‘Tis the season to be jolly — or, if you’re a tech writer hoping to score enough clicks to help pay off the post-Christmas credit card, ’tis the season to label this the worst year for Apple since records began.
From Gizmodo’s restrained “Everything Apple Introduced This Year Kinda Sucked,” to The Verge calling this the year Apple spent in beta, to Bloomberg banging the “lemon of the year” gong for the Apple Watch, pundits aren’t exactly being kind to Cupertino as 2015 draws to a close.
But, you know what? They’re dead wrong. This was the most important year for Apple since 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone.
Ever since Tim Cook officially took over Apple in 2011, people have demanded new product lines — and year after year we came away disappointed. Sure, we got new iPhones and iPads, each one incrementally better than the one that came before, but it felt like Cook was applying his undisputed operations wizardry to Apple’s existing products — making sure we got new versions of everything rather than having to choose between a new product category and an update of OS X, as happened with Jobs stealing Leopard engineers to work on the original iPhone.
Not this year. In 2015, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus continued to rocket upward in sales, before the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus debuted with the much-praised 3D Touch feature, which has the potential to fundamentally change the way we interact with our phones.
On top of this, Apple shook up its iPad lineup with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, whose Apple Pencil was dismissed as disastrous — until people actually tried it and labeled it a “must have” accessory.
But we also got whole new product lines with the debut of the long-awaited Apple Watch, which has received sterling customer-satisfaction responses and was one of the biggest sellers on Black Friday. We additionally heard intoxicating rumors of an Apple car hovering round the corner, and Apple continued its focus on growing its business in China.
The fact that the company was able to go in new directions without temporarily losing sight of its existing products, as it has in both 1984 (when the Mac debuted) and 2007 (when the iPhone debuted), is nothing short of miraculous.
On the strategy front, 2015 saw Cook maneuvering the chess pieces inside Apple. He brought his possible successor Jeff Williams forward. Jony Ive moved into a new “blue sky thinking” post similar to the creative role Jobs enjoyed. And Apple focused on enterprise, thanks to an IBM partnership and expansion into new markets like India.
Did all this innovation come without problems? Certainly 2015 wasn’t a perfect year for Apple. iPad sales declined further and that awful iPhone battery case caused us all to cringe, but there was so, so much more good than bad.
2015 saw Apple plant many seeds that promise to flower into things that will be become much, much more important in coming years. Dismissing 2015 as a disastrous year for Apple, when the company continued to innovate while smashing records in quarterly earnings, is like Steve Ballmer failing to see the potential of the original iPhone — which, incidentally, sold worse than the Apple Watch in its first year.
As we move into the futuristic wonderland of 2016, let me leave you with a few words from no less a sci-fi futurist than Douglas Adams, writing in 1984. “What I (and I think everyone else who bought [the original Macintosh]) fell in love with was not the machine itself, which was ridiculously slow and underpowered, but a romantic idea of the machine [and what it could become.]”
Dismiss Apple’s whole body of work for 2015 if you wish, but don’t come crying to me when you’re proven wrong in the long haul. And, while we’re at it, check the hordes of financial analysts predicting doom for Apple. There’s plenty of apocalyptic talk, but few have the courage to recommend selling your AAPL stock right this moment.
Whether you’re a blogger or a stock picker, it’s certainly easy and convenient to play the “Apple is doomed” game at the end of every year. It makes for sexy headlines, but you’d need a reality distortion field stronger than Steve Jobs’ to make me believe them.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
10 responses to “Why 2015 was Apple’s most important year since original iPhone’s unveiling”
I have high hopes for the Apple Watch. As long as smartwatches don’t die off entirely, I’m sure it will remain one of the best options available. However, I’m a little tired of hearing people say 3D Touch “has the potential to fundamentally change the way we interact with our phones”. I’ve been using the iPhone 6s Plus for nearly 3 months now, and I can honestly say this is pure nonsense.
It’s a nice shortcut to dive into a particular function here and there, but it is far from game breaking. I’m not saying it’s a gimmick – it’s useful in a small set of circumstances – but if developers were planning on using it to change the world, I’m sure it would have more solid uses by now.
The thing is that the apple watch like the iPhone a d the MacBook Air start slow and become hits because apple tends to improve a lot on each version which brings in more users and repeated ones. Why give you the best of the best loaded which coal ala Samsung when you create something good and usable but improve it over time when the tech is actually ready.
I will be totally honest. To me, it was the most disasterous year ever in Apple product history. The Apple Watch has great potential, but is not yet a great product. Same goes for the new MacBook. The iPhone has delivered nothing more than you’d expect in a “tock” release. The iPad Pro is suffering from trying to be the best of both, ironically what Tim Cook calls Microsoft products (that’s getting better reviews and sales). The Apple Pencil is a brilliant piece of tech, but limited to the iPad Pro. The Magic Mouse 2 and other accesories have questionable design decisions. Not to mention the battery case. But personally, my biggest disappointment was the AppleTV 4. The remote is poor (thumb fatigue and other issues), the interface not great and having to pay more for getting a worst experience is not good.
