2016 has not exactly been a spectacular year for Apple. There have been some nice highlights, like major changes to the MacBook Pro lineup and the wildly successful AirPods, but it hasn’t really been a year to remember for fans or investors.
Will 2017 be different? We know the next-generation iPhone will be big, but does Apple have more up its sleeve that will help turn around its fortunes and make the next year a spectacular one?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we battle it out over Apple in 2017.
Killian Bell: 2016 wasn’t a particularly good year for Apple, but this certainly isn’t the start of a miserable demise. I’m confident Apple will turn things around in 2017 and that we’ll be having a very different conversation this time next year.
The next-generation iPhone alone will be enough to revitalize Apple’s smartphone business. It’s the iPhone’s 10th anniversary, and you can be sure Apple has something special planned for that. This is probably the reason why this year’s iPhone upgrade was a little dull.
Recent rumors have promised the iPhone 8 will offer an all-new design with curved glass and the iPhone’s first OLED displays. And it almost certainly won’t be the only major refresh we see from Apple this year; we’re due big iPad and Mac upgrades, too.
I’m also expecting something completely new from Apple over the next 12 months. I don’t think we’ll see the fruits of its smart car efforts just yet, but I do think the company will finally dip its toes into virtual reality — probably alongside the iPhone 8.
How do you think 2017 will play out for Apple? Do you think it will do enough to turn its fortunes around?
Luke Dormehl: I think we can agree on this not being the beginning of the end for Apple. People have been predicting Apple’s demise for years and, simply put, it’s not going to happen. Just today I wrote about Microsoft’s early-2000s fall from grace after it hit its stock peak in December 1999. The following year its stock crashed by 60 percent. Today, it’s once again back to those 1999 highs.
As a business, Apple is way too big and diversified to fail. Yes, iPhones account for the majority of its revenue, but spin virtually any of its businesses off as their own company and you’ve got a giant in its own right. The fact that Apple can meet falling iPhone sales by growing its Services business shows that this — if its previous jumps hadn’t already shown it — is a company that can adapt.
But the question is whether the indisputably disappointing 2016 is like 1996: another poor year for Apple that prefigured the massive turnaround spurred on by Steve Jobs’ return? I don’t want to be a downer, but I’m not sure it will. Apple today seems to be a weirdly risk averse company. It appears to have lost interest in the Mac division — unlike the chances companies like Microsoft are taking with the Surface Studio; not got any worldchanging ideas for turning around slowing iPad demand; and appears content to iterate rather than innovate.
Could there be some massive secret project that could make the company exciting again in 2017, ten years after it shook the world with the iPhone? Of course, but nothing about Apple’s position today says that it’s a company which is interested in making big changes as it was forced to in the late 1990s. On a shareholder level, Apple’s still raking in money. I’m sure the AirPods shipping debacle will trigger sorting out some logistics and manufacturing problems… but you’re still going to have the same group at the top who have been running Apple for 15+ years.
Can you honestly say that you see major philosophical changes in Apple’s future? It doesn’t seem like a company that’s hungry any more… and that’s a problem for a brand that has always been viewed as giving us perfectly-tuned “must have” products that leave everyone else in the dust.
Killian: Well, not every company bounces back — just look at BlackBerry. But I certainly don’t think Apple will be following suit. As you rightly point out, it’s too big, and maybe it’s not taking big risks now, but I think it would be willing to if things weren’t going well.
Not everything Apple does is a safe bet, though. Just this year it made controversial moves like switching exclusively to USB-C and adding a Touch Bar to the MacBook Pro, and ditching the iPhone’s headphone jack to make those products better than ever before. And those things paid off; iPhone 7 is selling as well as Apple could have hoped for an incremental upgrade, and the MacBook Pro is Apple’s fastest-selling pro machine to date.
I don’t think Apple has lost interest in the Mac, either. It certainly seems like its focus has been elsewhere in recent years, but I don’t think you could call the 12-inch MacBook or the new MacBook Pro boring. What’s more, Tim Cook has promised exciting upgrades for the iMac line which will likely surface in 2017.
With regards to the iPad, I think Apple has probably just accepted that there’s little it can do to boost tablet adoption. Consumers just don’t buy them as frequently as they buy smartphones, no matter how exciting the latest iPad is. Until Apple makes a device like the Surface Pro that runs a hybrid of iOS and macOS (which we know it won’t do), the iPad will never be a laptop replacement.
I don’t think we can say Apple isn’t interested in making big changes, though. You only have to take a look at its latest patents to see Apple is working on incredibly exciting things behind the scenes. Most of them will never turn into anything, but it only needs one groundbreaking idea to surface in 2017 to change everything.
It’s hard to say whether you can predict big philosophical changes because Apple is so secretive. Do you think fans could have predicted big changes in the past?
Luke: I think it was easy to see that Steve Jobs was going to swing for the fences when he took over as CEO. It’s revisionist history to say it was obviously going to be as successful as it became, but it was obvious that it was going to be an exciting ride. Right from the off, he eliminated products that weren’t working on and started on a whole slate of new products. It was about ego as much as anything, and when you’re looking to make an impact in a stagnant industry it’s a very different scenario to the one Apple finds itself in today.
I think what you’ve identified are areas Apple could innovate in. I absolutely think it’s possible. They’ve got an insanely talented team there, arguably the best product designers in the tech industry, and a whole host of other people waiting in the wings. The cash pile is big enough that Apple could acquire — and acqui-hire — any company or talent it wants, and because so much revenue is being brought in by the iPhone it could afford to take risks elsewhere.
I hope 2016 is going to be a wakeup call. I recently wrote a post for Cult of Mac on all the ways Apple had disappointed in 2016. I thought I’d get torn apart in the comments section, but what was amazing is how many people agreed. And if you’re spending your days reading about Apple online, chances are that you’re a hardcore fan — who wants the company to do well.
Based on your post, let me turn it around and ask you whether you’re excited for 2017? And, if so, whether you think Apple is going to launch any products that will be more than incremental improvements? I really hope the iPhone 8 is great, but I also want Apple to remember that there is a userbase beyond people who buy phones. It seems like it’s forgotten that.
Killian: It’s a given that a new CEO is going to make big changes to a company that desperately needs saving. But can you think of a time since then when we could have predicted Apple was on the verge of making a massive shift?
I’m definitely excited for 2017. I think the iPhone 8 will be a massive upgrade, and I think we could also see some significant changes to the iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro. I’ve also mentioned that I think Apple will do something with virtual reality next year.
Let’s hand this over to the readers now. Do you think 2017 will be a big year for Apple, or do you think we’re in for another 12 months of less than spectacular product releases that we’ll be glad to see the back of?
Friday Night Fights is a series of weekly death matches between two no-mercy brawlers who will fight to the death — or at least agree to disagree — about which is better: Apple or Google, iOS or Android?
