If you think I’ve been overdoing the Apple issue recently, have a read of this post from Silicon Valley darling, VentureBeat.
You can more or less feel the horror of the former Apple koolade drinker rise and begin to bubble over with total indignation.
Make no mistake: The ruling tech elite (who don’t think of themselves as such) are now no longer aligned with Apple. I’m making a sweeping statement, I know, but I think we are way beyond the turning point now. One or two stories of disbelief are fine but I’m seeing far too many to document now, from serious, serious publications.
This is a catastrophic problem for the company but it will be a little while before the ramifications properly present themselves.
Apple has always behaved in a rather direct manner. Hitherto I think it is fair to say that there has always been a justification that the fans could at least swallow, even if they didn’t quite agree. Because it was Apple. And Apple didn’t have anywhere near a dominant position. Apple was a niche player. For the longest time it was comical watching companies try and compete with Apple in the mobile world.
We are now in a deliciously exciting phase of the evolution of the mobile world. We have a super dominant Apple under extreme pressure to deliver. We have the tech press beginning to look beyond their previously rose tinted Apple-centric world. We have millions of people coming into the Apple (mobile) ecosystem and absolutely LOVING it. And we have the rest of the mobile industry returning from licking its wounds, having learnt some valuable and incredibly costly lessons from the new reality as presented by Apple in recent years.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that IBM, HP, Oracle, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, LG, Samsung, Sony, Nokia, RIM, were all totally irrelevant. Indeed walking around parts of Silicon Valley over the last few years you’d be forgiven for assuming that the world belongs to Apple. Some commentators and analysts have actually I told me that some of the companies above should just give up. They weren’t joking either.
Maps demonstrated fallibility. Arguably antennagate did too but that was a different time, a different world. Steve Jobs standing on stage telling you that your BlackBerry had the same problem and that you were getting a free bumper … That fixed it. The turd that is iOS 6 Maps cannot be easily polished or explained away. This, I think, is when many people were forced out their “I’m fine” bubble. It has come as a real shock to a lot of people.
Have a read of the VentureBeat post. Study the language. Witness the utter dismay and disbelief.
The tech press is not the ultimate controlling force that its often tempting to believe it is. Consumers will make their choices — and millions have already put their cash down for a new iPhone 5. Millions more will do so over the next quarter.
The shine is fading though. It’s certainly possible this will be a temporary blip. But I feel it is greater than that. I think we are due ‘a correction’. I am not going weak at the knees at the imminent arrival of a 7″ iPad (a form factor that Jobs previously and famously dismissed). I suspect you aren’t feeling it either, are you? Oh it will be successful. Of course it will. But the magic has departed.
And this is brilliant. We need the competition. We need the hunger for success back amongst the wider industry. For too long much of the market has been sitting at the back cowering at Apple’s unbeatable form.
The Emperor, as the phrase goes, has no clothes. There are a lot of executives in charge of a lot of capital in this industry that have previously been staring at a naked Apple and seeing nothing but sumptuous layers of finery. I don’t mean to detract from Apple’s unquestionably brilliant achievements. I’m just looking at the wider marketplace. We need new blood, new investment, new competition and if key players begin to believe that Apple is fallible then I think things could get very stimulating rather quickly.
Bring it on!
(And while I’m here, let me highlight one brilliant statements made by one of the readers of the MIR Insider TinyLetter a week or so ago: iOS is the new Symbian. Ooof!)
Written on an iPad 3 😉
…no, not feeling anything at all! Surface on the other hand side makes me “jumpy” 😀
Its not just Maps, its the general lack of innovation from Apple displayed on both the iPhone 4s and 5.
Apple protagonists are now making excuses for their beloved pocket totems, and this is unprecedented for the Jesus Phone. They argue that tech has moved on so much and so fast there are fewer opportunities for significant innovation.
