Innovation at Apple is 'Sputtering', Says Analyst

[jkflipflop98]

[citation][nom]jaquith[/nom]IDK, maybe because 'widgets' were so good and well adopted since they failed over-and-over: Windows 98 widgets failed, Windows ME widgets failed, Windows XP widgets failed, Windows Vista widgets failed, Windows 7 widgets failed, and now Windows 8 widgets on steroids - not to mention MacOS widgets failed. Also, Convertible & Tablet PC's for years also failed.I'll give Microsoft credit for having huge balls with f/k/a Metro interface with Windows 8. I've used Windows 8 off and on since it's early Preview editions, and at least on a 'PC' it's not ideal and quite honestly gets a little annoying after a while.I 'get' OMG 'NEW' ... sheep I must buy it mentality, goodness knows I bought a few $39 upgrades just in case and for testing. Now where Window 8 f/k/a Metro interface makes since to some degree is with Phones and for now Convertibles -- not RT, RT sucks. Convertible's like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 are indeed a perfect match (i7 Ivy Bridge, 128GB SSD, Touchscreen & Folds). So unless you have a 'Touchscreen' IMO you're not going to be happy after a a month or two of trying to swipe your PC's screen ... or ... spending $500+ on a decent Touchscreen monitor.[/citation]

I can tell from your post that you're lying out your ass and indeed have never even seen Win8 for yourself. You don't swipe anything.

 

[jkflipflop98]

This isn't hard to figure out, guys. What happened to Apple when they fired Steve Jobs? Apple went nearly bankrupt. What happened when they brought Steve back? They suddenly had iPods and Intel-powered PCs followed by the iPhone and iPad.

Love him or hate him, Mr. Jobs was the visionary creative force that drove Apple to megaheights. He's gone now, and people like him don't come along very often. Tim Cook is certainly no Steve Jobs.

 

[acadia11]

[citation][nom]kartu[/nom]We used to have tablets without touch screen, you know.Hint: Reality Distortion Field.[/citation]

Yes but apple wasn't the first to bring it to either phones or tablets. That was the point, the idea that apple is innovative is a joke, they take existing ideas and are very good at refining , polishing, and executing and control complete product ecosystem. Innovative no they aren't.

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]jkflipflop98[/nom]This isn't hard to figure out, guys. What happened to Apple when they fired Steve Jobs? Apple went nearly bankrupt. What happened when they brought Steve back? They suddenly had iPods and Intel-powered PCs followed by the iPhone and iPad. Love him or hate him, Mr. Jobs was the visionary creative force that drove Apple to megaheights. He's gone now, and people like him don't come along very often. Tim Cook is certainly no Steve Jobs.[/citation]
On the flip side, Balmer is no Gates, but MS is a company that was set up to work as a company where no single person can make or break it. Apple on the other hand was set up to rely on Jobs and the future looks bleak. Not impossible, but definately not looking good.

All of my friends are mac users (art students... sigh) and they are pissed! They all bought retna iPads... to have them replaced by something way better just a 2 months later (they are students, they cannot purchase on day 1). They all had high hopes for the iPhone 5, and it fell short. They will still move up to the iP5, but are not in any particular rush to do so. But one of the biggest things they are pissed about are the iMacs. They were hoping to see a new iMac with bigger CPUs, and see the ugly chin bezel disappear. Instead it has almost identical specs as the last version for CPU and GPU, and it got thinner in depth, but still has a ton of wasted space on the front. Plus they are unhappy that they will have to get an external CD drive which will be ugly and take up desk space. They added a ton of ram... which people would have purchased aftermarket anyways, and the fusion drive seems cool... but it comes at too high a cost (just like Intel's SSD caching; there are very few workloads where it is useful).

 

[leandrodafontoura]

Apple has clrearly said, on a video its on youtube right now. "We will not bring touch to Mac screens cause its stupid" And it is, Apple is laughing at PC for bringin touch to computer screens and advertizeing as the future. Touch is for post-pc devices and trackpads only.

