I'm puzzled by the critics as well. It's thinner, lighter and faster. It has a better camera, a better display, a better cable, better speakers, better mics and better software. What's not to like?
When you're using the patent system to beat up your competitors in court over your right to innovate and crowing in public about the deep creative values at the heart of your company you need to bring your A game when it comes time to launch your new flagship product.
Not a better camera - it uses exactly the same camera as the 4S. You get panorama mode, though.
A better cable, that has essentially obsoleted millions of peripherals. "Use the adapter", not so much - I for one have an in-dash GPS / deck with Pandora and the like that I can't use with the iPhone, even with the adapter, because it doesn't support iPod out. Thanks, Apple.
Kinda weird to see Apple fans defend them for their newfound stolid conservatism when they earned their reputation on their willingness to break eggs to make a better omelette.
In today's backwards world it's boring old Microsoft that's really sticking its neck out and thinking different.
I think the article's author makes the point that Apple have operated using the same evolutionary model for 30 or so years. Five years after the Mac was introduced, the latest version of the product looked similar, but was faster, more capable, and subtly refined. So too with the iPod. It's unreasonable to assume Apple could "break eggs" on an annual basis. The original iPhone was incubated inside the company for roughly half a decade, and it's likely Apple's next big product is maybe halfway through a similar incubation period. When that next big product is finally revealed, pundits won't recognise exactly how long it took to develop, and will voice their disappointment when the second generation model is only slightly better than the original. And so history will repeat.
I think that they earned that reputation when the alternative was death. You could say that the same thing goes for Microsoft today. The iPad is going to back them into a corner, and they need to reinvent Windows and the PC in order to have a prayer of still being relevant in 20 years.
edit: I should also mention that I am incredibly disappointed that they still haven't added multiple user accounts to the iPad, which feels like a no-brainer and a critical feature.
I don't think that is true necessarily. Firstly, as much as iPad may dominate home use, enterprise is still a territory that it will find incredibly hard to cater to. There are multiple reasons for this; the two most that I think are most important: (1) Lack of backward compatibility with existing code and apps (2) Dependence on Apple's curated marketplace for installing applications
> still being relevant in 20 years.
Now, for personal usage, I think WP7 was nice and WP8 will probably be better. Which means that if they realize a tab, as they are planning to, it will be a product that can at least compete in quality if not quantity or marketplace. But again, this is a problem for NOW. 20 years is a LONG time - I cannot even imagine how computation will look like in 20 years!
Like Microsoft before them Apple is a victim of its own success. But it's very dangerous to shift your focus from inventing new markets to protecting those you already control.
Apple doesn't seem to have any qualms about making big breaking changes in OS X though.
While I hate all the patent-BS, Apple already made the better omelette. It's not like you can revolutionize the industry every few years.
But wait, they have revolutionized laptop design, smartphones, and even the all in one desktop. The industry is following them in three different segments.
A good example might be Feynman or Einstein: They both revolutionized physics when younger, and didn't do much afterwards. Doesn't mean they weren't doing good work, it's just not easy to create breakthroughs.
I can't stand the term 'retina display'. Displays are characterised by numbers - size and resolution (and therefore pixel density) being the big two.
The iPhone has a 1136x640 px, 4" display, not a 'retina' anything. It was made even worse when it was revealed that 'retina' doesn't mean a specific pixel density, only 'a resolution higher than what the competition offers at the time'.
