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Ten Years Without Steve

Entry 2156, on 2021-10-05 at 21:13:23 (Rating 1, Computers)

Recently, we have reached the tenth anniversary of the death of Steve Jobs. I wrote a blog post just before that event, when he resigned as CEO of Apple, and mused about whether the loss of this visionary founder would lead to Apple's ultimate demise. After all, many people noted how Apple had done badly the previous time Steve had left (or been booted out of) the company, and quite sensibly, they wondered whether it could happen again.

Well, Apple is now worth more than any other company, including Microsoft and Google/Alphabet, based on market cap. I know that is just one way to measure a company's value, but it is a good indicator of the health of the company. So it seems they are successful in that area, at least.

But what about other aspects of Apple's current status? Here's my thoughts on the future of the company from that post in 2011...

When the Apple board threw out Jobs in the mid 1980s they had decided that it was time for Apple to "grow up" and they tried to run the company just like all the others. That clearly didn't work because if you become just one of the others you can only really compete on price and that is a sure path to failure.

So Apple must keep its distinctive culture and it must continue to take risks. It should design new products based on what people will want (even if they don't know it yet), not on what they are asking for and definitely not on what they have had in the past. But they should be a little bit less extreme about it and try to pay a little bit more attention to backward compatibility.

How hard can it be? Judging from the total failure of almost every company except Apple obviously it is very hard! Can Apple do it without Steve as CEO? I certainly hope so or the future of technology looks rather dreary.

So you can see that I was hoping for the best of both worlds there: the freedom and innovation of classic Apple, but a bit more maturity and practicality as well. So how have they done? Well, as I said, financially the company looks great, but what about their efforts in the area of innovation and superior design?

There has been only one new class of product created in that time: the Apple Watch. That has been very successful, and Apple out-sells all the other smart-watch manufacturers combined, as well as selling more watches than every company in Switzerland combined. And, apart from sales, the Apple Watch is a very good product. I have the Series 4 version and I find it very useful and well designed.

All other product categories are also strong. The iPhone is the biggest source for Apple's income and, although there are more Android phones than Apple, in the premium market it is dominant. And the iPad is clearly the dominant premium tablet. The Mac market share is small compared with all the PC brands together, but it is still amongst the biggest selling brands of computers. And services have become far more important in recent years. iCloud is finally a useful and reliable service, and Apple TV+, Apple Pay, and other services are successful without being dominant in any way.

So, from a business perspective Apple seems to be doing very well, but from a design and innovation perspective the story is a bit more doubtful. I have noticed a distinct drop in reliability in Apple laptops from the 2018 and 2019 era, although those issues now seem to be fixed. And what Apple tried to tell us was a very innovative product - the "trash can" Mac Pro - was really a failure. But at least it was a failure that they seem to have learned from and fixed.

Apple do seem to be a little bit more responsive to negative user feedback now than in the past. The pro market didn't like the Mac Pro so Apple re-designed it totally and now it is a real powerhouse - although a very expensive one! And people didn't like the new laptop keyboard and that has now been replaced with one of a similar design to the older version. And don't forget that Apple made plenty of mistakes when Steve Jobs was in charge too. Need I remind you of the unfortunate case of the "hockey puck" mouse!

I often say that influential people always enjoy some element of luck. Steve was in charge of Apple during the most innovative years of the computer industry. It was early enough that many product categories hadn't been filled yet, but late enough that the technology to create these products did exist. Of course, it took great vision, knowledge, and persistence to do what he did, but if he had been involved 20 years earlier or later he might not have been as influential as he was.

So maybe all the important new devices have already been created: desktop computers, laptops, music players, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, web-based services. What is left? Maybe there is nothing else new we need, so that explains why Apple (and other companies) seem to be less innovative now.

There are two categories which might be candidates for "the next big thing". One is AI (artificial intelligence), and the other is augmented reality devices such as glasses (Google Glass was an early, but mostly failed, attempt at this). Just while I am discussing this, there is another product, which is a bit outside Apple's usual area but which they are rumoured to be seriously working on: self-driving cars.

AI is being used increasingly in existing devices, so it seems more that we will slowly use it more and more without really noticing that it is happening. VR glasses are more like a traditional product which will become more obvious when an elegant model is available (most likely made by Apple, of course). One type might be for day to day use, and project information onto the wearer's visual field, and another might be a VR head-set for purposes like gaming, which completely takes over their experience.

Note that even if I expect Apple to create these devices, I'm not saying they will do it first. In fact, they haven't really done anything first, but they have done it best.

If Apple continue with that strategy - to create the best products - then they should continue to succeed. They do need to be a bit careful though, because some recent products (both hardware and software) haven't been up to the standards of reliability and quality I would expect.

So Apple are doing OK without Steve. Would they be doing better if he was still with us? Well, maybe. Who knows what he might have come up with. But we still have some very fine products, and I think the company has hit a fair compromise between "growing up" and remaining the crazy company we all love.

Comment 1 (6904) by Anonymous on 2021-10-11 at 12:40:54:

Com on, you must admit Apple aren't the company they used to be. When was the last time they did anything really new.

Comment 2 (6905) by OJB on 2021-10-11 at 12:46:16:

That is an interesting question (and an interesting claim). As I said in the post, it might be that all the obvious new innovations have already been done, and it was just luck that we had Steve at the right time in the history of computers. Maybe even Steve wouldn't be that innovative if he was still with us today. I think the company is following the right strategy though, and producing very good products, despite my complaints about some bugginess recently!

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