Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Apple less visionary under Tim Cook? Don't bet on it!

On the excuse of Tim Cook's five-year anniversary as CEO of Apple, there has been a flurry (one might even say a feeding frenzy) of articles proclaiming that, under his leadership, Apple is less visionary than it was in the past, under Steve Jobs.

That's not the way it looks to me.

Sure, it's been quite a while since certain products have been updated, and, other than the much anticipated Apple Watch, most of the customer-facing news that has broken surface over the last few years has felt incremental rather than new and brilliant.

This is less true of developer-facing news, which has included the introduction and rapid evolution of Swift, and also less true of the underlying hardware technology, such as the A-series chips, which have dramatically improved every year since they were first publicly mentioned (the A4 used in the iPhone 4), in terms of shear performance and also in terms of performance per watt.

Add to that the rumors that they're hard at work preparing an autonomous electric vehicle of some sort, and that they are also investing heavily in augmented reality.

To me it looks like Apple is laying the groundwork for bigger visions, perhaps even more profound visions, than it ever attempted under Steve Jobs. Time will tell.