What about the fact that they haven't announced a single new product category since the Apple Watch in 2014?
To my mind, it certainly seems as if Apple is actually organized to simply refine the innovations of its past, much like the conventionally grown tomatoes that we've all grown accustomed to. Apple is now just another amplified thing, very much in the mold of our post-WWII mindset.
They released the HomePod and AirPods as well as a range of new services e.g. Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Fitness.
And we are expecting two major changes to their product offerings over the coming year or so i.e. ARM Macs and Apple Glass.
This takes innovation, too. Just because a product isn't a wholly new, virgin thing doesn't mean it isn't innovative.
The A-series chips aren't products themselves, for example, but they're certainly innovations. Apple is now the best mobile processor house in the world, and it isn't particularly close - who saw that coming?
Will likely be the best laptop processor in the world as well.
Apparently Apple can't even refine their own innovations without breaking their own kit and bilking their customers.
To wit, iOS 14 and watchOS 7 (most recent versions) break Activity and Health GPS data and Apple recommends using iCloud backup to resolve the issue. [0]
The problem is that not only is iCloud insecure (e.g. Messages) compared to local backup, it also costs money for over 5GB storage. [1] In other words, Apple has broken GPS with iOS 14 and watchOS 7 and their recommendation is to use an insecure service that will cost users more money.
Such affected customers should be represented in a class action lawsuit. (I'd love for this link to get traction, but I know it's a longshot. [2])
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865
AirPods (2016) are pretty popular.
(edit: I listed some of Apple's recent new services here, but removed since the AirPods make the point by themselves. Apologies to user optimiz3 for leaving your comment dangling.)
This was always apples thing.
I mean even if we go back to the apple watch. Was it a new innovation? No, not at all. Other companies had produced similar products years before, just non did put enough mony into it to refine it to the degree Apple did.
Same goes for their ARM chips. They didn't invent them nor did they invent the idea of fast ARM chips. But they took and refined them over many product generations to now yield excellent results.
Same for ARM laptops.
Same for a lot of their software innovations.
Same for there camera.
Through it should be noted that for them to be able to refine thinks to that degree often some technological innovations are mixed in in-between.
But that's fine, constant refinement is often more use-full then complete new innovations without refinement.
Sadly sometimes the focus on what gets refined in which ways is pretty questionable.
In turn refinements you can't sell as innovation get neglected.
Also the developer is forced to work with Apple using apple tools so that is often neglected, too. Their is little insensitive for Apple to spend more money on things like that when this will not bring more Users or Developers to Apple.
Which is short sighted IMHO given how much money Apple has.
That said though I think their services offerings so far are underwhelming.
> “We went through that stage in Apple where we went out and thought, Oh, we’re gonna be a big company, let’s hire professional management. We went out and hired a bunch of professional management. It didn’t work at all….They knew how to manage, but they didn’t know how to do anything. If you’re a great person, why do you want to work for somebody you can’t learn anything from?"
Folding phones today are a mess e.g. creases, durability concerns, inconvenient form-factors.
Using 'Rosner' as an example is a little bit insufferable: "We only have experts!" But then put an eng. with 20 years Engineering in charge of a media product?!?
'I have to learn what incentivizes News companies!'. Yeah, maybe a few more things. Three cheers for being a cowboy, but know that you're a cowboy in that situation.
Do you notice how badly Apple does in everything social or media? Sure they made podcasts mainstream, but after 20 years of incubation, and still others reap the reward?
This is an example of that kind of weird hubris, it reminds me of 'Google Plus'.
I do know that MMS is garbage, and that the mobile networks used to price gouge people for using MMS, and on top of that it doesn’t work many times, or at least it didn’t use to.
Because people believe you need to have iMessage.
Must be nice to reimplement an old idea and qualify as innovation. :)
What's the issue with SMS in the US? At least in Australia, SMS is no hindrance to messaging between Android and iOS apart from the colour of the bubbles.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18624681/apple-imessage-a...
Why don't Americans use Telegram?
https://9to5mac.com/2016/05/26/patent-troll-facetime-imessag...
None of us are on the same messaging services (besides Discord I guess, but that doesn't have good notifications), so we can't switch. This is on AT&T, but Verizon and T-Mobile have the same problem.
SMS messages work almost all of the time which makes it really irritating when they don't.
So you're privileged in an entirely privileged bubble? If iPhone is only 52% of the USA and 20% of the world it seems almost statistically impossible that all of your friends or family can use iMessage.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
"Messages in iCloud also uses end-to-end encryption. If you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your Messages. This ensures you can recover your Messages if you lose access to iCloud Keychain and your trusted devices. When you turn off iCloud Backup, a new key is generated on your device to protect future messages and isn't stored by Apple."
Although Apple uses end-to-end encryption for both iMessage and FaceTime, it doesn’t do the same for iCloud backups. They are encrypted, but Apple holds the key, meaning that the company has access to a copy of almost everything on your phone – and that includes stored messages.”
The situation of not knowing a single non-Apple user is unlikely outside the US anyhow.
Indeed, if you look at AMD's laptop chips, their performance per watt is quite superior to Apple's chips. And since then AMD has only improved.
And I would expect Apple to be significantly better at Amazon.
I don't have a problem with people discriminating against MMS, but everyone I know doesn't have a problem using any of the other decent alternatives that work on both Android and iOS.
Does this count as a “source” in this instance?
Edit: found something more traditional https://www.vogue.com/article/breathless-couples-who-are-not...
pretty frustrating read though. Be warned.
I'm just claiming that there is a valid use case for making it abundantly clear if a conversation is happening via MMS versus iMessage, so I didn't take it as a way for Apple to somehow "lock" people into iMessage...especially since plenty of other chat apps are a few taps away with no degradation in usability.