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It does feel like Apple innovation is either stagnating or small, incremental gains. Certainly not huge leaps like iPhone or Apple Watch. Vision Pro hadn’t real

It does feel like Apple innovation is either stagnating or small, incremental gains. Certainly not huge leaps like iPhone or Apple Watch. Vision Pro hadn’t really taken off yet.

surfingdino 2y ago
When Apple had a smaller user base of devoted Mac fans it could allow itself to experiment, but it cannot do it at the current scale. They have two potential options: focus of research of various groups of their existing products, e.g. find out who uses iPads for what and see if there is a potential for a hardware product for that group of users. For example, pilots load flight plans and other information on iPads, maybe there is a potential for a product for the aviation industry? Second option is an experimental product spin-off that they would finance, a bit like Bell Labs, but for Apple. BTW. Apple Vision is not taking off anytime soon. At that price point it's going nowhere.
- ghaff 2y ago
  The Vision would be uninteresting to me at anything beyond pocket change prices. I have an SF concept of the type of augmented reality that could be interesting but we're nowhere near there. Really, I'm an Apple fan but MacBooks and iPhones are the only devices I'm genuinely attached to. I haven't replaced a broken old iPad (at least not yet) and my Apple Watch is something I basically use for hiking.
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    I was in the Apple Store in Regent's Street in London yesterday. They had Vision on display. The headbands were already visibly dirty and nobody was looking at them anyway. At £3,500 it's no wonder why. My personal take on Vision is that it was created to shut up Wall Street asking why Apple does not have a VR vision/product? So they produced a product that will join Pippin and Newton and will kill it before Wall Street starts asking why they have a VR product when nobody else is investing in VR?
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I was in their Covent Garden store late spring/early summer--admittedly not at a peak time--to ask to take a look at one of the new iPads. And, yeah, no one was playing with the Visions. Even if they're skeptical, probably makes sense for them to be playing with (even very visibly). But I'm not sure I see a general use case at this point.
- jwells89 2y ago
  The impression I get is that there's a substantial appetite for experimentation with (and attention for in general for) macOS among Mac fans that hasn't been satisfied since iOS began to suck all the air out of the room many years ago. It's understandable that Apple might not want to rock the boat too much for more general audience Mac users, though. Perhaps some kind of "enthusiast mode" for macOS that could act as a playground for these things is in order.
- ghssds 2y ago
  They don't need to experiment with Mac. They still own the perfectly good Apple II brand they didn't use for decades and could experiment with all they want.
dingnuts 2y ago
the watch was a leap? the only people I know who have them are Apple stans, and unlike the iPhone they certainly didn't kick off a new category of must have everyday item heck, after growing tired of having one more thing with a rechargeable battery, I went back to an analog watch
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  Every person I see working retail has an Apple Watch. Think it’s some weird mix of they can’t have their phone and also rampant materialism through exposure at work. I loved my $30 EBay Apple Watch as a cheap running watch with GPS before the battery got so weak it wouldn’t even do my 1.5 hour runs anymore. Apple wasn’t helpful about a battery replacement and encouraged me to buy a new one (starting at $249) and said they couldn’t replace the battery since it was so old, when I met a Genius at the Apple Store. That soured me quite a bit on the whole thing.
- surfingdino 2y ago
  They shot themselves in the foot with eSim for Apple Watch (Samsung did he same with Galaxy Ultra watch). You have to buy a contract for both your iPhone and your watch, because you cannot put your Apple Watch on a pay as you go plan. This is a big obstacle in Europe where PAYG plans are popular. It's not going to change, because operators like it and LTE smartwatches do not cut into smartphone sales.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    I know a bunch of people with some apple watch at this point but I never met anyone who pays for cellular for it
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I did for a bit but I'm just not really in circumstances where I need smartwatch connectivity and my phone isn't on me somewhere. I have an Apple Watch Ultra and, honestly, hiking is pretty much the only thing I use it for.
sosborn 2y ago
Let's travel back to 2016 ... > It does feel like Apple innovation is either stagnating or small, incremental gains. Certainly not huge leaps like iPhone or iPad. Apple Watch hasn’t really taken off yet.
skgough 2y ago
This might be true on the user-facing side of things, but moving chip design in-house and transitioning their entire hardware lineup to the ARM ISA is a big innovation. M-line Macs can't be beat in efficiency or performance any time soon.
- talldayo 2y ago
