Has Apple Become a Company of No?

"Zero for nine," my friend Jan joked to me after the two new iPads popped out of their Yerba Buena cabbage patch yesterday. If you believe my tongue-in-cheek wish list from last week, the new iPad Air and iPad mini are boring: safe, conservative potential best-sellers that don't rock any boats.

I got two things wrong, and I'll get to them in a second. But yesterday's releases aren't going to change a word in the chorus of people who think Apple has lost whatever mythical spark it once had.

Is Apple trapped? Maybe, but there's hope.

The Hobgoblin of Small Minds
Apple's biggest danger right now is that it's constrained by its own success. iOS is the oldest of the major mobile operating systems, and it's showing its age on its grid-of-apps homescreen. In the past few years, we've been slowly sliding towards more natural, more personalized mobile interfaces. Voice input clearly has a lot to do with whatever's coming next, and Apple played its part there with Siri. Microsoft's Live Tiles and Android's widgets do manually what Google Now is starting to predict automatically. But Apple's grid doesn't change.

Apple's trapped by its need to maintain compatibility with its million-plus high-quality mobile apps; move the goalposts too far, and it won't bring its app developers with it. Look at what a chorus of whining erupted over iOS 7, which is actually a pretty minor redesign. The Apple faithful have gotten too used to consistency, and they don't want anything to be disrupted.

When does consistency become foolish consistency, the hobgoblin of small minds, if you will? When you're afraid to break things to start new ones. Apple seems to be very afraid of breaking anything right now, and that's getting people like me worried.

It's All a Setup
But peer under the hood of yesterday's announcements, look into the wings, and you might see some hope — if Apple can pull it off.

Apple is a user-experience company, and the great UX challenge of our moment is how to manage the transition between mouse/keyboard PCs and touch-centric devices. Microsoft just fell into the UX version of the uncanny valley with Windows 8, awkwardly slapping together a touch interface and a desktop interface, which ended up sitting across the gym from each other, refusing to dance.

Now go back to the Apple event and look at those iWork and iLife demos. Apple's iApps on iOS and OS X are beginning to look alike. More importantly, Apple's experimenting with multi-touch gestures in the OS X apps, training users to flick Safari windows to the side and pinch to zoom iPhotos.

Apple may be pulling a pincer move on Microsoft here. As Microsoft plows towards Apple's strength in tablets, Apple may be trying to wrap around and attack Microsoft's legacy PC business by solving the touch/desktop conundrum and being the first to offer a truly unified user interface across the various computing categories.

We know Microsoft is trying to do this too, of course; we've heard a lot of rumors about how Windows 9 will really start to bring together Windows and Windows Phone (and render Windows RT irrelevant.) Apple's betting it can do this faster and more elegantly.

If Apple unifies its user platforms before anyone else in the industry, nobody will be left worrying if the company can innovate.

Don't Undercount Elegance
The one big surprise for me with the iPad Air, and the reason it's going to be a big hit, is something that doesn't have a big effect on photos or spec sheets: the weight and materials.

Apple is known as the master of fit and finish. There's something joyous about the Air. You can toss it around like a toy, but it doesn't feel like a toy; the materials feel high-class. The software has fit and finish, too. iOS 7's home screen is painfully dull, but it's clear, and Apple has put time into things like smooth zooming and system stability that competitors like Samsung seem to completely forget about.

If Apple's going to make its name on pure elegance, though, it needs to hit its mark every time. That's where the problems with iOS 7 on older iPhones really damage Apple's brand. I've been bombarded recently with complaints from owners of iPhone 4 models that iOS 7 has slowed down their phones. (The iPhone 4's processor doesn't seem to be able to handle the strain.) More missteps like that will drive iPhone owners over to alternatives which offer more features.

(Oh, something else I got wrong: Yes, there are plenty of ways to use a tablet's rear camera other than looking like an idiot taking snapshots. So I'm changing my opinion there mdash; tablet makers don't need to get rid of the camera, they need to get rid of the camera app.)

Tim Cook's Stew
The fear underlying all of this, of course, is the same old one: whether Apple can do anything truly new without Steve Jobs. Tim Cook is an operations guy, the thinking goes. He's better at making things faster and simpler, but he isn't a tastemaker.

Steve Jobs's hits came every three to five years, but crucially, he reshaped the company in his first year at Apple in the late '90s. Jobs came back to Apple in 1997. He swiftly slashed product lines and then introduced the iMac in 1998 a tangible, visible statement of purpose. OS X followed in 2000, and then the iPod in 2001. The iPod became Windows-compatible in 2004, which really made it take off. The iPhone came in 2007, then the iPad in 2010.

Now it's 2013. So we're due, right? What new category will define the "team era" of Apple, where Tim Cook gives Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and Eddy Cue more stage time than he takes for himself?

I think that's what's frustrating us all. Apple's new statement of purpose, shown in its mission statement video, is about the products it doesn't create rather than the ones it does. There's a thousand "nos" to one "yes," the company says.

We fear Apple has become a company of "no." The company is still very successful, and it's creating great products. But it has about 18 months to show us another big "yes." The tech world has a short attention span. Just ask BlackBerry.

For more, check out my hands on with the iPad Air (video below) and iPad mini With Retina Display.