For most of 2013, we've been reading about Apple's supposed decline. As the weeks ticked by without any new products to speak of, the discontented din grew louder, declaring innovation was dead in Cupertino, with the ghosts of the iPhone and iPod forever haunting the halls at 1 Infinite Loop.
And yet, here we are. There might not have been anything revolutionary or groundbreaking about the recent spate of releases from Apple, but the lineup of products — iPhone 5C, iPhone 5s, iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina Display and Mac Pro — are some of the most perfect we've ever seen. You might say it's the start of a golden age for Apple, the ultimate confluence of design and performance reached after years of research and development on existing products, not new ones.
And it's happened before. If its critics would do a bit of homework, they would see that Apple's innovations aren't born out of thin air; they follow a pattern of intense focus and fine-tuning. In short, Apple looks to its own products for inspiration.
Let's go back 10 years. The somewhat uneventful Macworld 2004 keynote was wrapping up when Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPod mini. Carved out of a block of anodized aluminum, it took the impossibly small iPod and shrunk it even further, sacrificing none of what made the original player so great. It was, to borrow a term from Jony Ive, a concentration, not a reduction.
Apple spaced out its product introductions a bit more back then, but it joined a stellar lineup that included the iMac G4 and aluminum PowerBooks, and later that year, the incredibly compact iMac G5 made its first appearance, along with a new iPod that took most of its design cues from the mini. You might say it was the start of a golden age for Apple.
You see the pattern? They might grab all of the headlines, but Apple's most innovative products are only the start; it isn't until years later when the true vision begins to take shape, leading to the next big thing. Just look at the iPhone 5S and iPad Air — comparatively, the original iPhone and iPad seem like cheap knock-offs. It doesn't follow a strict timetable, but as Apple refines its existing products, it inevitably reaches a plane where performance and design wholly mesh, and that's when innovation is born.
Take the iMac. There's no question that Apple was in serious trouble due to some poor decisions in the years leading up to its release, but Apple's design wasn't the problem. There was the PowerBook, with its sleek black enclosure and industry-leading trackpad; the Newton, which oozed innovation; the space-age Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh; and the compact Color Classic. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a golden age, but it was the best Apple had looked in some time.
Jony Ive was definitely letting his presence be known, and the iMac represented his finest work. But while it was most certainly a watershed moment in personal computing, there wasn't anything about the iMac that we hadn't seen before — the all-in-one design had most recently been seen in the TAM and the PowerMac G3, the blue translucent plastic made its debut a few months earlier in the ill-fated eMate, even the handle was a throwback to the original Macintosh. Ive just saw how it all fit together into the next big thing.
And that's how it is with Apple. The iMac and its iApps begat the iPod. The iPod's portability and simplicity begat the iPhone. The iPhone's sheer brilliance begat the iPad.
And the iPad's power and versatility will beget the iPad Pro.
Initially I thought the rumors of a 12-inch tablet were ridiculous, but when I considered how many times a day I instinctively reach out to touch my MacBook, it makes a little more sense. Both the Mac and the iPad have reached a ceiling of sorts: the retina MacBooks, the all-day Airs, the mind-blowing Pro, the unbelievably thin and light iPads. They've all reached a certain level of perfection.
And that's when Apple's innovation comes shining through.
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