Apple Going Downhill Again Without Jobs
Today marks 10 years since Apple Cofounder Steve Jobs passed away afterwards a prolonged boxing with cancer, and the visitor that started in his parents' garage is now valued at over $2 trillion. Apple Inc. is the largest visitor on the planet with massive revenues and earnings to boot. In one of his last public interviews at D8 in 2010, the Apple tree CEO said that the massive financial success of the company (which had merely surpassed Microsoft'south market capitalization at the time of the conversation) "doesn't matter very much. It'due south not what's of import. Information technology's not what makes y'all come up to work in the forenoon. It's non why any of our customers buy our products."
Ten years later on he passed away, the visitor has spent hundreds of billions of dollars ownership back their own stock, and billions more chasing cool with the Beats acquisition and the advent of Apple TV+. While many customers may not detect any difference, Apple has lost the keen attention to detail that Steve Jobs held in such regard in his fourth dimension at the company he founded. The company is not the same, and has ignored many of their core values in my opinion.
This commodity is not meant to disparage the hard work of Tim Melt and his team at Apple, simply will instead highlight several moments over the past decade when the company deviated from the path Steve Jobs laid for them. Apple tree has moved from being an underdog driving innovation and hazard-taking in the late 90s and 2000s to a company focused on iteration and maintaining market share today.
Throwing away the simple genius of iPod
Apple has had many near-death experiences in its 45 years of existence, and information technology is safety to say that the iPod saved the visitor back when it launched 20 years ago this month. Similar many of the products Apple has released over fourth dimension, the visitor didn't invent MP3 players. There were plenty of competitors already on the marketplace when Apple began shipping the device in 2001. What Apple got correct with iPod highlights a lot of what they did correct nether the leadership of Steve Jobs as the product was piece of cake to apply and featured an elegant style to navigate through thousands of songs and organize them how you liked. And it fit in your pocket!
When iPhone launched, Jobs fifty-fifty described the product every bit one part iPod. iPhone had an iPod app congenital in, and it brought over a lot of the functionality of the preceding boom hit product. While the iOS developers certainly tinkered with the iPod app over time, it allow users selection how they wanted to navigate their music and video collections with moveable buttons on the lesser of the screen. This all changed when their Apple Music subscription service launched, and the company decided to ignore the brilliant simplicity of the iPod.
Buying cool with the Beats conquering
On May 28, 2014, Apple tree Inc. acquired Beats by Dre for $three billion. This is still i of the largest acquisitions ever made by the company, and it ultimately lead to the release of Apple tree Music. Apple Music was truly the first step the company made into streaming music with a subscription model, but the conquering was truly a departure from Apple's practice-it-yourself strategy of product, software, and service pattern.
When Apple created iTunes, they didn't have to acquire a company to execute on their vision. With Apple Music, it really felt like the company was attempting to buy absurd for the first time. iTunes and iPod never actually seemed to need that actress juice with their amazing and iconic market place campaigns, and seven years afterwards the acquisition, it is hard to empathise why the company made the Beats bargain.
At the time of the Beats by Dre bargain, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "Music is such an important part of all of our lives and holds a special place within our hearts at Apple tree. That'due south why we have kept investing in music and are bringing together these extraordinary teams and so we can continue to create the most innovative music products and services in the earth."
It makes sense for Apple Music to be, but the introduction of the service on iOS truly pb to a worse user experience for customers who were used to the piece of cake navigation of the iPod app. Four out of five of the buttons on the bottom of the new Music app push Apple Music while users have to click on Library to navigate their endemic iTunes music content. This was a huge step dorsum from what made iPod the dominant music player, in my stance. I would have preferred a split up app for Apple Music or at to the lowest degree the option to alter the lesser row of buttons similar in previous versions of iOS.
The iPod app wasn't broken when the original iPhone shipped back in 2007, and today'southward Music app design is a fine example of Apple pushing their services over friendly and easy-to-use user interface design to the detriment of iOS as a platform.
The fall of iOS
When Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone at MacWorld in 2007, the telephone'due south operating system was truly revolutionary. Certain, the visitor didn't invent multitouch technology, but iPhone was a stunning package of emphasis that created a whole new era for smartphones.
When the iPhone launched, Apple tree truly had a five year lead in software development which it has since squandered. The most recent release of iOS 15 highlights merely how iterative the operating system'due south updates have go, but it goes beyond that. Apple no longer introduces new features that are truly unlike from the residuum of the marketplace. Most of the WWDC 2021 iOS 15 announcements were features that have existed on Android for years. Apple tree spent way too much time talking about widgets and continues to brand design changes that move the iOS experience farther and further abroad from the original user experience.
Things really began to falter with the introduction of iOS half dozen and the release of Apple Maps. Apple and Google had previously worked together on some tremendous iOS apps for YouTube and Google Maps, with Apple helping on the forepart-end blueprint. It seems probable that Steve Jobs would accept besides pushed for an Apple Maps application, as Google's Android was gaining steam, but I sincerely doubt that he would have shipped it in that sorry state.
