Christopher Breen in a piece for MacWorld suggests that Apple is not innovating at the moment.
Breen made a salient point in that Apple has only disrupt / innovate three times in the last twelve years:
- iPod – This completely changes the way we acquire and listen to music.
- iPhone – This completely changes the way we think of a computer in the pocket.
- iPad – This completely changes the way we think of tablet computing.
Christopher Breen:
It’s not that those last two—or other companies like them—lack smarts and drive. It’s that real innovation is extremely difficult. Imagine winning the World Series as many times in as many years, and you get the idea.
[..]
And so Apple has chosen to accept the dumbed-down definition. When it releases a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or operating system, we hear a nearly constant barrage from the company of “innovation this” and “innovative that.” And it’s simply not true. The latest crop of Apple products may be wonderful, but they’re iterative improvements (albeit sometimes significant ones) on what came before. We may love those improvements, they may make our work easier, but they don’t completely change the way we do anything.
My take is show me a tech company that has innovate once in 12 years before we call Apple out on this.
