Apple “Can’t Innovate Anymore, My Ass”, The Bare Facts From WWDC 2013

At its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple unveiled the highly anticipated iOS 7 operating system for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, to initially favourable review. This latest event was not the anti-climax like some in the recent past. Ok, so we were made to wait 90 minutes into the keynote before we got to see what we were all waiting for – but what is 90 minutes, when we’ve been waiting 18 months for any real progress with iOS.

While many have been downplaying the importance of this year’s WWDC due to a lack of new mobile device announcements, we believe Apple wanted to focus attention on the iOS platform. In our view, users will find the modern, flat interface, with its translucent, precision feel and gestures as well as improved built-in apps a satisfactory leap towards a new frontier for their iOS devices.

The refreshed user interface with iOS 7 was a big change through more striking colours, a simpler interface, translucency, new typography, full screen interface, “subtle motion” capability and more. Clearly, Jony Ive’s influence on iOS 7 was felt in a meaningful way with this release. Many new features come with iOS 7 and multi- tasking was one that we believe users will appreciate, along with AirDrop for peer-to-peer transfer, a new Siri voice and expanded intelligence, iOS in the car and other new features.

We believe that the improvements in iOS 7 should give iPhone users, and investors, a new reason to be excited about their iOS devices and subsequent new mobile devises. At the end of the day, we believe iPhone users get over new hardware within a few hours when updating their phones, but the OS is what mesmerizes people longer term. Overall, we believe the event sets the stage for new products over the next 6 quarters including iPhone 5S, a cheaper iPhone, a television, iPhone 6, iWatch, and possibly a payments solution.

We were left more underwhelmed by what we saw of the new Mac OS X (v10) – Mavericks, which by contrast felt evolutionary rather than revolutionary. From what we saw the UI for Mavericks in the most part has not changed noticeably from Mountain Lion and as entertaining as Craig Federici was, there was not enough crossover UI design from iOS 7 for our liking. It remains to be seen that by time of release this will change. A new iWork suite is due to be released later in the year. It seems logical for Apple to carry across much of the iOS 7 UI design to Mavericks as well as on iCloud (via browser).

So, what of Apple’s so called imminent demise?

“Can’t innovate anymore, my ass.’ Phil Schiller’s one-liner during the WWDC keynote just may be one of the best in Apple history. People may forget what drives Apple, but Apple does not. Back in the dark days, before Steve Jobs returned their products had become mediocre, uninspiring. The success of iMac proved that Apple was still able to innovate. From that point on, a series of successes put Apple into the black and removed all the question marks surrounding it. After iMac there was iBook, AirPort, iPod, MacBook (Pro), iPhone and iPad, products that fueled Apple’s continued rise, made one thing abundantly clear. Apple would continue to grow as long as it continued to innovate. Schiller’s 2013 affirmation of this belief suggests he and Apple are confident about their pipeline for a little longer yet.