78Bandit

I would assume an A11X processor is in the works too. That would make the next iPad Pro significantly more powerful and allow further development of multitasking.

Small bezel design should have been implemented last year with the iPhone 7.  AMOLED is a great technology, but if Apple would have developed a redesigned iPhone with a modern design based on LCD display tech I think it would have gone over more successfully than continuing on with the huge top and bottom bezels of the iPhone 6.

My takeaway from this is Apple was forced to bring their expected tech forward a year because they didn't have anything interesting in the pipeline for this year.  Their plan was for the iPhone 7s to be the flagship and it simply wasn't standing up design wise with what was coming out of other manufacturers.  The Galaxy S series, Huawei Mate, Essential Phone, LG G6, Pixel 2 XL, etc. were miles ahead of Apple's 2014 design that debuted with the iPhone 6.  Apple had to do something to stem the continued slump in sales of their bread-and-butter product, so they ratcheted the version number up a full notch to 8 to give the impression of a new phone and threw in the luxury priced X as well for those that were waiting for a new design.

rogifan_new said:

arie said:

My choice : bring Scott Forstall back. He grew up in the apple tradition with Steve.  Or someone who has similar background. 

What does Scott Forestall know about running an $800B company. Pretty much all of the current executive team “grew up in the Apple tradition with Steve”.

Steve Jobs - “My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. The products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything.”

Scott Forestall or whoever is the next CEO doesn't need to know how to run an $800B company.  That's why you have competent finance, production, and legal departments.  They will handle the day-to-day operations.  Tim Cook was a terrific team member.  He could take a product that Steve Jobs and Jony Ive developed and have it turned into mass-produced real-world goods.  I just don't think he has the vision for yet undeveloped products that Steve had.  It doesn't matter how efficient your productions lines are or how great your marketing campaign is if the product itself isn't awe inspiring.

What distinguished Apple and Microsoft was having leaders who were intimately familiar with and passionate about their products and who could foresee upcoming technological developments and gauge when the time was right for widespread consumer adoption.  The CEO sets the long-term aims for the company.  It is a fallacy of Wall Street that only financiers can head large corporations.  One only needs to read Bob Lutz's book "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" to see how a change in focus from product creativity to financial efficiency can cause long-term ruin.

Apple has extremely large design, engineering, production, logistics, finance, legal, and human resource departments.  Each one needs to have a SVP that is an expert in their field.  However, the CEO of a company like Apple that is dependent on the creation of new and innovative products needs to be a visionary.  Someone whose life focus has been finance, marketing, production, etc. is generally too rooted in the here-and-now to be the person who can pilot the ship to where it needs to be a decade ahead.

Wow, kiss Apple good-bye if it does turn out to be true.  Apple has already lost a lot of its innovative spirit with the death of Steve Jobs.  Tim Cook is a great supply chain guy but is having difficulty doing much more than polishing the iPhone line as much as possible.  To even suggest that a marketing executive whose experience is primarily in fashion goods would be an appropriate leader for one of the greatest technological companies in the world is ludicrous.

Apple would do well to take a note from Microsoft.  Steve Balmer did his best to ruin it because he simply didn't have the technical ability to see where the company needed to be in five-to-ten years.  Now they've finally got someone back in the big chair who has degrees in electrical engineering and computer science as well as an MBA.  You need to be a high-level user of your company's products to be able to predict where the future lies.  Nadella is doing a lot to turn Microsoft around.

Apple needs to be grooming a talented engineer with great design skills to be the next CEO.

macplusplus said:

MplsP said:

macplusplus said:

MplsP said:

andrewj5790 said:

Except Apple didn’t release a 7s. They released an 8 and the X, so we don’t know how a 7S would have sold. 🙄

Sure they did - it's just called the iPhone 8. 

As far as the 'Duh' comment goes - I totally agree. There is very little difference between the 6s, the 7 and the 8 (headphone jack, waterproofing, some incremental changes in the camera and now wireless charging) to excite most people about upgrading. When you dangle the iPhone X on top of that, who can blame people for waiting?

The A11 Bionic is the difference. It is not an incremental change, it is a substantial jump forward and the only jump since four years after A7 which was a jump to 64-bit. With a 7 you can go further at most one year, but 8 series will support you at least four years.

True, I forgot about that, but very few people were actually limited by the processor before. The A9 in my 6s is doing great. The home screen may open 200ms faster on the 8, but I'm not going to pay $700 for that. I suspect many people are in the same boat. In years past 2 model years made a huge difference in features and performance. Not so much any more.

You don’t pay $700 for 200 ms gain, you pay that for 6 cores, Apple GPU, Neural Engine, OIS and better image signal processor, wireless charging, TrueTone display, color accuracy... Not all of these can be summarized as 200 ms.

That's like touting the latest specs on a top-line gaming rig with a 16 core Ryzen processor, 32GB RAM, and a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video card.  The average consumer is not going to notice the difference when they are posting on Facebook and Instagram, sending messages, or browsing the internet.  I've got a 6 Plus that would be perfectly functional if it just had the 2GB RAM it should have come with in the first place.  The processor is far from being the limiting component.

I do think you are overselling the real-world capabilities of the A11 Bionic.  The A6 chip in the iPhone 5 would run OK with iOS 10 after five years, and I know people who are still using an iPhone 4S.  I believe the iPhone 7 will be perfectly capable for 95% of consumers' needs for at least another three or four years until it stops getting system updates (likely with iOS 15).  Sure there will be some advanced software that requires the A11 to run, but it will likely be of very niche appeal as developers continue to write for all phones that support the latest operating system for the foreseeable future.