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It's not the copying that worries people, it's the lack of not-coping, i.e. innovations. iPod is not the first mp3 player, iPhone is not the first smart phone,

It's not the copying that worries people, it's the lack of not-coping, i.e. innovations. iPod is not the first mp3 player, iPhone is not the first smart phone, but they were packed with innovative ideas that stood them out. We see less and less such ideas from Apple. Their execution/quality control is still top notch though, but other companies are catching up.

dasil003 11y ago
The problem is that after a string of successes like iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, there is no way to out-do that. There is no market so ripe for disruption that plays to Apple's strengths the way that the iPhone setup. That's why the iPad is so disappointing to analysts and why nothing Apple does is that impressive now. There is no opportunity for the next iPhone-level success in the market today. It's out there somewhere in the future, but everyone carrying around a $700 pocket computer is a game changer of a magnitude that can only be approximated by physical implants. It certainly is not approached by any imaginable Watch or Google Glass type of device.
- anjc 11y ago
  If Apple had made the Surface Pro (which hasn't existed for very long) before Microsoft then it would have been the next in that line of major innovations. They didn't, because of a lack of foresight, but the opportunity to create it was readily available.
  - gress 11y ago
    The surface pro is a failure. Apple didn't make a pro tablet earlier because they understood the correct time to introduce such a product.
    - anjc 11y ago
      By what metrics is it a failure? Because when I last looked at Microsoft's financial statements, their revenue was up due to the Surface (Profit was down for unrelated reasons). I'm assuming you haven't used a Surface Pro but you can mark my words now, Apple will release a direct copy of the Surface within 3 years. The iPad Pro is a glorified iPad and will be utterly unusable for doing anything professional, so it's not a copy at this stage.
      - gress 11y ago
        This is already demonstrably false. The iPad is already in use for professional purposes, and if you'd watched it, you have seen the stage demo prove you wrong.
        anjc 11y ago
        What professional purposes?
        gress 11y ago
        Medicine, CAD, Commercial Aviation, Finance, Retail, Graphic Design & Illustration... Pretty much everything serious. https://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/healthcare.html https://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/health...
- threeseed 11y ago
  > There is no opportunity for the next iPhone-level success in the market today. Oh yes there is. The car. Very high margin. Plenty of opportunity to do something radically different.
  - tallanvor 11y ago
    Tesla is already there. I mean, Apple could still try, but they're not likely to come up with anything that people will consider "revolutionary".
    - 72deluxe 11y ago
      Touch-screen steering wheel? What could possibly go wrong? As an aside, I find the obsession with touchscreen interfaces in cars to be irritating because obviously the testers test these things whilst sat perfectly still in a stationary vehicle or in a car with hydrogas suspension (just kidding), and not on a typical road that has bumps. They're impossible to use whilst in motion as your arm bounces around.
rdancer 11y ago
oh come on, apple watch?!
bduerst 11y ago
I dunno - Apple kind of killed NFC adoption by waiting so long to finally include it. They should have had it back in 2012.
- johansch 11y ago
  They still haven't included it...
  - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    Well it's there for apple things like Apple Pay. There's no real incentive for them to open it up to developers unless they're controlling the space. i.e. for Apple Pay it's nice, or say to unlock your car, or unlock your home's door with Home Kit, but random NFC thingies? They're not really interested.
- giovannibajo1 11y ago
  That's because they are not a OEM that throws hardware together trying to differentiate, no matter what the software using it will be like. Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type, and that makes them make money but without charging more neither the users neither the merchant, and is interoperable with existing credit cards and banks (including the per-bank customized provisioning process). Putting everything together is several order of magnitude harder than adding a part number to a BOM years before the ecosystem is ready to use it appropriately. They had to get there feature by feature, one at a time. Touch ID was a stepping stone for instance, and that's a whole engineering and design task by itself. It's a multi-year evolution to get to the point of adding a service that incidentally happens to use NFC as one of the many involved technologies. So, no, they did not "add NFC" without Apple Pay.
  - sigmar 11y ago
    >Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type... What specific changes have made it possible for NFC to work in this way? All those things you listed seem possible in 2012.
npunt 11y ago
> We see less and less such ideas from Apple. Disagree. This is a really commonly held viewpoint that I think is the product of our fast news cycles, and I don't think it approaches truth for another several years. You are totally right that iPod and iPhone were not the first. While these were cool products when they came out, I think what's often lost is that it was only in the years of incremental improvements that defined how important these products were. Tons of use cases are being unlocked in health, education, home automation, transportation, payments, enterprise, etc that these markets have been waiting for and wanting and are truly transformative. They're just not talked about as much, or hit that level of 'omg' for people who aren't dealing with those use cases, but they're real. The less sexy incremental stuff is amazing, and in fact, way more interesting because so few companies get the details right. Just like you're saying about not being first, most blow-your-mind ideas that will come out in the next 10 years are probably already thought of, prototyped, or launched in some highly crippled form to an extremely limited audience. Two amazing things we can assume are in the pipeline are: 1. Driverless car, which will fundamentally change our transportation infrastructure. 2. Eye tracking and face tracking, which unlock new interaction paradigms that are even more natural and seamless. See the recent Faceshift acquisition [1] for evidence. These are going to be awesome! But they'll take time to perfect. I'm not sure what qualifies as innovations for you. I'll admit I'm not blown away by today's stuff, it is S-cycle after all, but I am impressed by the way they've implemented 3D touch. Its the first force touch implementation (vs watch and macbook) that I really like because it looks incredibly intuitive and everyday useful - like something that I'll wonder how I lived without. Well anyway, I think we'd probably agree about a lot things, but I'd be curious as to what big innovation you've got in mind that's missing. Cheers. [1] http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/04/faceshift-motion-capture-acquired/ http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/04/faceshift-motion-capture...
- beedogs 11y ago
  Apple's not going to release a driverless car. Where are people coming up with this crap?
  - npunt 11y ago
    I guess that test track for driverless cars that they've been in talks with [1], and all those auto executives and autonomous vehicle engineers they're hiring are going to work on something else? Just because they've been a computer company thus far doesn't mean it'll always be that way. They're the largest company on earth with over $100B in the bank and incredible consumer goodwill looking for any space with large profit margin potential where they can differentiate with good user experience. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/14/apple-self-driving-car-project-titan-sooner-than-expected http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/14/apple-self...
com2kid 11y ago
The main innovations that the iPod and iPhone launched with was in regards to their business models. iPod had iTunes, true flat rate pricing for all music. Giant articles (if not books) have been written describing the huge challenge that was. The iPhone was a completely new relationship between the phone manufacturer and the cellular carrier that allowed Apple to rake in unheard of profits. Their other main innovation with the iPhone was making a touch screen UI that was good. To be fair, that took a lot of engineering and UX work (early gen cap touch was terrible). Apple was then able to pivot and make an app store built on existing infrastructure, another innovation that none of the other phone manufactures made. Yes "app stores" existed before the App Store, but they where not the one stop shop with guaranteed assurances that Apple offered. Executing on the App Store idea perfectly involved innovation for sure.

