How Apple Is Organized for Innovation (opens in new tab)

They released the HomePod and AirPods as well as a range of new services e.g. Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Fitness.

And we are expecting two major changes to their product offerings over the coming year or so i.e. ARM Macs and Apple Glass.

This takes innovation, too. Just because a product isn't a wholly new, virgin thing doesn't mean it isn't innovative.

The A-series chips aren't products themselves, for example, but they're certainly innovations. Apple is now the best mobile processor house in the world, and it isn't particularly close - who saw that coming?

Apparently Apple can't even refine their own innovations without breaking their own kit and bilking their customers.

To wit, iOS 14 and watchOS 7 (most recent versions) break Activity and Health GPS data and Apple recommends using iCloud backup to resolve the issue. [0]

The problem is that not only is iCloud insecure (e.g. Messages) compared to local backup, it also costs money for over 5GB storage. [1] In other words, Apple has broken GPS with iOS 14 and watchOS 7 and their recommendation is to use an insecure service that will cost users more money.

Such affected customers should be represented in a class action lawsuit. (I'd love for this link to get traction, but I know it's a longshot. [2])

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24904349

AirPods (2016) are pretty popular.

(edit: I listed some of Apple's recent new services here, but removed since the AirPods make the point by themselves. Apologies to user optimiz3 for leaving your comment dangling.)

This was always apples thing.

I mean even if we go back to the apple watch. Was it a new innovation? No, not at all. Other companies had produced similar products years before, just non did put enough mony into it to refine it to the degree Apple did.

Same goes for their ARM chips. They didn't invent them nor did they invent the idea of fast ARM chips. But they took and refined them over many product generations to now yield excellent results.

Same for ARM laptops.

Same for a lot of their software innovations.

Same for there camera.

Through it should be noted that for them to be able to refine thinks to that degree often some technological innovations are mixed in in-between.

But that's fine, constant refinement is often more use-full then complete new innovations without refinement.

Sadly sometimes the focus on what gets refined in which ways is pretty questionable.

In turn refinements you can't sell as innovation get neglected.

Also the developer is forced to work with Apple using apple tools so that is often neglected, too. Their is little insensitive for Apple to spend more money on things like that when this will not bring more Users or Developers to Apple.

Which is short sighted IMHO given how much money Apple has.

That said though I think their services offerings so far are underwhelming.

I do know that MMS is garbage, and that the mobile networks used to price gouge people for using MMS, and on top of that it doesn’t work many times, or at least it didn’t use to.

Must be nice to reimplement an old idea and qualify as innovation. :)

What's the issue with SMS in the US? At least in Australia, SMS is no hindrance to messaging between Android and iOS apart from the colour of the bubbles.

Why don't Americans use Telegram?

Folding phones today are a mess e.g. creases, durability concerns, inconvenient form-factors.