 

[acadia11]

[citation][nom]CaedenV[/nom]On the flip side, Balmer is no Gates, but MS is a company that was set up to work as a company where no single person can make or break it. Apple on the other hand was set up to rely on Jobs and the future looks bleak. Not impossible, but definately not looking good.All of my friends are mac users (art students... sigh) and they are pissed! They all bought retna iPads... to have them replaced by something way better just a 2 months later (they are students, they cannot purchase on day 1). They all had high hopes for the iPhone 5, and it fell short. They will still move up to the iP5, but are not in any particular rush to do so. But one of the biggest things they are pissed about are the iMacs. They were hoping to see a new iMac with bigger CPUs, and see the ugly chin bezel disappear. Instead it has almost identical specs as the last version for CPU and GPU, and it got thinner in depth, but still has a ton of wasted space on the front. Plus they are unhappy that they will have to get an external CD drive which will be ugly and take up desk space. They added a ton of ram... which people would have purchased aftermarket anyways, and the fusion drive seems cool... but it comes at too high a cost (just like Intel's SSD caching; there are very few workloads where it is useful).[/citation]


The iPhone 5 looks and feels so much cheaper than the 4. The phone size is right but the materials feel yuck , it's too light and the anodized aluminum back is a step backward my gf who is payout as tech savvy as a neandrathal thought the 4 was the 5 when they were side by side in the store, for her it's just looks and feel and the 5 missed the mark there. 4/4s is the best body, feel, and quality they've made to date. I have 2 upgrades and was excited on the 5 until I actualy held it, everytime I get excited I go to the store and remind I'm disappointed in the feel and hold off in purchasing. Maybe 5s they'll bring that sexy back.

 

[wemakeourfuture]

[citation][nom]sublime2k[/nom]So Tom's Hardware brings more articles for people to hate? Maybe they should actually read the comments instead of relying on raw numbers.[/citation]

You do realize page views is a very important metric from advertising, search engine indexing ranking, and for an author. So when you morons keep trashing Apple articles with your million negative comments and page views you support the Apple articles.

It's equivalent to picking up a free newspaper that you dislike and write negative responses too. You're keeping its circulation numbers higher. This helps them in terms of securing advertisements and justifies the authors works. They don't care about how many negative comments there are as long as the circulation numbers are high and they can generate good advertisement revenues from it.

Would you as a business prefer 2 page views and 2 good comments, or 1000 page views, 90 negative comments and 2 positive ones? Well the latter is happening and it generates more net benefit to the company.

 

[CrArC]

[citation][nom]echondo[/nom]"Why is that Apple, the company that brought touch to phones and tablets, stopped just there and did not bring touch to notebooks and iMacs?"Really? Apple brought touch screens to phones and tablets first?This Chowdry guy is an idiot.[/citation] Quite. They did help boost popularity of capacitive touchscreens though, when most screens at the time used crappy resistive touch panels. Definitely don't miss those things.

As for the question "why not on laptops/iMacs"... well, because it's stupid. The mouse/keyboard arrangement works great, why do I want to be flapping my arms between those and the screen, which will wind up smudged to crap and need cleaning all the time?

I agree with your assessment on Chowdry.

 

[Guest]

Apple hasn't produced any significant technological innovation in decades. What we're seeing now is a long overdue collapse that had been staved off by Steve Jobs' cult of personality.

 

[cknobman]

Please get rid of Zak his iShit news pieces take up room on the home page where real news pieces should go.

 

[hate machine]

Used to be a hater against touch screens on desktops (Laptop touch screens were always nice in my view)

After using a Windows 8 AIO with a 27 inch touch monitor I'm looking for two 24 inch touch screens with good res and response time to replace my dual 24 inch 1080p ASUS monitors.

 

[katfishgr]

Apple and innovation ... two words that do not belong in the same sentence. Patent troll maybe, but not innovation.

 

[jecastej]

[citation][nom]katfishgr[/nom]Apple and innovation ... two words that do not belong in the same sentence. Patent troll maybe, but not innovation.[/citation]

If what you say is true then either way no company in the world and no person in history could say they produced innovation because there is always something, an environment, a circumstance, an idea or a person that was there before.

Innovation is not an absolute term.

Apple in the recent years contributed with 3 influential devices, and even if they don't come up with another influential device their general contribution to the industry and to the popular use could be defined as creative or innovative.

After all every artist including the great masters in history learned their initial techniques from their masters or from other artists but in the end their own expression was also particular and strong enough to distinguish their work.

