but actual lies to tarnish the perception of Apple in the eyes of the business community?
This may be my personal view, but it does seem to be a somewhat widely held view as well.
It is a widely held misconception. I think an element of it is that it is what THEY want you to think. Notice how Microsoft are currently patting themselves on the back with how well their anti-Apple campaign is going. Like last week when they said Bing had overtaken Yahoo! (the day everyone was trying it as opposed to using it). They just love short term gains while ignoring the bigger picture. It gets to the point where Microsoft release press releases about press releases so it keeps them in the news. It is more important to be seen doing stuff than it is to do stuff. And money will cover the rest - coz we have a lot of it.
Look at the gaming platform wars for a perfect example of this execution. Microsoft have bought every title that will gain traction and tying them into exclusive downloadable content. So what Microsoft have actually done is make companies release a game that consists of 4/5ths of a game and then the final fifth you have to buy from Microsoft. BUT only if you keep paying to access the network. The 14 bucks a month or whatever tax, a real you keep paying tax, Microsoft wants to charge you for using their machine. Like paying for anti-virus software on the PC. It is protection money. What a way to live!
The Natal project was typical Microsoft over promise under deliver. Big new shiny toy. Only shown behind closed doors or in carefully scripted demos. But here is the thing. It is not a product. What it is is a “don’t look at them look at us, we have shiny new toys”. What they carefully ignored was the fact that it wasn’t a product and wasn’t going to be a product for at least 18 months, if not longer.
What is the point of a fantastic demo if you aren’t shipping a product? It’s like showing you your Christmas presents on June 1st but not letting you use them.
I wonder if the bar was set so high at Macworld 2007 as to invite disappointment in following years, or if there truly is a slowdown in the innovation coming from the company.
The single biggest launch Apple had was that of the iPod. I saw it and went “meh” - that was a crap idea - Creative have this all sewn up. I was very wrong. The point is that often the big stuff from Apple garners a “meh” approach from the punters and the pundits and then the actual hitting comes through when people get to grasp what has actually happened.
Considering the WSJ last week mentioned how SJ was not able to digest protein for most of last year, it invites the question: is the lack of innovation due to an absence, both physically and energy-wise, from Mr. Jobs?
You see and this is where you are planting your final FUD filled message. But worse than that it tries to imply that Steve is dying like that robot in Silent Running and we should all be sad and angry. The point is that had Steve appeared at the launch then it would have reinforced Wall Street’s view - and the one that you are attempting to reinforce here - that Apple is nothing without Steve Jobs. Yes. The Apple of the sugar water seller was definitely a rudderless ship. That is not Apple today. It has been completely remade.
I really don’t know if you have every created anything - I have - and innovation takes a LONG time. It is easy for the people who wish to make that this company is failing to think that getting up on stage and showing something is the easy bit. Like a swan - you get to see something elegant and peaceful gliding down the river - what you don’t see is the webbed feet underwater paddling like mad.
It’s like the guy on another board who posted 20 minutes into the keynote that this was “the worst presentation ever”. This is like leaving the cinema after 20 minutes and saying that Titanic is about a bloke who wins passage to New York on a big ship. Or Alien is about a group of people who wake up on space ship. You have to see the whole thing before seeing what actually happened.
Quite frankly I think you should re-watch the keynote online and then decide (apart from the stuff from the audio guys that went horribly wrong and I feel sorry for them but that stuff happens occasionally).
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Woodward,
I am glad the others have responded to you in a fair and balanced way. I have only just read your post and see really the original post was yet another fear uncertainty doubt rant.
I agree, wholeheartedly. Great post.
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Steph :apple:
Id quot circumiret, circumveniat -
I just had to look back > Apple Music Event 2001-The First Ever iPod Introduction
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DawnTreader
- [ Ignore ]
Measuring innovation on a yearly basis is like measuring profitability on a quarterly basis: its too short a term to be meaningful, and can be counterproductive if you are so short-term thinking.
Take a slightly longer view, and the iPhone/iPod Touch/App Store/SDK constitute an amazing innovation, perhaps the greatest of our generation.
That said, the tablet is overdue. I am hopeful that is coming soon, and it is going to be another amazing innovation. If 2009 comes and goes without it, I might be more concerned about Apple’s ability to innovate multiple projects at one time.
My view on the need for a tablet device has been evolving. I see the netbook craze as merely a fad and one that will pass. I have no desire for a cheap, cramped and underpowered laptop. But I certainly wouldn’t mind a tablet that would take advantage of the tens of thousands of iPhone/iPod touch apps and with a screen that could display much more text than my iPhone. My desire is for a book reader, a news reader and an entertainment device that’s highly portable and could be used in the same way I see people currently use an iPod touch.
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Woodward,
I am glad the others have responded to you in a fair and balanced way. I have only just read your post and see really the original post was yet another fear uncertainty doubt rant.
I agree, wholeheartedly. Great post.
As do I. Maybe I am a cynic but thank you for unmasking what on the surface appeared to be a harmless post.
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Measuring innovation on a yearly basis is like measuring profitability on a quarterly basis: its too short a term to be meaningful, and can be counterproductive if you are so short-term thinking.
Take a slightly longer view, and the iPhone/iPod Touch/App Store/SDK constitute an amazing innovation, perhaps the greatest of our generation.
That said, the tablet is overdue. I am hopeful that is coming soon, and it is going to be another amazing innovation. If 2009 comes and goes without it, I might be more concerned about Apple’s ability to innovate multiple projects at one time.
My view on the need for a tablet device has been evolving. I see the netbook craze as merely a fad and one that will pass. I have no desire for a cheap, cramped and underpowered laptop. But I certainly wouldn’t mind a tablet that would take advantage of the tens of thousands of iPhone/iPod touch apps and with a screen that could display much more text than my iPhone. My desire is for a book reader, a news reader and an entertainment device that’s highly portable and could be used in the same way I see people currently use an iPod touch.
There has been talk for quite some time (I’ve mentioned this before) about Apple working on an iPod max for lack of a better description. There are many of us that would like to have one of these as an addition to our notebooks. The iPhones great but a bit small for extended time on the web during periods when you can’t or won’t pull out your laptop. I’m hoping that they’ll introduce more home automation (think Crestron) and further enhance Apple TV simultaneously.
Much of Apples innovation of late has been developing new technologies for OSX and the tools for developers to deploy them. Core animation is now a couple of years old and I’m betting that there will be some products that utilize it’s possibilities coming down the pike. Some may call it extraneous fluff but I still want an enhanced version of the email system shown in Disclosure back in 94. Core animation was built for that kind of thing. The ability to write for multiple cores is key to the utilization of the new cpu’s. I’d like to hear sleepy’s take on how Apples implementation compares to the rest of the worlds.
As an investment, don’t lose sight of the fact that Apple has been siphoning off most of the profit available in the industries it participates in. Look at Nokia’s rapidly declining returns in phones. Dell’s declining returns in computers. Sony’s lack of returns in anything. Now look at Apples rapidly accumulating cash horde. It could be said that the single greatest innovation that Apple has produced is a business model to accomplish this (though I’m sure they’d be a bit reluctant to admit it).
[ Edited: 10 June 2009 12:18 PM by BillH ]Signature
I don’t mind being wrong…,I just hate being wrong so FAST!
