Jony Ive leaves Apple

If we keep saying this it must be true.

Except that what is there left to innovate? If it wasn't for battery degradation there wouldn't be a need to buy new phones (any of them) for 3-4 years. We have been in a technology boom since the 80's, it had to stop sometime. Am I the only one who hasn't noticed a huge shift to services from these tech companies? Shirley not. We have gaming PCs that can last 5, 6, 7 years. We have TV manufactures trying to push 4k and 8k when the content just isn't there nor is the hardware adopted in mass to support it.

Apple is better positioned as a tech company than Samsung or any other competitor because of iTunes and all that comes with it. A good chunk of their user base has purchased movies, music, etc or just do not want to change. There isn't anything "innovative" over at Android to make it enticing to repurchase content. Unless you like bloated software with no update support like most on here... but apple.

Most of the things you are describing are not innovation, they are incremental improvements or market penetration. There is a ton of work that can be done on phones. And to be fair most of it isn't a question of if it can be done, it is if it can be done easy enough and user-friendly enough and cheap enough. Apple has a ton of power in that field. They are one of only 2 companies that can snap their fingers and make something universal in the phone world and bring mass production to high enough levels to bring prices down. Look at things like digital payments and fingerprint reader, those were on android phones long before Apple and they were on computers long before that, the innovation was already done, but only Apple could make the decision to use it and therefore make it universal, and that is when people think the innovation happened because that's when the average soccer mom can actually take advantage of the technology and therefore justify investing in it, usually in the form of a new phone. There is plenty more to do in this area, phones can completely replace laptops and many desktops, they can keep taking better pictures, especailly in low light or other non ideal scenarios, more phones can start to support a stylus, assistants can get way way better, the phone can better interface with smart homes, battery life, charging rate, lots of things need improvement.
 
So, who's going to say "alyouminium" in those Apple product videos now?
 
About the only thing I think Apple needs to do from physical design POV is minimize that notch, make the screen square (or app designers need to account for round edges) and maybe include a thumb reader in the screen.

But nothing is going to get people to upgrade every year or 2. That was possible when phoen plans had a phone subsidy built into it and you paid whether you upgraded or not. Now that we know the cost, we use them till we have to upgrade. I upgraded last year, but honestly, there wasn't much wrong with my 6s+ and it works fine. OTOH, the 6 that I have is at times a bit slow, but I mostly only notice it if I play a game.

My gut says iPhones are good enough for at least 4 years, maybe more. I have a friend who uses an android device and I think she waited 5 or 6 years. I think that was too long, but she got a serious performance boost :D I look at it like PCs. I use to need to upgrade every 3 years. Now I can go at least 5 or 6 years and honestly my old i7 860 was fine, but the MB was kinda fucked and I just got a 6700 in 2015. I can see myself using this for a long time. I'll probably upgrade the GPU one of these days, but outside of gaming, this machine is fine, despite being almost 4 years old.
 
And be a slave to that company. It is sort of terrible for 100% of your income to come from one customer. You are still their employee then in all practical terms.

Hehe instantly reminded me of this:

48580069.jpg
 
It's hard to gauge as some have put it, how much influence he has/had in current products, but the guy has influenced the shape of the company for decades, and is a household name among a lot of designers and architects. Fiercely intelligent man for sure. Good article that takes a shallow dive into his demeanor and mindset, for anyone interested (this is more watch focused): https://www.hodinkee.com/magazine/jony-ive-apple
 
Back
Top