  M-line Macs have been beaten in pure-performance terms since the day they were released, and that goes for everything from the M1 to the M3 Max: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks It's the single-core scores that are really impressive, but as time goes on, the performance gap is closing and not widening. It's been said many times before, but it was Apple's TSMC alliance that mattered more than their core design or ISA choice at the time.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    > M-line Macs have been beaten in pure-performance terms since the day they were released I don't think anyone would ever argue this based on performance alone, which is why I think your geekbench link is irrelevant, and I think a fair reading of parent's comment talking about "efficiency and performance" would mean these two aspects taken together, not independently. That is, nobody is surprised a beefy server chip has more computing power than an M3, and nobody is considering an Nvidia H100 a competitor to an M3 in any sense.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      The problem is, we can correct for wattage and it's still a blowout. Compare the M2 Ultra's 5nm GPU performance-per-watt to a product like Nvidia's RTX A5000 laptop GPU on Samsung 8nm. The M2 Ultra is rated to pull over 290w at load, compared to the A5000's maximum TDP of 165w. Apple's desktop-grade iGPUs are less power-efficient than Nvidia's last-generation laptop GPUs, even when they have a definitive node advantage and higher TDPs. You don't have to just look at the server chips. Compare like-for-like and you'll quickly find that Apple's GPU designs are pretty lacking across the board. The M3 Max barely swaps spit with Nvidia's 2000-series in performance-per-watt. When you pull out the 4000-series hardware and compare the efficiency of those cards, it's just plainly unfair. The $300 RTX 4060 outperforms Apple's $3000 desktop GPUs in performance and efficiency.
paul7986 2y ago
Vision Pro in form factor and experience is just another VR headset the population has no interest in. They haven't since it first debut in the 90s. I know their pathway is to shrink it down to glasses size so we are basically wearing our iPhones on our face. Yet as Ray Ban smart glass enthusiast (use almost daily since Oct '23) im fine with vocally asking my glasses what time it is & getting an audible response. Some visuals in my face only upon summoning them maybe via a ring on my finger or a watch or some natural non-intrusive gesture would be helpful. Now I don't think smart glasses will replace smart phones as you cannot take selfies with them.
- albrewer 2y ago
  > the population has no interest in I definitely have an interest, but there's always something wrong with the existing headsets, so I never adopt. The Oculus is close, but the mandatory Meta integration is a no-go for me.
  - paul7986 2y ago
    Maybe the masses (smartphone user population) will once it's as light as sunglasses. Been wearing my Ray Ban smartglasses while playing pickleball lately and they are too heavy for playing sports. Im always pushing them up on my face so they dont fall off.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I don't like these takes of "innovation is stagnating", as a lot of this is just a function of what is possible at any given moment. For example, I think the iPhone was a revolutionary, innovative device at the time, but the need was obvious: it was pretty clear even back then that things like separate mp3 players, phones, and mobile browsers would converge - Apple was just the one that did it best early on. Even with Apple Watch, while a smart watch form factor was pretty obvious, in the early days the "reason for existence" wasn't as clear until Apple Watch (and pretty much all smart watches) started laser focusing on being fitness trackers and providing health monitoring functionality. So now we're at a point where you have either things like Vision Pro, which is an amazing piece of tech but which solves problems nobody really has, or you have ideas ("I want a robotic housekeeper!") that are eons from being technically feasible. So for anyone saying "Apple isn't innovating", I'd challenge you to think of areas where it could even begin to innovate in the first place (and where people would actually pay money for whatever they built). The answer to that question isn't as obvious as it was in 2007. Final thought, I think Apple has been doing a ton of innovation. Their chips are now state of the art leaders, and take a look at just Airpod revenue alone compared to total revenue of other major companies: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/15z558o/oc_airpods_revenue_vs_top_tech_companies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/15z558o/oc...
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  There are some obvious areas that are not easy but could develop into a very good value proposition such as certifying a variant of Apple Watch for medical use, more sustainable tech (their products are basically throwaway when finished), integrate better across ecosystems such as Android, and improved battery technology / investment.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    I agree that all the examples you've given would be welcomed by users, but I highly, highly doubt that the crowd that accuses Apple of stagnating when it comes to innovation would be impressed with more "sustainable" tech, for example. Many of the examples you've given (better integration with Android, better batteries) have nothing to do with tech but are clearly deliberate business decisions by Apple.

