jaffa

"The market for expensive watches like Rolex and Patik Philippe has softened since the introduction of the Apple Watch" Lol, the Apple watch - even the gold one - has had zero influence on the quality watch market. No-one outside Apple's marketing department or their freebie receiving celebrity hangers-on thought the Apple Edition Watch was a serious player in the quality watch space, it was a joke.

jkichline said:

I'd like to see them match this technology.

Reflective IR proximity sensors have been used for years (maybe decades) in industry.

As for mobile phone implementations of similar technology the 2nd (and 3rd) gen MotoX use IR proximity sensors to detect the users hand approaching the screen to wake it up, that predates this patent application by six months.

Active, reflective IR sensors would be extremely wasteful of energy for a battery operated device.

What's the innovation here?

Google's Android phones are updated. Google make the code available so 3rd parties with modded/skinned/forked versions of Android can also update - but they choose not. If 3rd party companies made phones using a modified/skinned/forked version of iOS would Apple be responsible for updating them? No of course not. If people are worried about updates they should buy Apple or Nexus or another brand with a good track record for providing updates.

I don't think anyone is suggesting Apple are doomed, they're just recognising the fact that iphone growth has limits. The maturing smartphone market means the upgrade cycle could lengthen, then numbers would level off and maybe begin to decline. Investors money-boners are fueled by growth so their concerns are reflected in the share price. There's no need to be dramatic, the share price is reality, estimates are estimates. Get over it.