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Apple approaches similar crisis, strangely soon. I predict the company also won't respond fast enough to Google and the shift from touch to touchless computing. CEO Tim Cook focuses too much on preserving revenues streams, rather than disrupt them as predecessor Steve Jobs risked so many times. Stuff like this makes me think this guy is a jackass. Steve Jobs never "disrupted an established revenue stream" - in 1999 he started with nothing, and built everything from scratch. He died with the company in full throttle, and that's that. Never had the need or the chance to do what this author is suggesting. Furthermore, how exactly can you fault Apple/Cook's performance post-2011? Their releases have all been solid improvements which have sold like hotcakes. Their products still command global consumer consciousness like no other brand. The iPhone and iPad stand as the centre of gravity of the mobile market, and the confusion and noise of the myriad products churned out by Apple's ertswhile competition only further cements their stature. Other than a few small exceptions (screen size in particular), they still control the focus of consumer desire - the average consumer only knows and cares about a particular feature once Apple has pointed to it. Watch what happens post-5s - if other phone manufacturers release a spree of devices with novel unlocking mechanisms, you can guess why. Everything Apple has done has been profitable and popular. They're playing from a position of incredible strength, so why should they rush out and reinvent the wheel? They have time, their current position is stable, and it would only advantage competitors to reveal their next plans before Apple is ready or it is even necessary to do so. I think the mistake people make here is in confusing what happened to Microsoft with what might hypothetically happen to Apple. But Apple isn't Microsoft. There's no indication whatsoever that Apple is taking their current strength for granted - moves like the new campus suggest a firm focus on and faith in a very long-term future. The only people who are dissatisfied with Apple's performance are impatient, ignorant tech commentators, who seem to depend for their sense of self-worth on a deluge of new gadgets to critique. It's a serious cognitive failure to imagine that just because Apple overturned incumbents, Apple must be equally vulnerable to being overturned, as if the marketplace just cycles through the same rough dynamic with little to no variation. Apple blew the competition out of the water because it was better, and in so doing it set a new bar for product and ecosystem execution that until now no other device manufacturer could equal - a bar which it has only maintained and even raised. We're only now starting to see the market rebalance with Google and Amazon emerging as real competitors, with Microsoft a big question mark about when and if they will ever rise to the occasion. But the ball is thoroughly in the competition's court, so right now Apple can watch, analyse, and plot its next move. We don't have even close to enough data to evaluate Apple's "performance" yet because we haven't seen it. |