But the competition is proving that to be a lie: Nokia’s advanced camera tech, HTC’s audio advances and the big-screen format designs denied to Apple owners are showing that something is eating Apple from the inside out.
That ugly, writhing truth is now making its way up to the skin, and when it breaks through it will show the real disparity:
Apple have taken all the money from.the smartphone world over the last few years, yet other, more cash-strapped manufacturers are doing all the real innovation.
Shame on you, Apple.
It’s bad enough that the pride of owning ‘the best smartphone available’ is soiled by the fact that every Tom, Dick or Harriet now owns an iPhone. The salvation of exclusivity is now cruelly and ironically denied to those who sought it from the seductive, white altars of the high street, high tech temples Apple created to convince us to enter their better way of life; now kids around the corner flash their vajazzled iPhones to remind us that we are all reduced to the same common denominator: the iPhone.
At least we could look down our noses and maintain a safe, elitist distance when they all owned Blackberries…
Apple no longer innovates, and the iPhone is ubiquitous. The design is staid, conservative and unimaginative compared to the competition, which enjoys higher specification, better tech features and is cheaper.
The emperor has made his embarrasing realisation:
As he attempts to cover his white bobbing backside with his excuses the rest of the world laugh loud and hearty.
The question is, who will have the last laugh?
I mentioned this before… it should be something to highlight again.
-5 years… we were 1 year into the N95, and had the 1st iPhone
-10yrs… Communicator and Treo
We are due for something to come out of no where and change mobile again. Current radar sees FirefoxOS (from a platform/dev perspective) and Jolla (from a China-is-here, open source runs things, and IP from the former giant like someone growing from IBM perspective).
Its great news for the market. And probably something that those of us who have been in mobile (devices, platforms, and ecosystems) for a long time should have long since paid attention to and made the better statements towrads.
Me too!
Nicely written Steve!
Agreed!
Okay, let’s break this down a little. What innovation should we be expecting from Apple, but we are instead seeing from Nokia, Samsung, HTC and others?
Samsung: Big AMOLED screens… that’s about it, or am I missing something? As the iPad 3 and MacBook R show, Apple is pretty much at the cutting edge of display technology. The reasons it sticks to IPS LCD 4″ displays for its iPhone is because it sees this as the best solution, it’s clearly not that it has somehow stopped innovating in this area.
Nokia: Big displays. (see above). PureView. At this point it’s not fair to compare PureView phase 2 to Apple’s current camera tech. The 920 isn’t even available yet. To compare an unreleased product to a shipping product is madness. As for PureView phase 1, here is some serious innovation that blows away anything from Apple or any other manufacturer for that matter. But it comes with a heavy price. Bulk. Even Nokia’s imaging team couldn’t figure out how to get phase 1 into a slim hardware. Is there a chance that Apple will get PureView phase 1 type technology into slim hardware before Nokia? Yes there is.
HTC: Audio advances. I’ve not listened to anything for any length of time on a new HTC device, so I can’t comment on this.
As I mentioned to you on Twitter the other day Steve, exactly how many industries do we expect one company (Apple) to transform? Is it right to say that Apple ‘no longer innovates’ when it clearly has a track record of transforming entire industries as recently at 2012.
If we are to make that assumption, there has to be much more evidence. It was only last year that Apple introduced Siri, a natural language user interface that will become the bedrock of many of its future products, and I might add, an innovation that Google should have come up with. And how about video stabilisation? Apple has had superb video stabilisation in its iPhone and iPad for a year now. Then there is its Retina displays. A tablet with a 3.2MP display? Yep, Apple got there first. A laptop with a 5.1MP display? Yes, Apple did that this year. How about a mobile chipset with greater power/performance figures than anything in the Android or Windows Phone world? Apple did that with the A6 just a few weeks ago, and then shipped millions of the devices in one week. What about a cheap way of getting all your media onto your TV, including the ability to stream your entire iPhone, iPad or Mac display to your TV at 30fps at 1080p. Apple did this with the Apple TV, and ships millions of the things and still says it’s just a hobby. Shouldn’t that alone be a massive hint that Apple has something huge on its way for TV?
