It’s January, which means it’s time for some tech pundits to declare that Apple has become boring and is in danger of falling far behind its rivals. We’ve seen two examples of this recently — one from Engadget and another from Business Insider — that ripped Apple for not having an immediate answer to Microsoft’s new HoloLens augmented reality headset. Yoni Heisler, however, argues that Apple has always been “boring” in the sense that it typically doesn’t publicly show off whatever “moonshot” projects it’s been working on behind the scenes.
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“Apple today is as ‘boring’ as it’s ever been,” Heisler writes. “If anything, Apple’s position as a ‘boring’ company is the result of adhering to a business philosophy rarely prized in Silicon Valley, a philosophy which values finished products that ship by the millions over unfinished futuristic prototypes which are more likely to take up space in tech blog headlines than on store shelves.”
If you want an example of this, consider Google Glass — when first unveiled in 2012, it was hailed as the next big thing in computing and people wondered when Apple would release a Glass-like product of its own (see here and here for examples). Fast forward to 2015 and the first iteration of Glass is seen as a complete joke that has been widely ridiculed by late-night comedians everywhere.
As we’ve observed in the past, Apple just operates differently from Google and Microsoft in that it keeps a tight wrap on its more experimental projects until it feels confident they’ll be hits with consumers. That doesn’t make Apple’s approach better or worse, of course, but it does explain why the company seems “boring” for long periods of time.
Heisler’s whole essay is definitely worth your time and you should check it out by clicking the source link below.
