If you watched the Apple Keynote yesterday you witnessed why Apple’s best days are behind them. Apple executives still see themselves as celebrities and rather than lead with innovative products, they still believe that consumers are willing to pay premium prices for products with an Apple logo.
My first indication that Apple is in serious trouble came from comments in social media on Apple’s Keynote yesterday. I have never seen so many people blast Apple for the lack of innovation and charging so much for their products. As one person said “$5000 for an iMac Pro? I can get a Windows machine that surpasses those specs at a fraction of the cost”.
It’s now becoming clear that Tim Cook was the wrong choice to lead Apple. He has made several strategic mistakes, including stripping people from their desktop team and overspending on the acquisition of Beats headphones which is a mediocre product at best. Mr Cook is a great operations leader, but it’s apparent he is not in anyway the visionary that Mr Jobs was.
Apple has another problem. Many of the existing features in the iPhone are already too complicated for many users to figure out. This comes at at time when rumors are flying that the new iPhone could cost as much as $1000. There is a good chance that iPhone users could say “my current iPhone is good enough” rather than laying out big bucks for the latest model.
The introduction of a home Siri device is seen by most as a “me too” device while current iPad owners are saying that their current iPad’s work just fine and don’t see the need to upgrade.
All this is coming at a time when Microsoft is introducing new and innovative products that leave Apple trying to play catch up. The Surface studio is getting rave reviews from users and I recently toured an ad agency that switched their art department from Mac’s to Surface Studio’s much to the accolades of users.
I was hoping that Apple that would overhaul OS X their desktop system. It’s long overdue as Mail and Safari are both dated and full of bugs. However, they just added some features that are slightly useful, but overall generated a lot of yawns.
It’s not easy to replace a genius like Steve Jobs but Apple has become a media company where innovation is out the window and the only thing that’s important is the stock price. [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””] The pirates, that Steve Jobs said were essential for Apple, have been replaced by a corporate bureaucracy that is killing rogue innovation.[/inlinetweet]
