Writing for SlashGear, Don Reisinger shows he’s still the master of conventional wisdom.
“What does iPhone 6 need to restore Apple’s innovation crown?” (tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody).
Apple was once the king of innovation.
Once upon a time. Long, long ago. It was a time of zeppelins and dragons and all of America was enjoying the hit film Doctor Detroit. Ask your parents about it.
Over the last few years, however, Apple has arguably lost its innovation crown.
True story: The six year period in between the introduction of the iPod and the introduction of the iPhone was actually a week and a half. It just seemed longer because Coldplay was so popular then.
Save for the Mac Pro, which is possibly the most innovative desktop on the market right now, I can’t think of a single product Apple has offered up in the last couple of years that is noticeably better than anything its competitors have offered.
So, other than the product you can think of, you can’t think of any products.
Not surprisingly, Reisinger does not list the highly innovative products literally pouring out of other companies that have stolen Apple’s innovation crown. Which is what really gets to the absurdity of this. You can name other products—the Samsung Galaxy Gear, Google Glass, the Amazon Fire Phone—but none of them has either reshaped a market or been as remotely successful as the devices Apple has shipped. Despite the Macalope’s railing about it, the innovation double standard is still in play after all these years. What does he have to do, take out ad space somewhere?
Meanwhile, those competitors have started to push the envelope with better display technology, 3D, and other features that, so far, Apple has been loath to bundle into its products.
3D. That’s what passes for innovation these days. Why not list projector phones while you’re at it?
That’s why the iPhone 6 will play such a crucial role for Apple and its ability to one day take back the crown as the world leader in innovation.
No. It won’t. And the Macalope predicts pundits like Reisinger will say as much come fall. Why? Because it’s just a phone. You’re not even applying your own double standard correctly. No, in order to “retake” this imaginary crown you’ve faux taken away from Apple, it will need to ship another market-defining device. It’s not going to do that with a larger-screen iPhone.
Apple needs to find a way to deliver to the market something it hasn’t seen and prove to us all that it really wants to deliver a Mac Pro of the mobile space.
That is the entirety of Reisinger’s advice to Apple. This is why this advice is free. And why the Macalope drinks.
Since Tim Cook took over, profitability and margins have become commonplace in executive discussions …
Right, no one ever talked about margins on quarterly conference calls when Steve Jobs was alive.
Apple needs to rethink who it is and what it wants to be in mobile.
The Macalope needs to rethink all the poor life choices that led to reading this article.
The pressure is on, Apple.
Apple better deliver or … or … it’ll keep being only as profitable as it’s been all these years that it’s supposedly not been delivering!
Can you make the iPhone 6 deliver?
Let’s just go ahead and say “no” and get it out of the way. Because nothing the company’s going to do is ever going to please you.