People have been saying for years that Apple needs to come out with lower end products or they'll die. Their steadily increasing profits (even through the recession) and massive cash reserves say otherwise.
True, but (1) we had many years of quite good economic growth until 2008 and (2) their big $$$ are coming from the iPhone right now - wasn't there a post yesterday observing that it's outselling the Mac? So one could argue that the iPhone is their lower-end product line: Mac design philosophy that goes in your pocket.
There's a big difference between being successful and being change-the-world successful. I'm sure Apple would love a piece of the latter but given their business model it probably won't happen.
I can't imagine Jobs is happy about being just being a billionaire when there are guys like Gates who dwarf his wealth and success (and therefore have the cash to actually saves many more lives and alter world history)
I'm sorry, it seems one could conclude from your statement that you don't believe Jobs-era Apple (which, after all, has had basically the same business model all these years) hasn't changed the world. It seems to me they've already done that a few times over.
The iPod. The iTune Music Store. The iPhone. A world-class music studio for $500. A world-class motion picture studio for $1000. The evolution of the digital hub. The insistence that technology should "just work". I honestly don't know what else you could expect from any other company of any size or business model.
I think josefresco meant the world outside the computer market. The iPod and iPhone, I agree 100%.
Music and movie software...no. As a professional in that sphere I personally feel Apple comes late to those parties after working out or buying what everyone else is wearing. That's not meant as a put-down, I just think you're overlooking how much innovation comes from third parties.
I've been using Logic since the Atari days, and I certainly don't mean to belittle the contributions of eMagic! I'm less familiar with the linage of Final Cut, but I'm sure whoever developed that before Apple did fantastic work.
But, though it's become a cliche in this context, I think what makes these products world-changing is Apple's vision. [EDIT: actually, now that I think about it, it's not their vision. It's their business model (the very thing the OP was deriding). Apple sells hardware and can use software as a loss leader. So it's able to sell Logic and Final Cut for much less than when they were the sole income of their respective companies] After Apple bought Final Cut and Logic, they slashed prices, refined the interfaces to make them much more approachable, and gave users a way to migrate from simple iApps, to Express versions, to the full-blown Studio packages.
This ease of use, low cost, and easy migration vision of Apple's all works together to democratize the creation of media. As a platform, it places an emphasis on the creation of media, not merely the consumption of it.
That's what I find world-changing about it, and I think its all stuff that's happened post-Apple-buyout. But I'd love to hear more about any similar efforts made before Apple bought these products.
Adobe were the breakthrough company to develop video editing on Mac, with what is now Premiere. Final Cut was a spinoff of that when the developer left for Macromedia, which was in turn split between Apple and Adobe (FC & Flash, respectively): http://steveblank.com/2009/05/11/supermac-war-story-x-the-vi...
Now you're right about Apple's price cutting, and it's more obvious how this drove down the cost of video - but on the music side while you had ProTools at the extreme high end and Logic at the prosumer price, over on the (post-Atari) PC side you had very aggressive competition from Steinberg (Cubase), then Cakewalk, and ultimately a host of others - not to mention trackers. eMagic had a big first-mover advantage in their price space, but competitors were really eroding that with a combination of pricing and ease-of-use. I personally think EMagic would have gone bust within 2 years if they hadn't been able to fall into Apple's arms.
To be fair to Apple, they were very smart to focus on things like high bus bandwidth and high-resolution hardware timers which are de rigeur for this sort of work. Wintel was able to play catch-up in large part because of the rise of electronic music, where things like hardware latency and so forth were less critical.
When I referenced "changing the world" I meant grand social problems and solutions that effect almost every human. Not a bunch of spoiled tech/gadget obsessed "Haves".
Ask the kids in Ghana how the iTunes Music Store has effected their lives.
"I honestly don't know what else you could expect from any other company of any size or business model."
We should all expect more from ourselves than simply overpriced/shiny electronics.
I admit I'm a very pro-capitalism type of guy and I indulge in many excesses that I should not take for granted, and yet do.
But I absolutely refuse to feel anything but joy and elation when I consider the miraculous tools I have available to me that allow me to complete works undreamed of by any generations previous.
It may naive, but I have to believe that if we are to care for the children of Ghana, we have to make more of ourselves, not less. To put it another way, would I know anything of Ghana's plight were it not for my shiny electronic computer and its connection to the miraculous interconnected network of shiny electronics?
Cringely has an interesting take on the relationship between Gates and Jobs and how they perceive each other.
"In Steve's mind, he has the best of everything. Apple software is cooler than Windows will ever be. Palo Alto, where Jobs lives, is trendier than Seattle. Even Jobs' plane, a Gulfstream V, is cooler than Gates' Challenger 604. It goes on and on. Gates has never even considered this latter point, but I'll guarantee you that Jobs has, and he revels in it."
So, no, it is not clear at all that Steve believes that Gates is more "successful" than he is. Furthermore, it is no longer insane to imagine that, depending on how long Jobs health holds out, he could presiding over Apple one day with a higher market cap than Microsoft (consider how Apple surpassed Dell in market cap a few years back).