To anyone paying attention, Apple is clearly out of ideas and is about to get washed by Google over the next 5-10 years.
Their new product releases have been duds / wholly underwhelming in a way I'm convinced Jobs would've never have allowed (touchstrip on the MBP?
Apple Watch 2 thicker than the first Apple Watch?
Camera not flush with the body of the phone?
)
There's really no sign of life from Apple in virtual reality, artificial intelligence (this is the big one to me), or autonomous vehicles. All indications point to their competitors investing more heavily in the former two trends, and investment in autonomous vehicles seems to have been a dud so far.
The Pixel has me looking at my iPhone like
. The only advantages are really iMessage and the camera at this point, none of which I see as lasting advantages for the casual user who uses Tinder, Instagram, and Gmail, and maybe occasionally plays a game when bored.
Artificial intelligence-enabled assistants are pretty clearly the next wave as far as I'm concerned. And Ok Google straight up embarrasses Siri at this point. No company is better suited than Google to build a personal assistant that helps you run your life, and an AI-enabled world in which hardware falls into the background is clearly unfavorable to Apple.
Financially, Apple's straight for now, but the writing is on the wall for them. Their ace in the hole is the huge pile of cash they have for acquisitions that can help them keep up, but it seems like they have no vision anyway. It's no coincidence to me that the company's started to flounder ~5 years after Jobs' death...that's probably the horizon Apple plans over at the highest level.
If you think technology is set to move beyond the mobile phone in the next 5-10 years, you'd have to be bearish on this company.
. Coming from someone whose used iPhones exclusively for the last 5 years.
