Apple's resolution for 2017: Focus, focus and focus

I was born in 1983, I’m turning 34 this year. Yet the only product from Apple that really mattered (or matters) to me is the iPhone. I miss the good ol days when Steve Jobs announced products that forced the industry to bend and follow. Back then I was on the other side, I was anti-Apple (in many ways I still am). But I would still tune in to every Apple product announcement, to get an idea of where things are headed and back in those days, every one of them would be exciting with some impressive and jaw dropping products being launched.

Times have changed. Steve Jobs has passed away and while critics criticized Apple when Jobs took over, they do so even today. The only difference was that back then, Apple made path-breaking products like the iPhone and the MacBook Air. Today, there are things like the iPhone 6s Smart Battery case that does not look like an Apple product, a gigantic iPad Pro tablet that needs two hands to operate (once you have placed it down on a table that is), and MacBook Pro that needs you to look down from a 15-inch display into a tiny OLED strip to execute a command.

“Can’t innovate anymore”

Times have changed indeed. But this happened a long time ago. Not today, not last year. In fact, Apple is now known for creating products and then ignoring them. Siri is a good example. It was ahead of the competition back then, today, it is the dumbest digital voice assistant around. The cylindrical Mac Pro was a monster of a machine yet there was not a single update since Phil Schiller’s “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass” statement. Let’s not even get started with the MacBook lineup.

The new Apple is distracted and believes in experimentation instead. Launch a product, if it does not work out, it can always be ignored. Apple can afford to do this as well, it has got the monies. But look at the other side and you  soon begin to realise that well, the industry does not bend and follow anymore, but its more like the other way around. Slim smartphones come at the cost of battery life, and the same goes for laptops. Apple, even with all its control on hardware and software somehow cannot beat competitor offerings. Today its more like Apple follows what others do unless you are talking about removing the 3.5mm headphone jack (Courage!).

Touch ID was Apple’s last known innovation in Apple’s ecosystem since it first showed up on the iPhone 5s, but more recent ones like 3D Touch haven’t caught on. In fact, the smartphone space is not aping Apple, but has moved ahead of it. Apple is now catching up with the competition. We now have blazing fast chipsets, huge 5.5-inch displays and dual lens camera modules on the iPhone that cannot do a better job than a single lens Pixel.

Focus

And this innovation is taking place in the strangest of places. We have a software company like Microsoft building the Surface tablet, a big success for Microsoft’s first attempt at hardware. In fact, it was so good, that Microsoft went on to build the Surface Book and the Surface Studio desktop, an area where Apple completely stopped innovating and updating in its quest to improve the money making iPhone.

Apple followed up with the iPad Pro and no, it’s not the computer we want it to be nor is it going to be a replacement to the ageing MacBook Air, the cheapest computing device in Apple’s lineup. Clearly, its diversifying instead on streamlining its products and this itself shows signs of desperation and being clueless.

The MacBook Pro revamp after so many years, still looks the same only “slimmer”. The iPhone 7 looks identical to the iPhone 6 (two generations old) and all we got was a dual eyed camera that cannot compete with a single lens unit from the Google Pixel. Maps is still a useless app in India since Apple launched it 2012 (the good bit is that you can now uninstall it).

Microsoft’s ads now focus on details and engineering perfection while Apple now simply focuses on features of its smartphone that it always had. What’s new in a camera? Watch an Apple ad. What’s new in the PC market? May you should look at Microsoft. What’s new in smartphones? Look at Google’s Pixel or Samsung.

Microsoft failed badly with smartphones, but they figured out what they wanted to offer (a Surface Phone is coming). Apple figured what it wanted to do long ago, but it’s just that they have simply lost focus along the way. In the past Apple would make one perfect product and the world would follow suit. Today it one confused product with too many options.

A year ago I penned down a piece on how Microsoft should give up on mobile and focus on PC software and hardware instead. For now, they seem to be doing just this. May be it’s time Apple should just focus on the iPhone and give up on everything else; instead of taking up more product categories in a half-hearted manner.