Tim Cook had to issue an apology for the terrible Apple Maps launch, and Scott Forstall ultimately left the company as a result. Forstall's name is featured on many patents for iPhone features that nosotros see to this day, and is widely regarded as i of the best engineers to e'er work at Apple tree.
Following Forstall's difference, Apple put industrial pattern proficient Jony Ive in charge of iOS software blueprint, ushering in a new era of apartment pattern. This was a huge departure from the skeuomorphism manner of near Apple tree software products, and iOS 7 was some other moment when I couldn't help but think that Steve Jobs probably wouldn't have done that.
Mac is no longer for creative professionals
"You lot know that if they'd ever used a reckoner, it would have been a Mac," said Steve Jobs virtually the historical icons featured in the Remember Different brand advertizement campaign that kicked off his second tour of duty equally Apple CEO. 1997 was a tumultuous fourth dimension for the finances of the company, and Jobs threw out the existing product lines and streamlined their offerings. Just a year afterwards, customers would become to see the new iMac revealed. While that product had some very odd design decisions, it was a turning point for Apple tree. The Mac was back and at the center of the next twenty years of the company'south growth.
Over the next decade, Apple slowly clawed back PC market place share with its Mac line. A focus of a lot of their marketing efforts centered effectually existence able to create and edit content on their computers. Famous movie directors were often featured in Mac announcements and commercials, and software offerings similar iMovie lead to the release of the truly professional software suite Final Cutting Pro.
The past decade has seen the Mac slip in terms of power under the hood, and many creative professionals have left the platform entirely due to the product lines inability to go on up with competitors. Many Mac Pro or MacBook Pro models cost more than their competitors and come with less impressive hardware.
This lead our own Shacknews Caput of Video Production Greg Burke to exit the Macintosh ecosystem afterwards being a lifelong user. "Information technology was a very lamentable day for me when I woke up and had to cull if I was going to keep to use the Apple operating system or make the switch to PC. What made information technology easier was the complete lack of optimization I had faced on the Apple platform over the years leading to my switch. Dumping literally thousands of dollars into proprietary raid cards, NVIDIA-specific uniform graphics cards, and lots of other things. Despite the upgrades my Mac Pro still ran pretty poorly in terms of performance when compared to equally-powered Windows machines. It was when Apple dropped CUDA support that I knew I needed to make the switch. CUDA uniform software and hardware was relatively new at the fourth dimension. Being able to export, render and run apps via the GPU rather than the CPU was a huge game changer in the video production department. To this day I believe Apple tree doesn't use CUDA, only rather its own proprietary version of information technology that they didn't release until many years later on I fabricated the switch."
Many artistic professionals have fabricated the bound to Windows PC workstations, and Apple tree still keeps using extremely underpowered AMD GPUs in most of their Mac offerings. The lack of NVIDIA GPU support across the Mac line is just another example of Apple moving further away from what made them the counterculture PC visitor of the late 90s, but to be fair much of this was put into motion while Steve Jobs was still alive.
Financial engineering is some of the simply innovation left at Apple
1 thing that Steve Jobs did non really care most was Apple's share cost. He presided as the visitor's CEO over many bear markets and never in one case issued a buyback or a dividend. Due to his frugal nature, Apple was in a very strong financial place when he passed abroad in 2011.
Apple had stopped paying a dividend in 1995 earlier Jobs returned to the visitor, as their finances faltered. Less than i year after Steve Jobs passed away, Tim Cook and Apple's Board of Directors issued a dividend and announced a massive share buyback. Nine years later, Apple has returned nearly $200 billion to shareholders.
This is another philosophical divergence that highlights just how focused Jobs' successor Apple CEO Tim Melt is on keeping Wall Street happy. At the 2012 shareholder meeting, I asked Tim Melt to please avoid buying back their stock and issuing a dividend and to instead focus on acquiring companies that could aid Apple grow revenues for years to come. Apple could accept attempted to learn hot companies like Netflix and Tesla for pennies on the dollar and gone later some more than distressed consumer electronics companies like Sony or Nintendo with that coin. Apple doesn't have much to show for their buyback other than a decreased amount of outstanding shares which has propped up their earnings-per-share results which take been experiencing decelerating growth for the bulk of the concluding decade.
Share buybacks and stock dividends are not what cool and innovative companies do, and information technology is pretty clear that Tim Cook is more than focused on keeping institutional investors happy than doing what is in the best interests of the company's long-term hereafter. Jobs left the balance sheet with nothing long-term debt when he stepped down equally CEO in 2011, and the visitor now has over $100 billion of long-term debt that was all issued to pay for the share repurchase and dividend program. Much of Apple'due south cash resides overseas, and the issuance of debt in America circumvented the company paying a hefty repatriation tax to execute the buyback. One has to give Cook and company credit for coming up with an innovative manner to do something that every stodgy Dow Jones company is lauded for on Wall Street, but none of that leads to great products that surprise and delight customers.
