A Few Free Product Ideas for Apple
To help one of the largest companies in the world after having a bit of a drop in their stock, here are a few free product ideas for Apple, many of them very small and random.
Make the computers and phones charge together
If you buy a phone and a computer from the same company, you should be able to charge one with the other. Keep the ports working until the ecosystem is more fully there.
Apple Wallet should automatically delete old boarding passes
As far as I can tell, when you have a boarding pass in Apple Wallet, it just stays around. It seems to me that a few days after you use a boarding pass, you really don’t need it there. It would be like if you kept all your physical boarding passes in your wallet. They should have them automatically remove, or if they don’t want to do this by default, make an easy setting to allow for this.
Laptop/tablet lineup — make something a lot better for a great price (Macbook Air + tablet)
I know this is a lot of armchair-quarterback-product-managing, but I’m not a fan at all of the way the Apple laptops have developed over time. I don’t feel there has really been a lot of innovation in them in the last 5 years. (I feel this is a fair criticism since they are the biggest company in the US ….) I think they should create a computer like a Macbook Air but where the screen disconnects and/or folds and can be used as a touchscreen or a tablet. I think for many users, or at least for myself, having a long battery life and a light computer are really good product features. I don’t feel the higher end Macbook Pros really have specs that are that much different than what you could buy for $2,000 6 years ago. Despite this, I still use Apple products because I have become so entangled in their ecosystem, but I think that newer users won’t necessarily be stuck as much and others may switch more easily.
I think buying the Macbook Air for $1,000 a few years ago was a nice computer and a good deal, but $1,000 today for Apple does not really get you a better computer.
Fix iCloud, make it easy to use like Dropbox
iCloud is not so great. I have things on GDrive and Dropbox and the Dropbox backup and web and app is pretty easy to use. It feels the iCloud interface is pretty old. It seems they made a step in the right direction adding an easy iCloud folder to finder and I believe automatically backing up Desktop. However, Dropbox has a simpler web/native product, and Google has a more functional set of productivity apps (docs, sheets, presentations, forms). It seems they have web apps, though I don’t think I’ve ever received a link to a web Apple Pages doc from anyone.
Mobile payments — what’s the native Venmo?
I think Apple Pay has been trending in the right direction, and works better for me today than it did a while ago. However, I don’t really use the peer-to-peer payments. They’ve made them more prominent in messages, but I wonder if a Apple-type Venmo or Square Cash app, like a full Apple Pay app, would really just help build visibility and usage around Apple Pay or Apple Cash or however they hope to roll that out.
Merchant payments — should they compete with Square?
Since Apple does so many things, I wonder if they should compete with Square and build an easy way for merchants to accept payments. Seems it could fit naturally with Apple Pay. This one though feels a bit farther out for me from Apple’s product lines.
Apple eReader — compete with Kindle
It seems the Kindle has really stood out on eReaders, and it’s not clear the iPhone or iPad is a full replacement. In googling, there may be rumors they are making this. I think it could be good to help compete with Amazon.
Overall
It seems Apple has a hardware focus, but competes as a large technology company with Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. It seems Amazon and Google’s hardware improvements have felt, in a very amorphous way, at a faster pace than Apple. So those are a few random ideas. What else could they do? Or what would you do differently?