Note that I am not in the US, so some features of products listed are not available here. That’s no excuse though.
These bad designs will however not show in the financial results this year or next, but when people buy again, as underwhelmed customers.
I totally agree with you! People got exactly what they wanted. There are some people who’ll find a fault with everything.
Let’s be honest, “doomed” is the straw man some Apple fans throw out when criticism comes around. No one – at least, hardly anyone – is literally saying that.
But as a loyal Apple user of the past 13 years, I will say this. They used to get a “B” for breadth but nearly always an “A” for execution. They nailed most of what they turned their attention to, but they couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Macs, iPods, and OS X updates every 2 years. They didn’t have the biggest portfolio but nearly everything in it was polished, stable, and delightful to use.
Now for 2015, they’ve traded focus for breadth. Lots of new stuff, but none of it masterfully executed. I like my Watch, but its UI, performance, and apps leave a LOT to be desired. Apple Music’s design is the most scattershot software I’ve seen from them since well, iTunes. The Apple TV is slick, but the remote and Siri need a lot of work. For awhile there, by the time a stable release of iOS came out, we were already getting the NEXT version. Apple Pay works great, but availability is still a crapshoot, even in the US. Not to mention some of the most uncompelling, awkward keynote presentations of the past 10 years. Anyone remember HomeKit?
Maybe it’s our fault for always complaining about not getting this or that. Apple listened, and put tons of stuff out the door. This is what it looks like when Apple gets an “A” for breadth and a “B” for execution.
Amen! That’s my point exactly. I’ve been an Apple user for 25+ years, unlike most commenters. It feels just like the 90s, when all the Apple fans blew the Apple trumpet as the company pushed out more and more average products, even inferior ones, to the point of near bankruptcy. All the “doomsayers” are doing is warning them to tread carefully, but their warnings are getting lost between the deaf, dumb and blind crowd who refuse to see anything wrong. This is not a good space for Apple, this is the space where Samsung and others play. Apple is NOT about quantity, and it shows.
I think it’s an overstatement to compare today’s Apple to the 90’s Apple. At that point, they were on the brink of bankruptcy, had abandoned their focus on design, and didn’t have great leadership.
I hope it’s just a blip in focus followed up by polish and refinement – kind of like what Yosemite and iOS 9 did following the tumultuous redesigns of 2013-2014. I’d be surprised if 2016 didn’t bring a cleaner Apple Music with new stations, faster Core M MacBooks, iPad Pro software optimizations, a ton of Apple TV channels/apps, and faster & cheaper Watches.
Yes, maybe it’s an overstatement, or maybe not. Apple was near bankruptcy in the early 90s when they started pushing a wide range of average products, but it was this that lead them to it.
I’m hoping as much as you that it was a blip. But I’m also disappointed that Apple has started using real customers as beta testers, as this is what 2015 felt like. Apple was always late, because they tested and tested and tested until it was just right. 2015 didn’t feel like that, and that may leave a bitter aftertaste for many users.
What I think Apple needs?
Hardware:
– 3 iPhones (S, M and L), all offering more or less the same up-to-date tech and a minimum of 32GB storage.
– 3 iPads (S, M and L), as above. That would include the ability to use the Apple Pencil on all of them.
– 3 MacBooks (12″, 14″ and 16″), all with at least 2 USB-C ports and more power, with the top end the only model with a fan.
– 3 Macs (Mac mini, iMac renamed Mac and Mac Pro) for the desktop.
– 3 AppleWatches (S, M and L) in Sport or Classic, and dropping the Edition.
– 3 AppleTVs (As current, one with Airport and one with full modem and router) with a rethink of the clumsy remote (I still think the clickwheel should have been repurposed here).
– Accessories to be cleaned up and overhauled.
Software:
– Apple Music reworked.
– iOS refined for ALL iPads.
– tvOS reworked.
– watchOS refined.
– OSX to one again become macOS.
I think one of the bigger things for Apple, not mentioned in the article, is Apple teaming up with Citizens Bank for the iPhone Upgrade Program. It’s a huge deal for Apple, that takes back the complication carriers impose on yearly phone upgrades.
Also, while Apple Music is certainly late to the game, and added little to the acquired Beats Music, the fact that it’s integrated with your Apple devices is a huge win, and also admirable that they aren’t keeping Android users out of the loop. Bigger yet, their family plan pricing makes competitors like Spotify and the now defunct Rdio (RIP) look overpriced.
Can we just remember that we are talking about Gizmodo? Since the incident with the iPhone 4 they are known for ranting to Apple for no good reason