It does feel like Apple innovation is either stagnating or small, incremental gains. Certainly not huge leaps like iPhone or Apple Watch. Vision Pro hadn’t really taken off yet.

surfingdino 2y ago

When Apple had a smaller user base of devoted Mac fans it could allow itself to experiment, but it cannot do it at the current scale. They have two potential options: focus of research of various groups of their existing products, e.g. find out who uses iPads for what and see if there is a potential for a hardware product for that group of users. For example, pilots load flight plans and other information on iPads, maybe there is a potential for a product for the aviation industry? Second option is an experimental product spin-off that they would finance, a bit like Bell Labs, but for Apple. BTW. Apple Vision is not taking off anytime soon. At that price point it's going nowhere.

ghaff 2y ago
The Vision would be uninteresting to me at anything beyond pocket change prices. I have an SF concept of the type of augmented reality that could be interesting but we're nowhere near there. Really, I'm an Apple fan but MacBooks and iPhones are the only devices I'm genuinely attached to. I haven't replaced a broken old iPad (at least not yet) and my Apple Watch is something I basically use for hiking.
- surfingdino 2y ago
  I was in the Apple Store in Regent's Street in London yesterday. They had Vision on display. The headbands were already visibly dirty and nobody was looking at them anyway. At £3,500 it's no wonder why. My personal take on Vision is that it was created to shut up Wall Street asking why Apple does not have a VR vision/product? So they produced a product that will join Pippin and Newton and will kill it before Wall Street starts asking why they have a VR product when nobody else is investing in VR?
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I was in their Covent Garden store late spring/early summer--admittedly not at a peak time--to ask to take a look at one of the new iPads. And, yeah, no one was playing with the Visions. Even if they're skeptical, probably makes sense for them to be playing with (even very visibly). But I'm not sure I see a general use case at this point.
jwells89 2y ago
The impression I get is that there's a substantial appetite for experimentation with (and attention for in general for) macOS among Mac fans that hasn't been satisfied since iOS began to suck all the air out of the room many years ago. It's understandable that Apple might not want to rock the boat too much for more general audience Mac users, though. Perhaps some kind of "enthusiast mode" for macOS that could act as a playground for these things is in order.
ghssds 2y ago
They don't need to experiment with Mac. They still own the perfectly good Apple II brand they didn't use for decades and could experiment with all they want.

dingnuts 2y ago

the watch was a leap? the only people I know who have them are Apple stans, and unlike the iPhone they certainly didn't kick off a new category of must have everyday item heck, after growing tired of having one more thing with a rechargeable battery, I went back to an analog watch

Mistletoe 2y ago
Every person I see working retail has an Apple Watch. Think it’s some weird mix of they can’t have their phone and also rampant materialism through exposure at work. I loved my $30 EBay Apple Watch as a cheap running watch with GPS before the battery got so weak it wouldn’t even do my 1.5 hour runs anymore. Apple wasn’t helpful about a battery replacement and encouraged me to buy a new one (starting at $249) and said they couldn’t replace the battery since it was so old, when I met a Genius at the Apple Store. That soured me quite a bit on the whole thing.
surfingdino 2y ago
They shot themselves in the foot with eSim for Apple Watch (Samsung did he same with Galaxy Ultra watch). You have to buy a contract for both your iPhone and your watch, because you cannot put your Apple Watch on a pay as you go plan. This is a big obstacle in Europe where PAYG plans are popular. It's not going to change, because operators like it and LTE smartwatches do not cut into smartphone sales.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  I know a bunch of people with some apple watch at this point but I never met anyone who pays for cellular for it
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I did for a bit but I'm just not really in circumstances where I need smartwatch connectivity and my phone isn't on me somewhere. I have an Apple Watch Ultra and, honestly, hiking is pretty much the only thing I use it for.

sosborn 2y ago

Let's travel back to 2016 ... > It does feel like Apple innovation is either stagnating or small, incremental gains. Certainly not huge leaps like iPhone or iPad. Apple Watch hasn’t really taken off yet.

skgough 2y ago

This might be true on the user-facing side of things, but moving chip design in-house and transitioning their entire hardware lineup to the ARM ISA is a big innovation. M-line Macs can't be beat in efficiency or performance any time soon.