I’m not defending Apple for its mistakes, Apple Maps is poor and I’ve seen some strange graphic design decisions in iOS recently that worry me, but to say that it is no longer innovating is a bit nuts.
Innovation isn’t something that arrives as steady stream, it’s irregular, lumpy even. If Apple has made no significant advances in hardware, software or services by this time next year, then we can start to point at it’s ‘white bobbing backside’.
Well, yes, that seemed to cover Ewan, who can’t bear anyone else to have the same device as him, but……
Meanwhile in a cold dark place, far far away, forced to suck Microsoft’s dick, and trying desperately to hold on to its own headquarters, Nokia once again announces a phone, the Lumia 920, without a date for availability, that looks near identical in design to the N9 from two years ago.
BB10 is coming, many of RIM’s detractors will be speechless. Just wait and see.
Surprises me that no one has pointed out the most obvious solution; Nokia licenses its map data to Apple.
Apple gets an immediate solution to its maps problem. Even if integration takes some time then the deal would mean that it would have maps completely nailed down by the Christmas season. Not a patch, not a fix or an improvement but the best map data in the industry bar none. And if they negotiate cleverly enough probably access to user data that let’s them continue to build their own maps.
What does Nokia get? Cold hard cash from the most liquid company in tech, possibly enough to see off any more talk of takeovers while Steven Elop gets his ducks in line (and that might be some time). Nokia and WP8 would also still have the monopoly on offline mobile mapping, as Apple would only be buying the data, not Nokia’s platform.
What else? Well, does Apple really want to build their own maps? It’s not as though they plan to licence them to other map users. Building a service just to fill a gap in their platform seems to be running just to stand still, not skating to where the puck will be. The cost of building and above all maintaining their own separate map data will create a not insignificant drain on Apple’s impressive profitability.
What about damage to Google? A mapping deal between Apple and Nokia surely deals a serious blow to Google Maps current status as the internet and mobile map platform of choice. Apple maps certainly starves Google of a significant portion of their mobile mapping revenues (if it provides a competitive offer) but it doesn’t really threaten the service in the long term. NAVTEQ is the industry standard for in car mapping and Nokia has an expressed desire to make it the ‘Where?’ platform.
Everyone wins except Google, especially the customer, and Google can afford a few losses on the mobile front at the moment.
If the question is about innovation, then surely this is how innovation should work; through diversity and shared industry standards. Apple doesn’t need to build industry standards in order to make revenues, and seems to like to stand a little apart from the rest of the industry, using what it needs and building what it would prefer to have. The ‘lightening’ connector being a case in point. Apple wants the benefit of a smaller physical connector but doesn’t see why it should share its accessories ‘ecosystem’.
Nokia was built on industry standards from GSM onward and its patent licensing is crucial to it now. Google and Microsoft are manufacturer agnostic and many of their services are platform agnostic too.
If the ‘war of the ecosystems’ means the reduction of common standards and services then we are all poorer. “There are a lot of smart people who don’t work for Apple”. That’s what Steve Jobs said when he came back to Apple. The same is true of Nokia, Google and everyone else.
I wonder if that will happen… Don’t forget Apple has spent a lot of cash on mapping so far already!
Another interesting fact that (I believe) points to the change in attitude towards the customer experience within Apple.
It always used to be ‘Its the Apple way or the highway, but we really care about giving you a great user experience’
Now it seems more and more like ‘Its the Apple way or the highway, and we really DON’T care about you’
I was always surprised to see they spent money on the glitz (3D maps for example) with the acquisitions but they went with 3rd party – even *open*… eughhh – for the core mapping data.