Iteration instead of innovation with no attention to detail
At the 2010 Shareholders Coming together, when asked why Apple didn't buy a game studio or Netflix, Steve Jobs said that the visitor didn't want to be a content producer considering they believe that other people do a meliorate job at that. Apple tree in 2010 was happy but being a storefront for successful video streaming apps and mobile games, simply things accept inverse over in Cupertino. Apple tree Television receiver+ is the most "hello boyfriend kids" moment of the mail service-Jobs era at the company. Apple tree is dumping millions of dollars into Telly shows that are fine, simply have not broken out the numbers of how many subscribers they have.
The visitor'southward Services revenue segment is 1 of their fastest growing divisions, and has been a focus of Wall Street analysts every bit they have rerated the stock with a focus on recurring revenues. This is some other example of Apple focusing on appeasing shareholders instead of making something truly different.
The other side of Apple continues to show a disappointing lack of attention to detail beyond many production lines. From HomePods leaving rings when used on wooden tables, to the massive camera bump that makes iPhone 13 Pro wobble when using it on flat table, much of Jobs' maniacal attention to detail is absent-minded from nearly of the product lines. In the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, there is story almost how his father Paul taught him to paint both sides of the fence. Jobs carried that lesson into his work at Apple tree, spending hours and days working on a detail that no 1 would always see or notice.
I would debate that Jobs' attention to particular is the almost sorely missed attribute of his management style. He had a deadline tyrannical focus on making products, manufacturing processes, and software experiences improve and more user friendly. Many of Apple'south recent updates across all their offerings seem to be moving in the opposite management.
Instead of innovating, Apple has truly fallen into the trap of solving problems that don't exist. No ane asked for a Touch Bar to replace the F keys on the MacBook Pro. In fact, the removal of the Escape key drove even more people away from the Mac. The reintroduction of MagSafe wireless charging is fine, but the company even so hampers their iPhone product line with their proprietary Lightning port. Some of these frustrating design decisions may accept been fabricated with Jobs in charge, but it seems abundantly clear from the past decade of failures that Apple lacks their "idea man." Fifty-fifty if the company made a stupid design decision, Jobs would figure out a way to spin information technology every bit a positive.
Epic vs Apple tree, #AppleToo, and the eating place at the end of the universe
It's been a very long ten years without you. moving picture.twitter.com/Uv8faKyIfj
— Productive Citizen ✌🏾💙🙏🏾👊🏾 (@technosucks) October v, 2021
In the decade since Steve Jobs passed away, Apple tree has go the visitor that they used to lampoon. In their 1984 ad, they painted the Mac and their visitor as a counterculture icon that was to be viewed equally the little guy. That is certainly hard to do with a market capitalization over $2 trillion, merely we are starting to meet the company behave in a way that Jobs painted Microsoft in the 90s and 2000s.
The Epic Games vs. Apple Inc. case highlights this in the context of the App Shop. Apple has created a walled garden for apps that Epic claimed is anticompetitive, and even though Apple has been able to defend these claims of antitrust, the battle rages on. Ballsy Games CEO Tim Sweeney at present finds himself in the same role of Jobs and beau Apple tree Cofounder Steve Wozniak back in 1984. Sweeney is willing to sacrifice millions of dollars of Fortnite mobile revenue in the name of doing what is correct for his view of the metaverse. Sweeney definitely provides an interesting foil for Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is clearly very focused on the company'due south fiscal performance.
Apple has become that which they demonized in the past in a lot of ways, and it extends beyond the company's products, services, software, and relationships with competitors. In contempo months, dozens of stories have been posted nether the #AppleToo hashtag, with several Medium weblog posts hitting the wire over the by few months. At that place are endless stories of women, lgbtq+ individuals, and other minorities being ignored by Human being Resources and management at Apple. This might not be attributable to the absence of Steve Jobs, merely it just highlights how Apple is no longer the company fans worshipped in the iPod days or fifty-fifty in the early years of the iPhone's rise.
CEO Tim Cook faces a lot of challenges in managing the engineering behemoth that is Apple Inc., and I commend him on his ability to follow up one of the greatest tech executives in history with very strong financial results, but information technology has become pretty clear that Apple tree is only not the same ten years after the death of Steve Jobs. Perchance the company really does accept i more matter somewhere in their R&D facility that will knock our socks off with truthful innovation, only as of right now it seems similar they are coasting on the difficult work of Steve Jobs and the team that executed the most astonishing corporate turnaround in the concluding thirty years.
This commodity is meant to express the stance of the author and does not necessarily reflect the thoughts of the entire staff. It is simply meant for educational purposes, and should non exist taken as investment advice. Please consider your ain investment fourth dimension horizon, chance tolerance, and consult with a financial counselor before acting on this information.
Full Disclosure: At the time of this article, Shacknews primary shareholder Asif A. Khan, his family members, and his company Virtue LLC had the post-obit positions:
Long Apple Inc. via AAPL shares
Short Apple tree Inc. via AAPL put options
Source: https://www.shacknews.com/article/126992/apple-has-lost-its-way-in-the-10-years-since-steve-jobs-death
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