Working without Jobs – Is Apple running out of ideas?

Posted on November 6, 2013

I’ve only ever liked Blackberry phones..until my iphone

As someone who respects and admires Apple – as the innovator, I would hate to see it drift down the path that Sony did after its two visionary founders, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita, retired and left us. But with all due respect to Apple’s current leadership, they seem to be missing a radical who will live, think, and sweat “the next big thing” — someone unshackled from business as usual as I feel Steve Jobs essentially was. 

I work as a full time software engineer (and aspiring website designer – shameless plug for more business byitsizepro) I feel Innovation is typically slow and requires long-term engagement. Apple could still surprise me in three to five years with a big project it’s been cooking up, far from prying eyes but right now,  just being “better, thinner and lighter” isn’t what the world was used to under Steve Jobs.

Is the tradition of beautiful, simple design is still alive at Apple? Even the world’s best design cannot hide that the company already seems to have fallen back toward a marketing-driven strategy, not an innovation-driven one. What I’ve seen coming from Apple since Steve Jobs passed away is all been refinement – spending increasing amounts on marketing what it does have rather than coming up with new gizmos.

Historically speaking

In the early days, Jobs laid a lot of emphasis on making his goods in the US. That’s barely the case now from what I’m reading : Apple looks to have morphed into a design and retail business that orders in its manufactures from a network of more than 150 companies, usually based abroad. That makes it a more profitable enterprise I’m guessing, but does this then also mean that Apple is effectively outsourcing its thinking about production and components to others? I’ve read this, about Jobs’s employees: “People were recruited to Apple with the idea that they would be helping to change the world. Apple was more than a company; it was a cause.“But what happens to a cause when most of its parts and its software come in from a variety of points scattered far, far away from the Cupertino HQ?

Looking forward..

Steve Jobs was a big part of apple, but i am sure there are members of his team that share his creative traits who will be able to continue his legacy. While it would appear that Apple may be running out of ideas, I don’t think Steve Jobs would have left this world without making sure Apple had a decade worth of Innovations in queue. After-all, I feel confident that such industry-changing innovations as the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and even the MacBook Air — were all in development in one form or another within Apple probably 30 years ago, waiting for major technological developments to take place before these far-out ideas could be executed (quantum leaps in storage in processing, the Internet, color displays, longer-lasting batteries).

There are a lot of smart people at Apple I certain of that, just as there were a lot of “A-players” working under Jobs in the early days. Isn’t it simply foolish and unfair to them of me to think they won’t contribute to the rise again of inspiring new technologies and ideas? What are your thoughts?