On 361 I think we referred to a 6 year cycle: http://soundcloud.com/361degrees/s02-e09
OK, let me just say right up front that I really did think that the new iPhone was going to come along and make the camera technology in the Nokia 808 Pureview look as outdated as a disposable 35mm camera. I really did. If it took Nokia 5 years to come up with the 808 then I reasoned that that market defining pile of cash that Apple had at it’s disposal would of seen them do something ten times better in a tenth of the time. But they didn’t. And this alone makes me question the very reason of that massive pile that they are nurturing.
Secondly, and this where I’m on not such a firm footing is, well, how many non-tech aligned people do you know who really *know* why their iPad 3 or Macbook R cost so much? How many of them really know and understand the clear innovation that stares them in the face? And how many of those millions of iPhone 4.2 buyers would even know how the new CPU helps them?
This is where Apple have come off the rails in the most glaring fashion for me. They have stopped caring about educating their customers and as evidenced by the latest maps fiasco, coupled by that outright fib they told about the screen technology of the iPhone 4.2 being the best in the world, they seemed to have moved almost exclusively to chasing the profit margins. But. Surely, what brought Apple to this exalted position in the first place was the fact that they could, once, do both with such effortless ease and grace? So much so that in the mobile phone market alone they directly contributed to both Nokia and RIM having just about the most horrendous couple of years imaginable.
Oh yes I’m sure that the North American TV market will get a goodly dose of Apple innovation sometime soon, but that is just two, possible three markets. I don’t see how Apple could possible have the same effect in China, Japan, the Middle East and all of Europe. So some of that wonderful innovation will be lost to the vast majority of the world.
If Apple’s massive liquidity can’t buy them a steady flow of innovation across every part of their product range then it should be able to ensure that no two keynote presentations on one of their product ranges goes by without them unveiling some sort of market shifting, competitor destroying, innovation. Because you’ve got to ask, again, what’s the point of all that money? USE IT APPLE! Or shut up and climb down off that there high horse and open your bloody eyes!
No, I’ve been the boy in the crowd ranting and raving that the Emperor is stark bollock naked for years now. And in the last six months you wouldn’t even begin to imagine how many of my “non-tech aligned” friends, and even a few who are, have admitted that I was right after all… Which is surprising because at times I’ve seriously doubted myself!
I’ll agree with your last point first, James: Innovation is something that does come along in lumps and bumps, but that’s only going to happen if a Manufacturer continually tries new things. The moment they step back from trying out new ideas they are either admitting defeat or taking advantage of the loyalty of their customers.
You ask what areas Apple might innovate in, and then dismiss the areas where other Mfrs are innovating.
Lets have a look at a couple of examples to see how valid and worthwhile innovations missed by Apple but picked up on by other Mfrs really are:
Wireless charging as a concept is nothing new. It is no more of an innovation than Siri was when Apple bought the company that first developed it as an iPhone app.
Years before that my Nokia N70 had a more primitive version of the same thing. Demonstrably, there is nothing really ‘new’ under the sun; ‘innovation’ is recycling ideas or perfecting them for market advantage.
Like Siri, wireless charging has its problems, still needs a load of development and needs a manufacturer to sell us on the advantages such technology may bring us.
People laugh at Siri just as much as others dismiss wireless charging, but of these two things we can be certain: one day we will all be talking to our mobile devices and we will not be plugging them in to recharge them…
Thus, we cannot dismiss wireless charging unless we dismiss Siri as well; both are innovations, both are imperfect.
You were quick to dismiss big-screened devices, yet for many these larger form-factors offer advantages that smaller screens cannot. I’m not talking about ease of viewing: with a smaller screen much of the workspace is obscured by the user’s fingers. Links, buttons and touch-sensitive areas are harder to select.
A bigger screen gets around those problems, and can be further exploited to offer split-screen ‘windows’ and overlay content on top of other tasks. Samsung is doing a lot of work in this area along with full stylus integration right into the OS and across the UI.
