News
Former Apple manager: Apple has ‘passed peak’
By Phil Dzikiy
News Editor, iLoungeGoogle+
Published: Wednesday, November 7, 2012
News Categories: Apple
Former Apple engineering manager Dan Crow believes the company’s best days are behind it, he opines in a column for The Guardian. As Crow writes, “…I think Apple has peaked and the story of the next few years will be one of slow but real decline.” Crow cites “a number of signs” showing that Apple is on a downhill slide, including the recent missteps with iOS 6 Maps and the executive reshuffle that jettisoned Scott Forstall and John Browett — with Browett’s decisions during his brief retail reign being an example of “Apple putting its corporate needs ahead of its customers.” He also refers to the fourth-generation iPad as an “insipid update.”
Crow says that after the death of Steve Jobs, Apple has had issues with balancing hype and product. He concludes that Apple has yet to find its way in the post-Jobs era and the company has “serious structural faults.”
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1
You forgot to mention that Mr Crow has worked at Google for the last 5 years, more precisely on Android. Of course he’d say this.
Posted by Jose M on November 7, 2012 at 1:52 PM (PST)
2
@1: Just because he has an obvious bias doesn’t make it not true.
Lacking any obvious emerging market to mine for ideas to polish (Apple’s main strength), it is going to take one heck of a hat trick to repeat a feat on the scale of re-inventing the desktop computer, laptop computer, portable media player, cell phone, and barely moving tablet markets.
Really, short of the long rumored Apple TV (of the hang it on your wall kind), there isn’t any logical source of technology out there for them to mine for future products. Even in the best case scenario, they’re in a long holding pattern of iterating on known themes for the foreseeable future.
Posted by Code Monkey in Midstate New York on November 7, 2012 at 6:10 PM (PST)
3
@3: Drink the kool-aid much? I’ve been using and buying Apple products for over 20 years now, I have never seen them innovate one thing in all that time, not one. They have always taken pre-existing market ideas (you do realize touch screen tablets had been around for close to a decade when Apple made the iPad, right?) and putting a polish on them that makes people take notice. If someone else hasn’t already thought of it, Apple can’t make it because Apple can’t invent squat.
Posted by Code Monkey in Midstate New York on November 8, 2012 at 7:07 AM (PST)
4
@#2
The very fact that you can’t think of a future product that will keep Apple on top is exactly the reason it will happen. Apple makes products that people don’t even know they want.
Remember when there were rumors of an Apple phone? Everyone thought it wold be a click-wheel iPod device that could make calls. Even the idea of a touch screen iPod was greeted with concepts of a touch-screen click wheel! People were completely surprised and blown away when the iPhone came out and it changed the industry.
No one even thought of making a large touch screen tablet before the iPad. Android touch screen phones were on the market and they didn’t even think of copying their own phone designs and making a tablet.
Apple will continue to innovate, even if they don’t make a game changing product like iPhone or iPad. Apple will make products that are the best of their kind and that alone will be more than enough to keep them on top.
Posted by davjaxn on November 8, 2012 at 7:10 AM (PST)
5
How the heck does iLounge’s database keep inserting comments of mine back in time? Is there a time machine there at the offices I don’t know about?
Posted by Code Monkey in Midstate New York on November 8, 2012 at 7:16 AM (PST)