Remember Apple? Man, it seems so long ago, right? You were so much younger then! You had that wavy hair and that Members Only jacket! Ah, we’ll never get those days back. Those days when Apple was still a thing.
Ah, jokes.
Anyway, writing for Tiger Beat in the Valley, Christina Wallace and David Kidder tell us of the fall of Apple. And apparently they’re not talking about cider presses, pumpkin carving and horror movie releases.
“From Macintosh to Granny Smith: The rise and fall of Apple.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Jason.)
Because… Apple has fallen.
(The Macalope doesn’t know what they’re talking about, either. Just keep nodding and move toward the door. When you get there, run like hell, Margaret, and never look back. I love you.)
The iPod turns 20 this year — holy you-know-what! Apple’s first foray into truly disruptive technology since the PC wars is basically old enough to drink.
Try that at a Fell’s Point bar, kids! “I’m bashically old enough to drink, ossifer.” Also, the iPod was released in 2001, not 1999, but no one expects drunk kids to be able to do math.
And it was followed by a string of lucrative successes with the iPhone, the App Store, and Apple Watch.
Hey! The Apple Watch listed as a success! Except Wallace and Kidder seem to think the Apple Watch was introduced 10 years ago.
In the early 2000s Apple was the standard of innovation and design. Every other company was forced to keep up or die.
The 2019 version of Apple couldn’t be further from that reality.
How do we know? Because Apple held an event that people didn’t like. To be honest, The Macalope wasn’t crazy about it, either. Not because he doesn’t think what was announced will be successful, just because it was boring for long stretches.
Gaming, streaming, news. Really? In 2019?
Things? Really? Now? Ugh.
Where has Apple been for the last six to seven years?
Making that Apple Watch you think is a success. And AirPods, which have also been a rousing success.
Wallace and Kidder laud Microsoft’s Surface Studio and wonder why Apple can’t be more like that nice Microsoft from up north.
For CEOs like Tim Cook, who aren’t founders, innovation doesn’t always come easy. … Perhaps Tim Cook could learn something from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
The Surface is a good business for Microsoft. It brought in $1.86 billion in revenue last quarter, while the Mac only brought in $7.4 billion in revenue.
Uh. Well, um… OK.
Now, let’s follow the bouncing logic. If we can without throwing up.
In May 2015, roughly a year into Nadella’s tenure, Microsoft made a stunning announcement. … It was pivoting to a new model: Windows as a service. Rather than asking consumers to shell out hundreds of dollars every few years for a new version, it would release Windows 10 as a free upgrade for current customers and make regular updates and improvements.
Brilliant! What other company does that?!
Oh, wait, Apple does that. And has done that since 2013 on the Mac and since the device’s release in 2007 on the iPhone. In reality, the fact that Apple and Google simply gave away their operating systems is what forced Microsoft to give up trying to force people to pay for huge upgrades every few years.
By contrast, Apple’s product strategy seems to hinge on nickel-and-diming its customers.
Oh, Apple’s planning on charging for these new services. But Microsoft doesn’t charge for its services. Said people who’ve apparently never owned an Xbox.
Turns out this piece is less about Apple than it is about how awesome Microsoft is. Which seems a little weird, right? Why make the headline all about Apple, spend most of the article waxing poetic about Microsoft and only compare the two in ham-fisted and misleading ways? And why does it take two people to write this? What could be the possible reason to do…
Christina Wallace is VP of growth and David Kidder is CEO of growth advisory firm Bionic. They are co-authors of New to Big.
…that. Oh. Okay. So, this isn’t so much an intellectual argument as it is an advertisement. Now it makes more sense.