 

[Guest]

"I guarantee that everyone here bashing touchscreens will be using them and loving them on their PCs within the next two years."

I guarantee you that i will not be buying a touch screen for my desktop....EVER. Unless every monitor is touch and there is no option other then to buy a touch one. If i have the option i would always choose a non touch monitor.

Touch makes perfect sense for phones, and tablets. It would also be nice on a laptop, because trackpads are way too small and annoying to use. But desktops.....no....touch is stupid on a desktop; ill take a mouse any day. Id rather move my hand 1 or 2 inches with a mouse, then move my entire arm 20-30 inches to touch something. Youd never be anywhere near as fast or productive with touch on a large screen vs a mouse.

 

[Vladislaus]

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]They didn't bring touch to Macs because touch only makes sense on handheld devices and kiosks. It's not a new idea, it's not new technology and it's not innovative. It's just a gimmick, there will be a wave of touch enabled PCs and then they'll quietly go away, just like previous gimmicks like voice recognition and 3D.As for Apple, they've made a killiing in the last 10 years with iPod, iPhone and iPad. Now they're just making obscene profits and probably working on something new that may be 2 or 5 years out. You can't expect a company to come out with an insanely profitable game-changer every few years. They dominated the MP3 player market with iPod, they dominated the smartphone market with iPhone and they dominated the tablet market with iPad. When was the last time Microsoft pulled off something like that? Windows 95 and Office were their last game-changers that they just built on over the years. Zune was a failure, Kin was a failure, Windows Phone was and is a failure and Xbox wasn't dominant in the console market at any point (it was a multi-billion hole for Microsoft and it was being outsold by Wii 2:1). So yeah, Microsoft is really changing the world with their square widgets, sorry, "Live tiles" and their kickstand equipped tablet. Amazing innovation.[/citation]
Microsoft Mobile was a failure? LOL! There was a time that Windows Mobile commanded a market share of almost 50%, something the iPhone was never able to achieve.

 

[mas]

This article misses the point just as Apple has really missed the boat.

The iPad mini should have been a converged tablet/iphone (like the Note2) - and if they really wanted to define the category, they would implement secure remote terminal access (eg ssh) tightly integrated at the OS level rather than as an add-on notoriously unstable 3rd party app - allowing secure remote access and 'real' app access on personal or business computers with the ability to push pull data down as needed, thus allowing us to leave the laptop at home and eliminating the security exposure of lugging around a laptop.

The result: a TRULY converged device that would allow phone, browsing & access to real apps and data as needed in a single secure package. The irony: it requires no new technology nor engineering - they simply implement that which has been around for more than a decade. All it takes is a a few moments to think of how the various duplicitous devices now offered are used. And that being the case, I anticipate such an advancement to take another 10-20 years...

 

[cpatel1987]

Honestly, is the ipad really that "innovative"? I feel their "innovation" stopped when the ipod touch came out. That to me was an amazing product. And if you really think about it, everything else after that was based on the ipod touch. ipad: Nothing more than a big ipod touch, and with that came new software. iphone, an ipod touch with cellular capability. Sure every iteration brought something "new" to the device, but it wasn't necessarily new to the market. By no means was much of it "innovative", Apple just has the gift of making things "popular".

 

[cpatel1987]

And refined.

 

[robochump]

[citation][nom]fat_panda[/nom]Apple hasn't done anything significantly amazing since the introduction of iPod touch...at least that's how I feel.[/citation]

Lol...ok buddy. Apple changed the smart phone market and significantly re-created the tablet market. How quickly the iHaters forget. Cant say Apple can sustain great new products forever, no company can.

 

[ronindaosohei]

Apple's lack of innovation is disappointing, though I think obvious given Jobs is no longer there.

 

[zodiacfml]

Though I agree that innovation is lacking in Apple, but it has been happening since the iPod. I also disagree with no touch on desktop devices, touch is made for portable devices to remove the need of buttons.

 

[beayn]

[citation][nom]wemakeourfuture[/nom]By the sheer number of comments and page views it makes sense. You guys complain about Apple articles then flood them with a million negative comments and page views, then wonder why there's so many Apple articles...[/citation]Where can you see views for an individual article? If apple articles indeed get the most views, it appears to be mostly people coming to bash them. Everyone likes to get pissed off I guess.