Apple should take a little more risk
Earlier this week, Apple was able to provide excellent quarterly figures again. The company owes this to a careful, perhaps even conservative course. With all that money in the bank, couldn’t Apple take a little more risk?
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Why is Apple taking so little risk?
When Apple omitted the headphone jack on the iPhone 7, CEO Phil Schiller said that it took ‘courage’, or courage. In 2010, Steve Jobs used similar words when it became known that iPhones would no longer support the then popular Flash plugin. Sometimes it is indeed wise to say goodbye to the old and thus make way for a new time.
You can dispute whether the loss of the headphone jack falls under this. Apple certainly needed courage to give Intel the guard and switch to its own M1 chip for the Mac. No one had asked for this and professionals were initially quite skeptical about the plans. So far, however, this step has turned out to be a resounding success.
Apple should take such a risk more often. While the financial prosperity of the last decade is due to solid, conservative business practices, Apple’s products have become a bit dull as a result. Where has the Wow factor gone?
Take the iPhone 12 Pro Max. A very solid smartphone, but also one that is very similar to the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which was very similar to the iPhone XS Max. The steps Apple is taking seem to be getting smaller rather than bigger.
Is it because the designers can’t do better or because the company is afraid of deviating too far from its current, very successful course? Why does the iPhone still have such a big notch? And why does the iPhone not have a periscopic zoom lens, like the Huawei P30 Pro from 2019?
Apple isn’t exciting anymore
Apple has become a large and unwieldy company that moves slowly with the market. Whether folding phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 will really become the future remains to be seen, but it is striking that Apple is not making any attempt to take the next big step for smartphones for the time being. There are rumors that there are prototypes of a foldable iPhone, but it does not seem to be on the market in the coming years.
You can also see that cautious attitude with the iPad Pro. The fast hardware in Apple’s top tablet is no longer in proportion to the limited possibilities of the software.
The company continues to insist that the MacBook and the iPad are two different machines. However, that position seems to stem mainly from the fear of losing sales. It’s not hard to imagine an iPad that can act as a tablet, laptop, and mini-desktop. Such a device would turn the market upside down.
No company, not even Apple, is too big to fail. It would be unwise to launch daring test balloons on the assembly line. But a little more risk would be to Apple. Then, in addition to being extremely reliable, the brand may also become a bit exciting again.
