[mikhailt]

That's been Apple since the beginning. They always incrementally improve their stuff. They've never the first to invent and they're always late.

> If you have that much money, it means you didn't "take greater risks and suffer through multiple failures" in the years preceding.

So Apple Watch? Is that a success or failure?

The $3 billion+ purchase of Beats? That everyone said was going to be a waste of money?

AirPods?

Mac Pro redesign was a failure.

The car business that could easily burn through several tens of billions?

There's nothing truly innovative about Apple that no one can replicate but Apple is lucky lately with more people buying more of their stuff like 20m Apple Music subs, popular AirPods, Apple Watch, etc.

[valuearb]

Apple Watch was a huge success, $6B in sales first year alone, best selling watch in world by revenues.

Beats? Can't tell from outside, but I'm still skeptical.

AirPods? Reviews have actually been great, much better than first impressions. Sales? Who knows.

Mac Pros actually probably made good money for Apple, but strategically was an awful decision. They milked the form factor for sales, likely sell around $500M a year of it without any upgrades/investment for now 4 years. But given it was a poor solution for most Pro users, it's sales are just a symptom of a ton of pent up demand that Apple isn't meeting. Plus the loss of users abandoning the platform because the top end was capped so low.

The car business is a puzzle and unlikely to ever turn out well.

Apple is truly innovative in the best ways possible, which is why it's so successful. Xerox invented GUI computing, Apple figured out how to make it work much better and fit it into a $2,000 box the masses could use. MP3 players were around for years, Apple made them far more usable. Tablet computers were in development ever since Go in the 90s, no one every cracked it for mass markets until the iPhone and iPad. Apple's attention to detail with the proximity sensor and multitouch and a dozen other innovations is what made a touchscreen phone finally usable (and why Google ripped all the keyboards off their Android prototypes the day after they saw the iPhone).

[petra]

Sure Apple once had unique design skills and attention to detail. The iPhone is a great example of that.

But mobile app design, and Apple's success gave many people/companies great expertise in design, And some do put the effort and attention to detail that is required.

So in today's world, is that enough ?

And if not, that might explain why Apple's watch wasn't meaningfully better than Android's - although it did made more money, probably, mostly because of brand and market position.

[valuearb]

The details are worth a lot to the right customers. For example, I might spend up to a thousand dollars more for my Mac than a similar PC. But that works out to a cost of way less than 50 cents an hour to me in work hours. The extra details only need increase my productivity less than 1% to pay for that. Details such as being able to run three operating systems, retina screens, high build quality, mag-safe, Mac OS features, etc, etc. For me, it's a no brainer.

I bought an Apple watch for development, but it's been a pretty good purchase all around. Two years of value and it works better than ever. I can't say the extra functionality makes it worth more than an android watch costing a few hundred less, but I suspect they do given it's something you wear every day.