Apple is facing a reckoning of its own making. The Cupertino, California company has fumbled so many times in the last year, it is quickly approaching a technological blackhole—a point of no return in its transformation from a world-changing force to an inconsequential churner of shiny stuff.
The recent “dreams-crushing” iPad ad is the perfect metaphor of what the company has become: out of touch with reality, fully engulfed in its legendary “reality distortion field,” and lost in a corporate Russian doll that keeps the company peering into its belly button to sell more, more, more. But the ad (a carbon copy of an LG commercial from 2008) is merely a symptom of a greater sickness. Namely, that Apple has lost its customer-first design vision on its way to becoming the world’s most lucrative company.
Under the leadership of Tim Cook, Apple’s former COO turned CEO, the company has multiplied its output of iPhones, iPads, and Mac models, while also creating a constellation of wearables, home devices, accessories, and remarkable services and advertising businesses. Cook is an exceptional operationalist who has cranked the money printing machine that Steve Jobs built up to 11. But while total revenue has exploded during Cook’s command, it was mainly thanks to the iPhone, which accounted for 52% of Apple’s total 2023 sales. There’s a problem with that balance, though, as unit shipments of the iPhone have plunged recently.
This creates a hazy backdrop to Apple’s bigger issues around AI. We’re entering a new era that will redefine how humans interact with technology, and Apple is already behind. The company is facing some existential headwinds that will require a lot more than a great iPhone business to survive.
Of course, Apple can’t and won’t fail, financially speaking. Not for a very, very long time, at least. But that doesn’t mean it can’t fail in what it really counts and has always counted: its ability to impact the way we live, creating entire new markets like it did with the Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod, and the iPhone (the iPad is still a big iPhone and/or a Mac without a keyboard, sorry).
Those who cannot remember the past . . .
Consider the historical parallels of what happened to Apple between the 1980s and 1990s and the trajectory Apple is on today. In the 1980s, Apple had a clear, cohesive product design vision (enabled by brilliant engineering) that pushed Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to create the personal computer market with the Apple II. Later, in 1984, it was Jobs and his pirates’ vision that produced the “Next Big Thing,” leading the world into a new computing era with the first Macintosh computer.
The Mac was the first commercial graphical computer, and it’s not hyperbole to say that it changed the world. Apple’s earliest products weren’t just technological marvels; they were the embodiments of Jobs’ philosophy. It wasn’t just groundbreaking technology inside a plastic box, it was a device that provoked a visceral, immediate reaction among customers who saw these products and instantly understood their value. The Mac anticipated and shaped customer desires.
That sense of necessity began to fade into a sea of beige when Jobs disappeared from 1 Infinite Loop in 1985, booted by John Sculley, a former Pepsi and Doritos salesman who had joined Apple as CEO in 1983. When Jobs left Apple, his loyal designers and engineers left too, following him to form NeXT.
During Sculley’s tenure, Apple experienced its first real failure. Sculley thought that he held the new future of computing in his hands with the Newton, a tablet-and-stylus computer the size of a brick. The Newton was a cool tech demo, but it had no vision and no clear purpose. People failed to see it as something they’d use, and it instantly flopped. During this period, Apple was up against the commoditization of graphical computing, thanks to the triumph of the mediocre but cheap Microsoft Windows. In barely ten years, the company went from changing the world one desktop at a time to the unthinkable position of near-death.
. . . are condemned to repeat it
Now take that story and change the names a little bit. Jobs returns to Apple in 1997 and upends the entire technology industry twice, first with the iPod and then with the iPhone. In 2008, health declines due to cancer, and he eventually resigns in 2011. Right here, you can swap Sculley for Cook, who became Apple’s new CEO instead of the natural heir, Jony Ive, Apple’s chief designer and Jobs’ twin soul. Ive briefly keeps the vision alive, running on the fumes of Jobs’ previous successes and their plans.
But Apple’s marketing and bean-counting politburó gets stronger by the day. Time passes by. Ideas run thin. Pushed away by Cook’s new company culture, Ive leaves to start his own company, LoveFrom. After cycling through two new design chiefs, Apple decides to move the entire industrial design department under the control of another bean counter, Jeff Williams, who is perhaps not coincidentally Apple’s COO, just like Cook was the COO before becoming king.
And where’s Newton in this tale of déjà vu, you ask? That would be the Vision Pro, which has so far failed to capture the public’s needs or desires.
