Apple’s Next Frontier

One of the mantra’s of Apple detractors is that Apple no longer can innovate. They point to Apple evolving products instead of breaking any new ground, and some maintain that Apple has not innovated much since the iPhone was released in 2007. They say that the iPad is just an overgrown iPhone. While the Apple Watch does break some new ground for them as a new product, they don’t give Apple many props since it was not the first smartwatch and its roots lie in health trackers that were in the market years before Apple introduced the Apple Watch series 1 product.

The big problem with this non-innovation argument is that it states that innovation is tied to brand new product introductions that define a new category of devices. It misses the concept of using breakthrough processors, camera features and specialized software that does more than evolving a product and gives them new functions and capabilities. At this level, Apple has innovated on all products they have released since the original Mac. What they I think they mean is Apple is not disrupting markets at a pace they would like while overlooking their innovation in semiconductors, design, and software.

It should be noted here that most companies are lucky if they can bring one breakthrough product to the market that defines a new category of products or services. In apple case, they have done this with the Mac by bringing to the market a GUI, Mouse and integrated software. The All-in-one candy-colored iMacs introduced a new computer design that changed the way desktop computers were created. The iPod brought digital music players to the masses. The iPhone birthed the era of the smartphone, and the iPad brought mobile computing to new levels of portability. Apple’s Watch has created the smartwatch category and helped define what it is and can do and is the #1 Smart Watch on the market today. All of these were disruptive and innovative.

Central to Apple’s ability to develop category-defining products and innovate is their control of the hardware, software, and services used to create and deliver these products to the market. As I wrote in last week’s Tech.pinions ThinkTank column, Apple’s vertical strategy in which they even create their processors also plays a big role in their ability to disrupt and innovate.

As one who has covered Apple since 1981 and tried hard to understand what Apple’s real value proposition has been to the industry, I would have to say that introducing new user interfaces has been one of the things they do best. With the Mac, they gave us a graphical user interface and the mouse. With the iPod, they created a new mobile interface that worked on a portable music player. With the iPhone, they introduced touch UI’s for navigation and most recently, added voice as a UI to access and get information from the all of their devices today.

So what will likely be Apple’s new user interface face frontier for disruption and innovation? I bet that it comes with AR and eventually glasses of some type that deliver a more personal approach to using AR apps. While voice will be a cornerstone of the UI, gestures will be the new “mouse” for glasses. With gestures, Apple will extend their role of advancing man-machine user interfaces that drive it into other products and mass market acceptance.

What comes after gestures is interesting to think about. Given that one of Apple’s core competencies is to bring new user interfaces to the market, perhaps the next big frontier will be brain driven interfaces. There is much work being done in this area in the field of medical science and its potential use by people who have disabilities that can’t type, use a mouse or any other normal ways to communicate and interact with computers. Maybe this UI comes out of Apples medical R&D and can be made part of their advancements in user interfaces in the future.

While Apple’s ability to disrupt has been at a slower pace than some would like, one would be hard pressed to suggest that they are not innovating in semiconductors, design, software and user interfaces. How they deliver AR and glasses will probably be their next disruptive act with gestures advancing their role in bringing new man-machine interfaces to the mass market. Moreover, should they ever master brain-to machine user interfaces, the implications for those with medical handicaps and even mainstream users could be dramatic.

Published by

Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin is the President of Creative Strategies, Inc. He is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981 and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba and numerous others.

One thought on “Apple’s Next Frontier”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *