[corey_moncure]

Mid-2000's Apple catapulted us into the current era. OS X, iPod, the iTunes store, Macbook Pro (and Mac Pro to a lesser extent), and the iPhone, weren't just new products or good products, they were best in class. No, they created an entirely new class. They were the object of desire for anyone with eyes in their head to see how good they were. They did almost everything right, all the time, with relentlessly successful execution of features that actually made your life better in the ways that mattered. It's easy to forget how crummy and restrictive phones were in 2005. The business wins Apple pulled off against the recalcitrant music and telephone industry players.

But the fire of their innovation has slowly burned out, and with it, their vision. Like a star entering supernova, they have to try and burn progressively heavier elements to maintain the reaction. Apple doesn't profit from making desirable products any more, they have switched to exploitation. When's the last time you felt excited about an Apple product? For me it was the first retina MBP, which I ultimately didn't buy because I was waiting for a CPU upgrade... and waiting... and waiting...