Slashdot Mirror
Apple's Latest Products Get Rare Mixed-Bag Reviews, Muted Reception (bloomberg.com)
Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg: Despite the strength of its brand, Apple occasionally releases a product to mediocre reviews -- remember the original Apple TV or Apple Watch? But reviewers have rarely been as grumpy as this month, when Apple unveiled its collection of new gadgets for the holidays. "I can't think of a single compelling reason to upgrade [to iPhone 8, or iPhone 8 Plus] from an iPhone 7 [which was launched last year]," wrote Nilay Patel of The Verge. Another potential sign of trouble: the iPhone 8 models didn't sell out during pre-orders, another rare occurrence for Apple phones. [...] Reviewing the new Apple Watch Series 3 model, The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern wrote "On the AT&T-connected models, the cellular connection dropped, calls were often choppy and Siri sometimes failed to connect. On the one that ran on T-Mobile, I experienced several dropped connections." The Verge's Lauren Goode noticed a serious connection issue as well, saying the device "would appear to pick up a single bar of some random Wi-Fi signal, and hang on that, rather than switching to LTE." [...] Reviewing the Apple TV 4K, The Verge's Patel noted the device's high price, a lack of 4K support in major apps including YouTube, and a lack of support for the Dolby Atmos audio standard. Reuters reported on Friday: Hundreds of people usually gather at Apple's Sydney city store with queues winding down the town's main street, George Street, when there is a new product release. But there were fewer than 30 people lining up before the store opened on Friday, according to a Reuters witness. While the number of people queuing up outside Apple stores have dropped over the years with many opting for online purchases, the weak turnout for the latest iPhone has partly been due to poor reviews. Over at Financial Times, Tim Bradshaw reports: "I think demand is down from last year, for no other reason than you have another flagship phone," said Neil Cybart, an Apple analyst at Above Avalon. "A portion of the iPhone launch demand is not materialising quite yet." That could leave this weekend's initial sales lower than at any point since the iPhone 6 first launched in 2014, Mr Cybart added. Apple's decision to increase prices for the iPhone 8 compared with last year's model and a less aggressive launch push by mobile carriers could also affect demand.
Well yeah, people are waiting for the iPhone X. Or...gasp, the smartphone market is becoming saturated.
Maybe Apple will start giving their computers some love again. Or take their money and get into a whole new business to diversify a bit. At the moment they're all in on the phones and phone accessories, which is not a great plan long term.
Apple's secret to success isn't hardware. It's software.
Steve Jobs said almost verbatim that "Apple is a software company" and he was right. Apple designs nice hardware but it's not really terribly different from their competition and they don't actually make much of it themselves. I could put Windows 10 on a Mac and if you didn't see the badge on the front of the box you'd have no idea you were using an Apple product. You could put Android on the iPhone hardware and you'd never know it was an Apple product. What makes Apple distinct and what enables them to charge the margins they do is the software. Apple is a software company first and foremost. They just sell their software in a pretty box with some nice hardware.
Think about what parts of the business Apple has kept. Software and design. They don't actually make any hardware themselves so they cannot be a hardware company. They have some services but really they are just to support Apple software. Apple is at their core a software company and the rest of it is just tactics to make that work.