Apple Cancels Projects to Keep Talents
Is that a good way for innovation processes?
We can’t see under the hood of Apple Park, nor do we know what’s going on in the minds of the company’s various executives. But even Apple is not immune to the current economic situation. Instead of widespread and unpopular layoffs, however, it is pursuing a different strategy.
Unfortunately, it may cost him more than he is willing to admit. The current economic situation affects everyone. Employees, employers, companies and every individual.
By making everything more expensive (even traffic itself), by making our pockets deeper (inflation and equal wages), because we don’t know what will happen (will/won’t the war come?), we save and don’t buy.
This directly results in falling profits for companies trying to make up for it somewhere. If we look at the world’s biggest companies like Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Google, they are laying off employees. The salary cuts are then supposed to make up for those falling numbers.
Logically, it works for them. But Apple doesn’t want to lose its employees only to go through some indefinitely long period of uncertainty now and then have difficulty hiring them again.
In fact, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, it wants to overcome this crisis with a different strategy. He is simply stopping the most expensive thing, research, which goes hand in hand with new product development.
What products will be the beats?
At the same time, Apple is working on many concurrent projects. Some are due to come to market sooner, others later, and some more important than others. The iPhones will logically be viewed differently than the Apple TV. It is those low-priority projects that Apple is now delaying, not to mention that they will then be delayed in coming to market.
The funding earmarked for them will go to other and more important projects. The problem is that it will be very difficult to get a project that has been stalled back on track. Not only may the technology already be elsewhere, but since competitors may introduce their more technically advanced equipment, logically, the one that is inferior and comes later will not have a chance of success.
It is customary at Apple for individual teams to work only on their solution rather than getting to the rest. That’s why this move is rather odd. It’s impossible for those working on Apple TV to move next door and start working on iPhones. Therefore, the company’s strategy is generous, but in the end, it is paying for a workforce it does not need.
However, indeed, Apple has also avoided more hiring, as did Meta in particular, which is now laying off tens of thousands more employees again. So where will Apple redirect its funding? Certainly to iPhones because those are its breadwinner.
MacBooks are doing well too. But it’s tablet sales that are falling the most, so one suspects this will have an impact on iPads. Apple isn’t making extreme profits on smart home products either, so we probably won’t see a new HomePod or Apple TV anytime soon.
Product line refresh
It would be best if Apple cleaned up its product lineup and made a more limited offering that is more readable to users instead of competing products. For example, as far as iPhones go, I would love to see the mini back as an affordable iPhone.
However, that will no longer happen, so they could start with the iPhone SE and then leave the iPhone 15 in a smaller size and the iPhone 15 Pro Max. If rumours don’t lie as the top model, they could put the iPhone 15 Ultra. Everything would be tiered in price and what each model would offer.
You’d be hard-pressed to find any real differences between the phones that would have any real meaning to the user base. As for the computer offer, it would be very interesting if a 15" variant complements the 13" MacBook Air, as having a powerful, larger and yet still very compact and lightweight device would certainly attract many users.
Currently, I’m slightly confused by the Mac Studio on offer. It was either a misstep, or Apple is up to something, but compared to the M2 Mac mini, at least the base model looks a bit extra. As for the iPad, I would personally cancel the basic iPad altogether.
Using the first-generation Apple Pencil is great marketing, as it gets the company and its products talked about. People are more likely to reach for the Air model after all, but why not make the iPad mini more affordable and cancel the regular one?
The European Union may also shuffle the deck for Apple
However, we should avoid the fact that a state or a community of states telling a private company how to do business is strange. In that case, it’s almost tempting to say that the EU’s pressure on Apple is a big positive for ordinary users.
While the deployment of USB-C in iPhones instead of Lightning may still be up for debate, revolving mainly around the port’s usability today combined with resilience, the EU’s plans to open the system to developers are certainly not out of place.
We should see a revolution in browsers that no longer need to be webkit-based, but also an influx of new apps as alternative App Stories should be available. However, these will be cluttered with software ballast, which will be dangerous for iOS.
While some of that ballast is sure to arrive, on the other hand, several big software players, led by Microsoft, have already announced that they are going to bring their alternative app stores to iOS, and it is Microsoft that wants to use this opportunity to make Xbox gaming more convenient on iPhones.
While these can already be streamed to them via the cloud, it’s only through a web app, which isn’t that convenient. So users will benefit from opening up the system more in this regard.
However, it is important to remember that the options that the EU wants to ‘stomp out’ from Apple are not, in the end, exactly bringing its system closer to Android but rather extending its capabilities on top of its existing foundations.
After all, apps will continue to run in sandboxes for maximum security. As a result, everything we’re used to with Apple now will continue to be available but augmented with other things.
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