If he's going back 15 years, he's also leaving out the original MacBook Air and the iPhone in addition to all of the other products listed. What is the last great Apple product they designed, the 2004 iMac?
As for TVs, they are a very low margin product that has to interact even now with cable. Coming out with a new TV is a lot harder than I think he realizes.
Yeah this guy is full of shit. In fifteen years only Apple Park stands out. Like someone else posted how many of us will ever see Apple Park outside of some drone doing flyovers? Probably needs more sales for his book so he’s Steve’s mouthpiece from the dead letting us all know about the ‘bromance’ him and Ive had. Give us a break pal.
If you look at the context of Isaacson’s comparison of Apple’s current products to Apple Park, he is right. Everything was meticulously planned out. Whereas if you compare the watch, HomePod and airpods, you can find areas of opportunity. If it wasn’t for health and fitness improvements to the watch, it would have been discontinued. Where are the improvements to the HomePod? Why is there only minute improvements to the second generation of airpods?
IMHO, since the firing of Forestall, there hasn’t been much conflict and passion that is the catalyst of creating all of those amazing products like there was when Steve came back to Apple.
Allow me to enlighten you as to how Apple rolls... Gruber wrote about this almost a decade ago:
...iterative product development is the name of the game. It’s now we got from the original iPhone/Mac/Watch/whatever to the current versions, or iterations. Apple begins small, simple, polished. And then expands on it over and over.
The original iPhone didn’t have video or even copy & paste! Can you say.... “areas of opportunity”?
HomePod is a speaker end-point. It already sounds excellent. Any improvements to it come in software form -- which we're already seeing. iOS 13 brings multi-user support.
The AW was an overnight billion dollar business line when launched. Of course they didn’t “discontinue” it and instead continued to improve it, as usual.
...one thing I've read is that SJ did things on principle (x-grid?) vs always for the bottom line... This upredictability apparently made tech CEOs nervous. I use a 40" 4K screen and while not Apple display grade I find it makes a compelling case for a TV/monitor, running @ 110dpi so it matches the scale of both Apple 27" Cinema displays perfectly, and might a 40" 8K be the hi res (retina?) version...? Better late than never?
Make an AppleTV that supports the Pro Display XDR, and any other up to 8K displays that people might want otherwise. Problem solved.
I ask if the challenge would be cost and that the 32" XDR (or even 40" @ 2160p) may be a bit small for a TV, although beyond 40" is such too big to be used as a standard desk monitor? How much would 8K cost? What could run it? With 2160p there would be more universal compatibility (HDMI, etc) and perhaps at a retail between $1k ~ $2k 'for the rest of us'...? Is a commitment to retina display restricting Apple design options and zeitgeist? I'd embrace a return of the 1440p 27" TB and a 2880p (5K) display (with options for FaceTime) as well, with the addition of USB3 of course...
Why do people put this clown on TV. Just because he wrote some crappy bio of Steve Jobs the CNBC’s of the world think he’s some expert on Apple the company. He’s not.
Not just a crappy bio but hands-down the worst-ever bio of Steve Jobs.
There’s really nothing special in the display of a TV. It’s become a commodity. Apple has stated, Steve had stated, that Apple is interested only in areas where they can meaningfully differentiate the experience. Walter doesn’t seem to recall that being stated, as recently as the demise of the Airport products.
Walter also doesn’t seem to grok the fact that the smartphone, as invented by Apple, has incorporated one after another after another stand-alone product. The future is in miniaturization of devices that cover what ground the smartphone hasn’t. That means your wallet, your keys (home and car) and access fobs/cards to work spaces, etc. Devices that you need to have on your person but shouldn’t need to carry as separate items. Those go into wearables. Then there’s augmented reality, which needs to cover your field of view, thus wearable. Duh! And how does one create such products, which require even more processing power than what came before yet need to fit in vastly smaller, minimal forms? By a great deal of R&D and advancement across the industry, including fabrication. In other words, it will take some time to get there. You can’t just design physics in a drawing app.
Bottom line, we don’t need a new Leica camera design. We don’t need a new tablet/laptop geometry. We need to make some big leaps to get small. Steve Martin can relate, Walter apparently cannot. The word Luddite comes to mind.
Comments
The original iPhone didn’t have video or even copy & paste! Can you say.... “areas of opportunity”?
HomePod is a speaker end-point. It already sounds excellent. Any improvements to it come in software form -- which we're already seeing. iOS 13 brings multi-user support.
The AW was an overnight billion dollar business line when launched. Of course they didn’t “discontinue” it and instead continued to improve it, as usual.
https://carlhowe.com/blog/apple-watch-an-overnight-multi-billion-dollar-business/
As for the article itself...
Oh, another “Steve is dead and Apple is doomed” screed.
Walter also doesn’t seem to grok the fact that the smartphone, as invented by Apple, has incorporated one after another after another stand-alone product. The future is in miniaturization of devices that cover what ground the smartphone hasn’t. That means your wallet, your keys (home and car) and access fobs/cards to work spaces, etc. Devices that you need to have on your person but shouldn’t need to carry as separate items. Those go into wearables. Then there’s augmented reality, which needs to cover your field of view, thus wearable. Duh! And how does one create such products, which require even more processing power than what came before yet need to fit in vastly smaller, minimal forms? By a great deal of R&D and advancement across the industry, including fabrication. In other words, it will take some time to get there. You can’t just design physics in a drawing app.
Bottom line, we don’t need a new Leica camera design. We don’t need a new tablet/laptop geometry. We need to make some big leaps to get small. Steve Martin can relate, Walter apparently cannot. The word Luddite comes to mind.
???
Are you sure he’s saying “15 years” instead of five?