5 Recent Reasons Why Apple Inc is on the Way Down
Apple Inc was a company which was loved. I mean really loved. Such a fan-base was hard to find in the typically cold, sterile, ever-vicious technology market of the nineties and noughties.
However, from being the ‘cooky, a la mode alternative’, Apple’s products quickly surged to become market leaders. This sudden dominance not only made them richer than the US Government Treasury but also made them lose their identity and obvious market niche of ‘not-being Monopoly-Microsoft’. When they became larger than they imagined, without an obvious competitor to catch-up to and with the passing of Mr Jobs, it all started to unravel somewhat....
1. iPad Mini
Who doesn’t love blatant hypocrisy? Usually the perpetrators are government ministers promising they won’t do X in their pre-election speeches. Then, lo and behold, X is brought -in within a year of them being elected. The public sigh and lose even greater faith. Repeat ad infinitum.
It comes then as quite a shock that Apple has recently brought out the iPad Mini. Not only because everyone was expecting a better name than ‘Mini’, but because former Apple champion Steve Jobs was once quoted as saying:
“Seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad. ….Seven-Inch tablets are dead on arrival....There are clear limits of how close you can place physical elements on a touch screen, before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the ten-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.”
Not only that. I mean, not only has Mr Jobs been proved cataclysmicly incorrect (just look at how good the Nexus and the Kindle Fire are doing). But this product foundation was further collaborated by Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook, who during the all-hands Q4 financial results call stated:
“On comments that Steve made before about 7 inch tablets, let me be clear, we would not make one of the 7 inch tablets, we don’t think they’re good products, we’d never make one.”
Unbelievable lying! So the 7.9” iPad Mini then is therefore “not good” and “dead on arrival”. Who wants to spend £269 on one....anyone?
2. Mountain Lion was Still a Suckling Cub when it was Released into the Wild.
An Apple operating system (OS) is typically very, very good. I’m writing this on Snow Leopard. A beautiful, sleek, endangered species of operating system - one that’s so quiet and cooperative - you don’t hear any noise when it’s hunting...I mean working. The old Apple philosophy for an OS was ‘keeping throwing money into R&D, make it quicker, more intuitive and only release it when people are gagging for it.’
Old Apple knew that to maximise sales; demand has to be at its highest. For example, there was just under two years between the release of Leopard and Snow Leopard. And, on the whole, the successor did not disappoint. Any period of time significantly less than two years and the product appears rushed and the public infer that you are fire-fighting and trying to cover up a problem. So then, when there was only 370 days between Lion and its protege Mountain Lion, people knew something was afoot.
To quote the first (and most helpful) review from Mac’s own App Store:
Worst. *
17-Oct-2012
“I don’t understand Apple. Why bring this out, and make people pay for it and all it does is mess up the machine? So many programs I have don’t work now. I’ve been an Apple user for the last seven years and now I’ve decided to go back to PC. Apple have really let me down and others also judging by the reviews. It makes no sense at all.”
There we go. The moral of the story is, if your competitor is about to release it’s latest rival product after three expensive years of R&D (Windows 8), don’t rush yours and just ‘throw it out there’. Bide your time and only try and sell something when it’s worthy of buying.
3. The Constant War of (Legislative) Attrition
Many people are speculating over the start of World War Three. They’re all wrong. It’s already here. Sure, there are no bombs, bullets or battlefields - this war is being fought in the courtroom.
The Apple v Nokia v Samsung v Microsoft battle continues to simmer. Finland, South Korea and the USA fight it out over patents, technicalities and who slid-to-unlock first.
The fact that a company fights to protect its own copyrightable material is great. It shows pride, common sense and proves the old adage that the best things in life are worth fighting for.
However, Apple in its waxing period was vehemently ruthless in ‘liberating’ ideas from other companies. It is now only since Apple is now in the Premier League of cooperations that it takes the moral high-ground. It won’t allow other companies to use the same tactics through which it achieved greatness. As Mr Jobs was often quoted as saying:
“Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”
For another example of hypocrisy, please re-read point one.
4. Lack of Originality
Aluminium, golden ratios and glass screens. All of these have been around for years. Why o why then has Apple Inc not updated its design? Sir Jonathan Ive is one of the leading figures of British design of the last century: Akin to James Dyson, George Carwardine, Alec Issigonis and many, many others.
But, like many, I fear a case of Alex Ferguson-itis occurring in sunny California: Staying longer than the welcome as the creative juices have dried up (hence the need to bring out such banal inventions as the ‘Mini’ iPad....)
The products that used to be released by Apple changed the world. The iPod re-invented music and its consumption forever. Where is the pizazz, the wow-factor of old?
Even the toy company Fisher Price have re-designed their phones:
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No major new products means no new major injections of cash.
5. iOS 6 Maps
Where to start? I mean, I don’t know where to start because I’m lost - thanks to iOS 6 Maps application.
A lot of keys have been depressed writing about how poor this software is. And, let’s fact it, Apple only released it so they wouldn’t have to give Google the satisfaction of paying them for usage of their superior software.
To epitomise how bad it is, here’s a picture I found on the Interwebs demonstrating this point:
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quod erat demonstrandum.
