Farhad Manjoo, New York Times:
Since becoming the first trillion-dollar corporation last summer, Apple has battled a souring assessment on Wall Street. The iPhone is the most profitable product in the history of business, but more than a decade after its debut, pretty much everyone on the planet who can afford one already has one, and many customers see little reason to upgrade.
So now, instead of selling better stuff to more people, Apple’s new plan is to sell more stuff to the same people.
And:
As I watched Apple’s event, I felt the future shrink a little. In its gilded middle age, Apple is turning into something like a digital athleisure brand, stamping out countless upscale accessories for customers who love its one big thing, a company that has lost sight of the universe and is content merely to put a ding in your pocketbook.
Yeesh. Farhad really doesn’t like Apple. While the picture he paints might ring true to many, it purposely misses the remarkable in service to the complaints.
Apple’s health efforts alone deserve prominent recognition. The Apple Watch is an incredible piece of hardware and it has saved many lives by putting a low-end ECG on every buyer’s wrist. That is no small thing.
Add in all the health-related research that Apple’s health initiatives made possible. This is certainly a ding in the universe, a ding that is destined to grow significantly.
How about the remarkable AirPods, with that H1 chip and Hey Siri, small enough to fit in your ear. Again, tip of the iceberg of what’s coming.
And think about all the doors Apple has opened, all the tech folks Apple has birthed and influenced. iPhone begat Android, have no doubt.
Yes, it’s true that the MacBook Keyboard is a stumble. There are other examples where Apple has lost its way. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that shareholders demand growth at all times. That Tim and company have kept their commitment to privacy and continue to develop some remarkable technology while continuing to serve the ravenous growth demands of Wall Street is no small thing.
“The Apple Watch is an incredible piece of hardware”
which, I believe, is now earning more money for Apple each year than the iPod did.
“instead of selling better stuff to more people”
Better? Cheaper is not better.
Another pointless article about Apple. Apple is criticized? – more clicks.
Dave — IMO it’s not worth highlighting Farhad Manjoo’s articles. He was not a tech columnist until the NYT kicked out Pogue. Even Nick Bilton’s Apple coverage is better than Manjoo’s.
Manjoo was a tech columnist at Slate before he slithered into the NYT.
Manjoo is a pro-troll, nothing more. too much nonsense to address.
Normals aren’t expected to upgrade every year. But when you do, you want a fast cool device with features. Apple delivers this. Whenever you hop back on the upgrade train, you’ll get a best in class device.
Manjoo is a lazy, grade B mind. Of course Apple wants to sell more to the same people who are already customers – any business wants both repeat and new sales to their existing customers. After all, they’ve already bought from you and so selling to them is easier and in Apple’s case, there are also one billion of us.
But his lack of insight is in the lazy construction of a false dichotomy, that it’s EITHER sell more to the existing base OR sell new, better things to new customers. Anyone who’s not trapped in shallow thinking would realize that a company can do all of those things and ideally wants to do them all. I’m sure Apple wants to sell new, better things to new customers. AND they want to sell new better things to existing customers. AND they want to sell accessory products and services to existing customers. They want to do ALL of that and it’s not a zero-sum choice except to the degree that they can’t find the resources for an effort.
What Manjoo and most critics seem to miss is that revolutionary products are a once in 20 year or so occurrence. Apple’s had several (the II, the Mac, the iPhone)… but you have to fill in the years when the growth from the revolution levels off. It’s not possible to just conjure a new, revolutionary, world-changing product and even if you do, sometimes the world isn’t ready – see Newton for example.
Farhad Manjoo turned my mother into a newt. I also don’t read his click bait.
There are great columnists, like Joanna Stern, who are constructively critical of Apple and other tech companies. I always read their work.
Master Farhad has never liked Apple. His meticulously crafted, context-redacted arguments have been a rich source of comedy for years. Both The Macalope and the greatly-missed Angry Mac Bastards have made short work of his spew.
Disappointing to see him repeatedly fail upwards so spectacularly, first at Slate, then at the NYT.
I used to see his articles at Slate, and perhaps it was just my mental filter of reading Slate at the time or my bad memory, but they often didn’t seem like actual core technology articles to me. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Core technologies? I can’t address that. I doubt he ever did.
His coverage was almost always histrionic and reductive, serving a narrative that got attention and perpetuated popular myths.
It wasn’t you. It was him. Yet another glittering testament to decades of substandard tech coverage.
Hope she got better.
(Your mother, not Stern. Stern is very good.)
This is why I only read the Macalope’s discussion of Manjoo’s columns. I”m not really understanding what Manjoo expects Apple to do?
All of Apple’s Next Big Things (except, perhaps the Apple II) have come after someone else has tried them.
The Mac? After the Lisa, and Xerox’s inexplicable failure to move GUI out to the world.
The iPod? “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.” –Cmdr Taco, Slashdot.
OS X? Intel Macs? Built upon the history of NeXT. Remember, when Steve announce the Intel Macs, he revealed that they had always had a version running on intel.
The iPhone? A huge advance, but despite the great poster ‘Before/After the iPhone’, it is as much the bastard grandchild of the Newton and the Palm Pilot as anything else.
The iPad? IIRC that was what the bastard grandchild of the Newton and Palm Pilot was first proposed as, and Steve said make it smaller and a phone. The iPad succeeded much more because it was seen as a ‘big iPhone’ rather than a ‘tablet Mac’.
The old adage is that Apple has always skated to where the puck is going to be, but to do that, you also have to have a keen insight as to where the puck is right now.
All of the technologies in Apple’s “Next Great Things” have existed BEFORE they were built by Apple; but it was Apple that perfected them.
I’m not really seeing where the ‘Next Big Thing’ puck is right now…
All hail the horny one!
Apple lost its mojo long ago. I don’t expect Apple to regain it under Tim Cook. Period.
I really miss Angry Mac Bastards. See Farhad Manjoo, Think Forehead Manjuice Thank You AMB.