Whereas if it was some geek factory making "wild bets" on not-ready-yet technologies, like the kind geeks ask to see, it would be liked by few, ignored by most (and for good reason).

If someone wants that, they can buy all those wonderful innovative products MS, Samsung and Google regularly put out... Rocking their Google Glass look and pioneering VR with their Rift.

Is that extremely hard? Yes of course, but doing that effectively is why Apple got the reputation it has.

That's not exactly Tesla (the inventor, not the company) territory, bet-wise.

Phones were one of the hottest markets already -- and they would have only gotten smarter, iPhone or not. The iPhone just brought lots of smartness and polish in concentrated form all at once -- it took around 3 years for competitors to catch up (Android wasn't released for another full year), and I guess it would have taken them like 5-6 years or so to put it all together (or course with less panache) if they iPhone had not existed at all. But still it was no wild bet (except in daring to deal with the telcos -- that was a big bet and took balls).

So, in 2017, what exactly product would you think Apple should introduce as a bet?

Plus, people don't like strangers with always-on cameras on eye level eyeing them (Glass-holes).

And people who don't need actual glasses, won't go around wearing AR ones, except if they're geeks and do it for the novelty.

Combined this makes them a non-starter.

The broader point here, and this makes the point, is that Apple should be taking on any and all major challenges to keep it as a breakthrough trailblazing company. They have the cash, talent and position to do it.

"Any and all" major challenges strikes me as kind of a recipe for (slow) disaster, unless Apple decides to set up a quasi-independent Apple Research division dedicated to moonshots. That would be kind of cool, to be sure, but it strikes me as something that isn't really in line with the kind of company Apple's been the last ~19 years.

Hololens, all the Daqri products, Meta are all in the HMD space with products that are selling. The AR HMD space is WAY PAST where the mouse and GUI were when they introduced it on the Macintosh. They could even buy Magic Leap if they wanted but could probably do better themselves. I mean I live this stuff. If Apple wanted to do AR glasses right, they could.

>I mean I live this stuff.

That's the selection bias issue. Most people don't and don't care for these technologies.

Over the last 20 years Apple has had the same kind for advice to get in to all kinds of fads that never went anywhere and technologies that were way before their actual mass market stage.

Just like the mouse and smartphone markets didn't exist previously.

You do realize that all of the majors are focusing heavily on AR right? As in, most of WWDC was dedicated to ARKit, nearly the entire Zuck Keynote was about AR etc...?

I was asked for what the next revolutionary technology would be that Apple could break out with, I gave it. It's staring everyone in the face and has been desired for the better part of 60 years - through thousands of iterations that never worked because processing, integration etc... weren't there.

Miss it at your peril.

Overblown concerns that all made the Google Glass a total non-starter failure.

>The broader point here, and this makes the point, is that Apple should be taking on any and all major challenges to keep it as a breakthrough trailblazing company.

Nope. Apple should focus on carefully selected markets that keep it as a consumer favorite, best experience, record-profitable company.

Trailblazing breakthroughs in various random "major challenges" can be left to those without commercial concerns, like Google Labs who mostly makes up for money spend in positive press PR for its non-marketable "innovations".

This is actually a conversation I have over and over with friends, family and coworkers. The OS switching cost/risks are too high although most iPhone users know the top Android devices are typically better than the iPhone the risk of not liking the OS experience is too high compared to the reward of taking slightly better photos or bigger screen or whatever Android does now that iPhone won't until XI

In some ways (and on paper), you're right. Apple's stores are a huge advantage though. Any family member that asks me what they should buy is going to be told to get an iPhone. The Genius Bar might not be perfect, but it's better than calling Verizon or posting a message on the One Plus forums.

So which phone maker fits your level of privacy?

Tim talked about Steve's legacy, but really, was SJ's dream to build a stale stagnating company? Did he prefer money over putting a dent in the universe?

Youngsters might not remember, but I've followed those keynotes and introductions since 2002 or so.

It took 4 years for the iPod to get a color screen -- and 8 years to get a video camera. Several years to get Wifi. The original iPhone wasn't 3G -- that was the next model. Those years we waited year over year for Jobs to announce some extremely incremental updates. And people cheered for them -- they were actually exciting, all the press was speculating and gushing, and it was e.g. just a few additional features on the iPod, like the touch wheel as opposed to the old click wheel.

New announcements like the iPhone and the iPad were rare under Jobs too. And those products were low hanging fruit for Apple themselves -- a mobile phone and a table. Quite basic stuff -- not some whole new product category like flying cars and whatever people expect to see.

Apple is not in the business of creating experimental stuff to dazzle geeks. It's in the business in incrementally improving mass market products.

Besides, what competitor exactly did introduce those mythical "Jobs-worthy" products that people ask from Apple to deliver? Google Glasses? Microsoft's laptop/tablet combo that failed to gain much traction and is returned like crazy? https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/14/16142490/microsoft-surfac...

What Apple did better, and affected the industry, was not innovation in the sense of some new BS product category that didn't exist ever, it was delivery. Better thought out, more polished, and with lots of innovation in the details. The kind of innovation that the iPhone models get incrementally but few can understand, but then you use a model from 2-3 years ago and it feels ancient after you've used the last one.

For such introductions of new products, the Apple Watch has been one such under Tim's, err, watch, and it does great in the market (in fact it's almost the only smartwatch people can actually see in the wild -- it outsold Samsung Galaxy watches so much in units it's not even funny).

There was no improvement on the MP3 player, only the storage, but on crap Apple storage, you don't have choice to throw away a device that have slow memory 8GB? when you can buy a SD card? Too much innovation from Apple...

Well, you might find yourself in the extreme minority on this.

It's not like non-color-screen, non wi-fi full-week-lasting mp3 players don't exist -- there are tons of such models.

It's just that the market has spoken, and most prefer to be able to also stream, plays apps, etc on their multi-purpose device than get one such.

>There was no improvement on the MP3 player, only the storage, but on crap Apple storage, you don't have choice to throw away a device that have slow memory 8GB? when you can buy a SD card?

Well, obviously companies like Apple don't cater to some small niche of music aficionados. Most people don't care for juggling cards and having different parts of their record collection on different SD cards or whatever -- they did it with CDs and such on 1999 out of necessity. Heck, most people will just stream today and be done with it.

Also not sure how "slow memory" means anything in the context of an mp3 player. Ever had problem reading mp3s from the memory quickly enough?

Musk is certainly an inportant innovator, but he’s not a Messiah.

Global warming