2013 : For Apple, Was it iNteresting or Not? — Gadget Segment

So this is a new series I thought of. I will be writing an entire range of articles in which I will ‘try’ to analyse the Gadget segment of the company and the Finance side in two different articles. Finance would come later as the month isn’t over yet. This one is for the Gadget segment so let’s dig into in.

This year was an exciting year for Apple and all the iFans. We got not one but two new iPhones, a completely refreshed Mac department, a new iTouch, and two new iPads. Everything was shining and blossoming. Even the new iOS and the new OSX. But did it bring anything substantial to the table? Some may say yes they did. Some may say no they didn’t. I say they kind off nailed the middle and tried their best.

In the Mac department nothing new as such was there. The only substantial inclusion was the Retina display on the Macbook Pro and the all new powerful , beautifully designed Mac Pro. The new Air got killer battery life and all the Macbooks went Haswell. The iMac got a redesign and got the killer specs as well. And all in Apple fashion, things got smaller, thinner and more powerful. Some might say these are minor improvements, I say small steps only make a huge staircase. But yet opinion differs and I personally feel that Apple should have combined the Pro and the Air Macbook into one complete product. It would be a little thicker than the current Air but would pack all that powerful punch of the Pro. They could have sold more units as in my opinion more choices = more confusion. Plus the one product philosophy has for worked out amazingly well for Apple so far. Also we would get the best of both worlds.

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Macbook Air[/caption]

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iMac[/caption]

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Mac Pro 2013[/caption]

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Macbook Pro[/caption]

In the iPad sector, we got the new iPad Air and the new Mini. Only the Mini was treated to a special upgrade. It got the same retina display of the same resolution as it’s bigger brother. Apart from that both received the new A7 and M7 chip. And again similar to the Mac segment the iPad Air became lighter, shed some thickness and decreased the bezels by a huge margin. In my opinion the Mini would be a better buy as it has basically the same screen and the power that the bigger twin has. Also it’s cheaper and is much more portable. Data also supports this and more iPad Mini’s have been sold.

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The iPad Air[/caption]

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The iPad Mini with Retina[/caption]

For the iPhone we got the new iPhone 5S and the new iPhone 5C. Nothing spectacular as per me. However there are many things to point out here. The 5S has the same body as the 5. The 5C has the same chipset and almost the same internals except for a bit better low-light performance. However, it has a plastic shell. The 5S has the new 64bit A7 chip. Basically it’s twice as fast in both processing and graphics than the 5. (A separate article on 64bit will be up soon) It got the new dual tone flash. The new slow motion video ( New for iOS) and most of all, the fingerprint sensor Touch ID. But the 5C is apparently Apple’s attempt at low — cost phones. One question, how in the world is a 100$ less than a flagship device cheap? In India it starts at 40K and that’s more than some of the most premium devices. You messed up Apple, you messed up here.

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The iPhone 5S with Touch ID in it’s home button.[/caption]

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The iPhone 5C with the plastic casing.[/caption]

iOS 7 was something completely new. New design. New control centre. New app design guidelines. New features. Basically something built from scratch. It was a very welcoming change and I liked it. However, nothing original was introduced. Features were taken from various operating systems such as Android and Windows. But I believe having something is better than nothing and that competition yields its results. I personally love the new flat apps as I am a big fan of Google’s minimal Holo UI as well. Good to see iOS, Android and Windows are on almost the same page in app design now. OSX Mavericks was more of a performance update. iBooks was good and having a prebuilt maps app is nice. Also the new iWork and iLife apps are amazing and are a joy to use. Making the update and the core Apple apps free was a good move. I love Mavericks and my Macbook. I guess I have to give it to Apple for their software. Well done Apple, you passed and you passed well.

Well this is all for Apple’s year. A couple of other devices were out as well, but I felt these contribute most to the sales and revenue and are the core part of the Apple ecosystem. I just hope that Steve Jobs is sitting and smiling looking at his birth child and hoping that the revolution of 2007 hits again. Hope you liked this article. Don’t forget to leave a comment below and share the article. Also answer the poll. Thanks for reading have a good day ahead.

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