dasil003 11y ago

The problem is that after a string of successes like iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, there is no way to out-do that. There is no market so ripe for disruption that plays to Apple's strengths the way that the iPhone setup. That's why the iPad is so disappointing to analysts and why nothing Apple does is that impressive now. There is no opportunity for the next iPhone-level success in the market today. It's out there somewhere in the future, but everyone carrying around a $700 pocket computer is a game changer of a magnitude that can only be approximated by physical implants. It certainly is not approached by any imaginable Watch or Google Glass type of device.

anjc 11y ago
If Apple had made the Surface Pro (which hasn't existed for very long) before Microsoft then it would have been the next in that line of major innovations. They didn't, because of a lack of foresight, but the opportunity to create it was readily available.
- gress 11y ago
  The surface pro is a failure. Apple didn't make a pro tablet earlier because they understood the correct time to introduce such a product.
  - anjc 11y ago
    By what metrics is it a failure? Because when I last looked at Microsoft's financial statements, their revenue was up due to the Surface (Profit was down for unrelated reasons). I'm assuming you haven't used a Surface Pro but you can mark my words now, Apple will release a direct copy of the Surface within 3 years. The iPad Pro is a glorified iPad and will be utterly unusable for doing anything professional, so it's not a copy at this stage.
    - gress 11y ago
      This is already demonstrably false. The iPad is already in use for professional purposes, and if you'd watched it, you have seen the stage demo prove you wrong.
      - anjc 11y ago
        What professional purposes?
        gress 11y ago
        Medicine, CAD, Commercial Aviation, Finance, Retail, Graphic Design & Illustration... Pretty much everything serious. https://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/healthcare.html https://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/health...
threeseed 11y ago
> There is no opportunity for the next iPhone-level success in the market today. Oh yes there is. The car. Very high margin. Plenty of opportunity to do something radically different.
- tallanvor 11y ago
  Tesla is already there. I mean, Apple could still try, but they're not likely to come up with anything that people will consider "revolutionary".
  - 72deluxe 11y ago
    Touch-screen steering wheel? What could possibly go wrong? As an aside, I find the obsession with touchscreen interfaces in cars to be irritating because obviously the testers test these things whilst sat perfectly still in a stationary vehicle or in a car with hydrogas suspension (just kidding), and not on a typical road that has bumps. They're impossible to use whilst in motion as your arm bounces around.

rdancer 11y ago

oh come on, apple watch?!

bduerst 11y ago

I dunno - Apple kind of killed NFC adoption by waiting so long to finally include it. They should have had it back in 2012.

johansch 11y ago
They still haven't included it...
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Well it's there for apple things like Apple Pay. There's no real incentive for them to open it up to developers unless they're controlling the space. i.e. for Apple Pay it's nice, or say to unlock your car, or unlock your home's door with Home Kit, but random NFC thingies? They're not really interested.
giovannibajo1 11y ago
That's because they are not a OEM that throws hardware together trying to differentiate, no matter what the software using it will be like. Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type, and that makes them make money but without charging more neither the users neither the merchant, and is interoperable with existing credit cards and banks (including the per-bank customized provisioning process). Putting everything together is several order of magnitude harder than adding a part number to a BOM years before the ecosystem is ready to use it appropriately. They had to get there feature by feature, one at a time. Touch ID was a stepping stone for instance, and that's a whole engineering and design task by itself. It's a multi-year evolution to get to the point of adding a service that incidentally happens to use NFC as one of the many involved technologies. So, no, they did not "add NFC" without Apple Pay.
- sigmar 11y ago
  >Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type... What specific changes have made it possible for NFC to work in this way? All those things you listed seem possible in 2012.

npunt 11y ago

> We see less and less such ideas from Apple. Disagree. This is a really commonly held viewpoint that I think is the product of our fast news cycles, and I don't think it approaches truth for another several years. You are totally right that iPod and iPhone were not the first. While these were cool products when they came out, I think what's often lost is that it was only in the years of incremental improvements that defined how important these products were. Tons of use cases are being unlocked in health, education, home automation, transportation, payments, enterprise, etc that these markets have been waiting for and wanting and are truly transformative. They're just not talked about as much, or hit that level of 'omg' for people who aren't dealing with those use cases, but they're real. The less sexy incremental stuff is amazing, and in fact, way more interesting because so few companies get the details right. Just like you're saying about not being first, most blow-your-mind ideas that will come out in the next 10 years are probably already thought of, prototyped, or launched in some highly crippled form to an extremely limited audience. Two amazing things we can assume are in the pipeline are: 1. Driverless car, which will fundamentally change our transportation infrastructure. 2. Eye tracking and face tracking, which unlock new interaction paradigms that are even more natural and seamless. See the recent Faceshift acquisition [1] for evidence. These are going to be awesome! But they'll take time to perfect. I'm not sure what qualifies as innovations for you. I'll admit I'm not blown away by today's stuff, it is S-cycle after all, but I am impressed by the way they've implemented 3D touch. Its the first force touch implementation (vs watch and macbook) that I really like because it looks incredibly intuitive and everyday useful - like something that I'll wonder how I lived without. Well anyway, I think we'd probably agree about a lot things, but I'd be curious as to what big innovation you've got in mind that's missing. Cheers. [1] http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/04/faceshift-motion-capture-acquired/ http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/04/faceshift-motion-capture...

beedogs 11y ago
Apple's not going to release a driverless car. Where are people coming up with this crap?
- npunt 11y ago
  I guess that test track for driverless cars that they've been in talks with [1], and all those auto executives and autonomous vehicle engineers they're hiring are going to work on something else? Just because they've been a computer company thus far doesn't mean it'll always be that way. They're the largest company on earth with over $100B in the bank and incredible consumer goodwill looking for any space with large profit margin potential where they can differentiate with good user experience. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/14/apple-self-driving-car-project-titan-sooner-than-expected http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/14/apple-self...

com2kid 11y ago

The main innovations that the iPod and iPhone launched with was in regards to their business models. iPod had iTunes, true flat rate pricing for all music. Giant articles (if not books) have been written describing the huge challenge that was. The iPhone was a completely new relationship between the phone manufacturer and the cellular carrier that allowed Apple to rake in unheard of profits. Their other main innovation with the iPhone was making a touch screen UI that was good. To be fair, that took a lot of engineering and UX work (early gen cap touch was terrible). Apple was then able to pivot and make an app store built on existing infrastructure, another innovation that none of the other phone manufactures made. Yes "app stores" existed before the App Store, but they where not the one stop shop with guaranteed assurances that Apple offered. Executing on the App Store idea perfectly involved innovation for sure.