talldayo 2y ago
M-line Macs have been beaten in pure-performance terms since the day they were released, and that goes for everything from the M1 to the M3 Max: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks It's the single-core scores that are really impressive, but as time goes on, the performance gap is closing and not widening. It's been said many times before, but it was Apple's TSMC alliance that mattered more than their core design or ISA choice at the time.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > M-line Macs have been beaten in pure-performance terms since the day they were released I don't think anyone would ever argue this based on performance alone, which is why I think your geekbench link is irrelevant, and I think a fair reading of parent's comment talking about "efficiency and performance" would mean these two aspects taken together, not independently. That is, nobody is surprised a beefy server chip has more computing power than an M3, and nobody is considering an Nvidia H100 a competitor to an M3 in any sense.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    The problem is, we can correct for wattage and it's still a blowout. Compare the M2 Ultra's 5nm GPU performance-per-watt to a product like Nvidia's RTX A5000 laptop GPU on Samsung 8nm. The M2 Ultra is rated to pull over 290w at load, compared to the A5000's maximum TDP of 165w. Apple's desktop-grade iGPUs are less power-efficient than Nvidia's last-generation laptop GPUs, even when they have a definitive node advantage and higher TDPs. You don't have to just look at the server chips. Compare like-for-like and you'll quickly find that Apple's GPU designs are pretty lacking across the board. The M3 Max barely swaps spit with Nvidia's 2000-series in performance-per-watt. When you pull out the 4000-series hardware and compare the efficiency of those cards, it's just plainly unfair. The $300 RTX 4060 outperforms Apple's $3000 desktop GPUs in performance and efficiency.

paul7986 2y ago

Vision Pro in form factor and experience is just another VR headset the population has no interest in. They haven't since it first debut in the 90s. I know their pathway is to shrink it down to glasses size so we are basically wearing our iPhones on our face. Yet as Ray Ban smart glass enthusiast (use almost daily since Oct '23) im fine with vocally asking my glasses what time it is & getting an audible response. Some visuals in my face only upon summoning them maybe via a ring on my finger or a watch or some natural non-intrusive gesture would be helpful. Now I don't think smart glasses will replace smart phones as you cannot take selfies with them.

albrewer 2y ago
> the population has no interest in I definitely have an interest, but there's always something wrong with the existing headsets, so I never adopt. The Oculus is close, but the mandatory Meta integration is a no-go for me.
- paul7986 2y ago
  Maybe the masses (smartphone user population) will once it's as light as sunglasses. Been wearing my Ray Ban smartglasses while playing pickleball lately and they are too heavy for playing sports. Im always pushing them up on my face so they dont fall off.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

I don't like these takes of "innovation is stagnating", as a lot of this is just a function of what is possible at any given moment. For example, I think the iPhone was a revolutionary, innovative device at the time, but the need was obvious: it was pretty clear even back then that things like separate mp3 players, phones, and mobile browsers would converge - Apple was just the one that did it best early on. Even with Apple Watch, while a smart watch form factor was pretty obvious, in the early days the "reason for existence" wasn't as clear until Apple Watch (and pretty much all smart watches) started laser focusing on being fitness trackers and providing health monitoring functionality. So now we're at a point where you have either things like Vision Pro, which is an amazing piece of tech but which solves problems nobody really has, or you have ideas ("I want a robotic housekeeper!") that are eons from being technically feasible. So for anyone saying "Apple isn't innovating", I'd challenge you to think of areas where it could even begin to innovate in the first place (and where people would actually pay money for whatever they built). The answer to that question isn't as obvious as it was in 2007. Final thought, I think Apple has been doing a ton of innovation. Their chips are now state of the art leaders, and take a look at just Airpod revenue alone compared to total revenue of other major companies: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/15z558o/oc_airpods_revenue_vs_top_tech_companies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/15z558o/oc...

firesteelrain 2y ago
There are some obvious areas that are not easy but could develop into a very good value proposition such as certifying a variant of Apple Watch for medical use, more sustainable tech (their products are basically throwaway when finished), integrate better across ecosystems such as Android, and improved battery technology / investment.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  I agree that all the examples you've given would be welcomed by users, but I highly, highly doubt that the crowd that accuses Apple of stagnating when it comes to innovation would be impressed with more "sustainable" tech, for example. Many of the examples you've given (better integration with Android, better batteries) have nothing to do with tech but are clearly deliberate business decisions by Apple.