Of course, this parallel is not perfect. At one point in the new timeline, the Apple Watch comes out, a curiosity that barely sold at the beginning but is saved from failure as it became a niche health and fitness device. Combined with the AirPods and other accessories, these products account for just 10% of Apple sales. Today, Apple is richer than many countries and bigger than all banks. It was the first company to reach $3 trillion in market value, which at the time surpassed the GDP of the United Kingdom, France, India, and Canada.
Jobs’ most important lesson
When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, first as a consultant before taking over as the company’s interim CEO, he imparted an important lesson that Cook could stand to learn from. Leading up to the 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference, Jobs had knifed many Apple products—including the Newton—in an effort to cut costs and save Apple from financial collapse.
Taking questions on stage, Jobs confronted an angry engineer who asked Jobs why he was canning OpenDoc, a framework that allowed developers to create multi-platform apps by combining different components. Jobs had a perfect off-the-cuff response. Here’s the crucial part, transcribed:
“I’m sure that you can make some demos maybe a small commercial app that demonstrates those [OpenDoc] things [but] the hardest thing is how does that fit into a cohesive larger vision [emphasis mine] that’s gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars, 10 billion dollars of product a year . . . and one of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology [emphasis also mine]. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re gonna try to sell it. I’ve made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room, and I’ve got the scar tissue to prove it and I know that it’s the case.”
Regardless of Apple’s (diminishing) ability to Scrooge McDuck piles of cash every quarter, the company has lost sight of the fact that it all starts with the experience. In that regard, Apple has been on a steep philosophical decline for years. It’s suffering from a lack of clear focus that is best exemplified by the Vision Pro. I have a hard time imagining Jobs or Ive considering the idea of a VR headset, which is something that almost nobody wants to put over their faces. People don’t even want to try it out. Many die-hards returned theirs.
The next next big thing
All this history matters because we’re entering a moment that resembles the early ‘80s—a moment that will totally reshape the way humans and technology coexist. While Apple was wasting time with the Vision Pro and its axed Apple Car project, OpenAI and Google actually started to create the next “Next Big Thing” with generative AI. Apple appears to be years behind them. The company now finds itself with some goggles nobody wants and the dilemma of signing a contract with Google or OpenAI in order to remain relevant in the AI race.
Beyond some vague promises about some supposedly cool AI coming out in 2024, Cook has yet to articulate a “cohesive larger vision” that makes Apple part of this new computing era. And yes, I know that a company the size of Apple’s has to release rinse-and-repeat iPhones and a million sizes of iPad. These are the realities of a business of global scale, where the spreadsheets win. But without the vision Jobs spoke about, Apple just becomes what it is now: a massive peddler of commoditized consumer electronics and services that are practically indistinguishable from the competition’s. Just look at how Sony did exactly that.
One more (crazy) thing
Which takes me to my one more thing.
It’s time for the board to get a new leader that can provide that “cohesive larger vision” that Jobs articulated. If Apple wants to avoid becoming the new Sony, if it wants to change the world once again, if that’s even still the goal, it needs someone who has unmatched design and product sensibility. Apple needs someone who can look beyond the profit line, the cash hoarding, and even the immediate technological possibilities of today and ask the right questions.
There are still a lot of problems to solve in AI. There’s still the opportunity to make what OpenAI or Google haven’t yet made: a seamless, intuitive, and profoundly human experience with AI at its core. Great, vision-driven, consumer-focused design is the only way Apple is going to get there.
And without another Jobs in the world, here’s a wild idea to make this vision happen: Cook should buy OpenAI and LoveFrom. Then resign and get Sam Altman and Jony Ive in control. Maybe he makes himself president of the board. Altman is no Jobs. He doesn’t have the articulate charm. But what he has done at OpenAI has certainly proved that he has the instinct and the ability to conjure a “cohesive larger vision” for users. You might even say the kid has that young Jobs spark (he did get kicked out of his own company after all). And Ive . . . well, Ive is Ive. Everyone loves Jony. He’s design personified. He’s Dieter Rams with an ASMR voice and accent that makes my knees weak.
Together, these two can conjure the larger vision that Apple desperately needs. They are certainly capable of creating the “Next Big Thing”—in fact, they are already at work on it. Using Apple’s coffers and the infinite power of its current ecosystem, they can bring design back to the company and usher in the biggest technological revolution that humanity will ever see.