For years now, Apple have told us that 3.5″ was the optimal screen size. For some it may be (although how those indoctrinated users are going to feel now Apple have re-written the Book of Jobs and upgraded that ‘optimal 3.5″ to 4″ is another matter!)
The fact is, there is no optimal screen size for all users; that is a limitation a lazy and greedy Manufacturer sells us because its too expensive for them to change their ecosystem to cope with the fact that some of us want bigger screens.
The sales figures for SGSII, III and Galaxy Note are testament to this, and fact that screen sizes have been increasing in line with unit sales of these larger-screened devices proves that this is no fad, no blip in the market. Big screens are here to stay. I believe the bigger-screened iPhone 5 is also selling quite well, which further backs this up.
So innovations are not necessarily about radical, new, way-out-on-the-edge tech; they are about delivering choices and allowing certain ideas to flourish via a principle of Natural Selection; some will make it, other will not. Just like Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection the spontaneous mutations of the tech world (innovations) will drive evolution over time.
When a Mfr stops innovating, or innovates only relative to its immediate ecosystem, there are repercussions.
So let’s look at NFC:
Other manufacturers are introducing it, but the uptake is slow and the whole thing is getting hung up on payment systems.
Had Apple innovated with NFC the uptake would undoubtedly have had a badly-needed shot in the arm. Imagine the traction NFC would have with the financial institutions if it was integrated into the iPhone5…
But no. Apple would rather wait and allow other manufacturers to innovate with NFC at a more mundane, but no-less useful level:
Sony’s concept of giving users NFC tags to stick in their car, home, place of work, etc, to allow a simple tap to bring about a change of theme or functionality tailored to that location is a brilliant, simple and effective innovation.
Nokia’s ‘tap to pair’ system using NFC to instigate Bluetooth connections – another example of true, practical, useful innovation.
And talking of Nokia, the screen on the Lumia 920 can be used with welder’s mits – how useful will that be for all the welders who use smartphones?
But being serious for a minute, this innovative screen technology will enable year-round smartphone use for millions. That in itself is a worthwhile innovation quite befitting of Apple themselves.
Combine that with Samsung’s S-Pen tech that allows you to hover over a link or button on a screen and we’ll have near pc-like levels of mouse-over functionality at the tips of our fingers (gloved or ungloved) real soon.
You challenged me to give some examples of innovation missed by Apple and I have.
Furthermore I have given some examples (screen size, NFC) where Apple’s refusal to innovate is actually holding back innovation to the wider smartphone market.
And your second line of defence for Apple is that some of these technologies cannot yet be bought on a smartphone so they do not ‘count’. Not only is that over-defensive, it’s a flawed argument because most of these ‘innovations’ involve tech that had been around for some time:
The Samsung Tech is currently available.
The Nokia tech (wireless charging, highly-sensitive touch-screens, NFC) has also been around on other devices going back at least two years.
HTC’s audio amplifiers are nothing new, they are implementation of existing tech.
Nokia’s OIS on the imminently-forthcoming Lumia 920 is another old idea, as is pixel oversampling for the Lumia 808 before that.
These are ALL features Apple could have innovated, but did not.
Instead, one of Apple’s key ‘innovations’ on the iPhone 5 is a proprietary charge/connector plug whose main USP is that it can be inserted more easily…
Sound like a metaphor for how Apple are treating their customers if you ask me!
And in the process of implementing the innovation known as Lightning, Apple have alienated many existing customers who invested in iPhone-dockable accessories that are now largely redundant…
Innovation? A new type of plug connector, peculiar to Apple, at a time when every other connected device is going over on to wireless connectivity?
This is what I am getting at, James: Apple are nit innovating like they have been or how they should be. The opportunities are there, other Mfrs are doing it, and when Apple does attempt things they are not looking to the future – they are looking to their future profits.
+1000 on that. BB10 looks awesome…was totally impressed with the new UI. I think the future is BB10 and WP8. Apple and google are fading…its only a matter of time.