Apple and the iPhone
Go back eleven years, not ten
I was an early, early adopter of the iPhone. I stood in line at the Northpointe Mall in Alpharetta, GA the day the iPhone came out. I waited with my friend Clayton and hundreds of other people. I could not wait to be rid of my Blackberry that did not sync very well with my 17" Mac laptop.
The iPhone really did change everything about phones. There are times I long again for a simple Motorola RAZR flip phone. The curve and audio were great. It was a simple phone. I was not tied to a screen all day. But the iPhone made me more productive.
No, it did not have all the bells and whistles other phones would have later. It lagged behind on video, copy/paste, and still does not have exploding batteries and sensual massages complete with happy endings like some Android phones promise. But dammit, it works. It does what I need it to do, is completely reliable, and tends to be best in class with anything that it does do.
Right now, in the run up to the tenth anniversary of the iPhone, there is a lot of chatter about Apple not being able to innovate anymore, abandoning the Mac, running out of ideas, and on the verge of collapse. It is all Tim Cook’s fault. (full disclosure: I own Apple stock)
I feel sorry for Tim Cook. It cannot be easy living in the shadow of Steve Jobs. Everything he does is compared to Jobs. But Cook, I think, is institutionally made to not give much of a damn. Tim Cook is his own man, perfectly comfortable being his own man, and in no rush to satisfy others’ needs to scratch itches.
Yes, Apple has problems. Software is increasingly buggy. Email in iOS 10 has a glitch that they have not fixed, but that I and so many others complain about. The MacPro has not been updated and Apple should update it. They should not abandon that business. I have one of the brand new 15" MacBook Pros and had to ship it back to Apple today because of a graphics chip hardware malfunction. I would still never go back to a PC. Every time someone asks me to use a PC, I find it clunky, less intuitive, and cheaper looking in its interface. Windows is designed by people who have to use computers. Mac OS is designed by people who want to use computers. There are striking differences between the two and the Apple ecosystem works so well.
All this said, I would go back eleven years to Apple, not ten. Eleven years ago, there were news stories on a weekly basis that Apple was out of ideas. Jobs had the iMac, but Apple had not taken over the computer market. Apple had the iPod, but others were competing. It needed something new.
Leak after leak, though few in number, and patent after patent suggested Apple was on the verge of the next big thing, but the tech press and Wall Street wanted it yesterday. And it did not come. More and more stories suggested Jobs had run out of ideas, Apple was resting on the iPod laurels, and someone else was going to steal their market.
Then Apple came out with the iPhone. It was immediately panned. Go back and read the press. Many people did not get it. But it changed the whole industry and changed Apple. It had been in the works for years, but no one really knew. It was clear, towards release, that it was consuming resources and made the company look like it was coasting.
Here we are ten years after the iPhone. Apple seems stagnant and out of ideas. Its patents suggest something big is coming, but nothing is coming. This all seems so familiar. I would not be surprised if 2017 is the year Apple changes all over again. Something big must be coming because Apple is a company that does not coast and right now it is coasting. It is coasting exactly like it was in 2005–2006 before changing the world.
I could be wrong. Apple could be out of ideas. But I really doubt it and I’m excited to see what comes next.
