tdgeek:

dafman: Love them or hate them, you can’t deny Apple’s place in the world as past innovators of major world tech trends. After all, they created the MP3 player, touchscreen phone and the tablet phenomenon. And their kit was always beautifully designed. I still marvel at my (now retired) little square nano ipod.

But since Steve Jobs shuffled off, have Apple now well and truly lost their mojo? They haven’t released any new ground breaking tech since the ipad. In fact, they are now pretty much followers – take their last two releases - iPad Pro followed Surface Pro, Apple watch followed Android wear.

And with the exception of force touch, their phones are pretty much under-spec’d relative to other flagships competition (resolution, battery, waterproofing, expandable storage etc).

I see a few Apple watches on peoples wrists, but not many.

iTunes is looking tired.

I don't hear many raving over Apple music.

And their beautiful design ethos is now starting to well and truly show cracks, with some really woeful offerings of recent – the following youtube sums this up nicely: https://youtu.be/yOwlR74rC5Q

Yes, as one of the world’s biggest companies, Apple still have mountains of cash and plenty of punters still prepared to pay over the odds for an iphone, but are Apple’s glory days now well and truly behind them?

I think they have. 

Its hard to create new tech, its been done. When SJ left, I felt that helped as regards finally getting features added, it largely has feature parity now but back in the day it was missing a lot. What I see, is disenchantment. There are regular threads on Macrumors that are about dropping quality. Bugs and issues are one thing but these days its becoming a tradition, and these non minor bugs and issues that to me show a lack of testing. Rushed out is a phrase I read often. The board demanded innovation, but in reality its all about the money. The money used to be secondary to design, that has changed. The share price has plummuted 20% and thats big in the stockmarket.

I had never seen them as under specced as the custom SoC meant that they didn't need octa cores of high CPU speed etc, but my 6 Plus aint the most responsive phone on town, although the 6 was fine. Thats under specced and rushed out. Bring out the phablet quick please, we will finish it in the S year. 

But the faithful rule. I am on a Yahoo forum, and thats been vibrant lately as some of us put forward our less than stellar thoughts and the fanboys react. So sales will be good no matter what, but they need to be better than good, and I can see them levelling. 

Along as I don't have to listen to "they wont do it first but it will be better" and "Apple knows what you want, you don't" I'm happy enough. Its losing its aura but its a good ecosystem.