It seems like Apple has forever been a household name nowadays. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it cleans the floor in the MP3 arena, and Apple Inc. has made it’s place in history with the elegance of it’s iPods and iPhones respectively. However it has not been plain sailing for this company, and I believe Apple Inc. could indeed be making the same mistakes of it’s past.
Apple was not always the success it seems today. See how many Apple products you can name before the original iPod in 2001. I’m sure the Fanboys will be shouting ‘Apple I-III’ or ‘Lisa’, none of which, may I point out were particularly awesome. This is probably where I should point out that Apple started on 1st April 1976. Microsoft was started almost exactly 1 year previous on the 4th of April ‘75. I repeat the question: how many Microsoft products can you name before the turn of the century? It doesn’t take much more than being over a certain age to remember Windows 95, 98, 2000; Encarta(s), Microsoft Office Suite, several online services including MSN Messenger. I’m not going to suggest that everything Microsoft has done has been good or even well recieved, but it would be impossible to suggest that Microsoft has not changed the face of modern-day computing.
After Steve Jobs was ousted from his own company due to infighting, Apple sunk even lower than before. The Macintosh had been out ahead for a period of time, but lack of innovation on a large scale, meant they were overtaken by Microsoft and it’s Windows platform. It would be many years before this company returned to any decent profitability.
In the late ’80s Apple brought out the ‘Newton’ which is said to be the grandfather of the iPhone. A terrible device in so many ways, summed up exactly where the company was. Floundering. It was only the return of Steve Jobs that saw a turn around in buy-ability. The iMac was introduced, which were the bright-coloured-backed computers that can still be seen around in films of the age. The dawn of development had started at Apple and with the success of the iPod, the company moved it’s goal-posts away from computing to consumer electronics. So much so that in 2007, Apple Computer Inc. dropped the middle word in it’s title.
The iPhone was a revolution. No question. It not only pushed the mobile phone market forward to the 21st century, but was a quantum leap in the quality of build, in touch-screen smartphones. The software was good if not yet polished, but had the capacity, with the huge app. catalogue brought out a year later to be ever-compelling. The subsequent releases of the 3G, 3GS and 4 all took this platform on a stage. But here I find the problem. Apple of 2010 is doing what Apple of circa 1987 did. It is stagnating through lack of innovation. The iPad runs the same software as my iPod. Apple is not going to take a chance and change the whole thing at the risk of losing everything. Unfortunately, risk is what has defined companies. It’s the reason many products today exist. If Apple don’t take a few risks soon, people who can buy from an array of cheaper, Google-powered Android phones (that can be held how they like) will do and Apple will be overtaken again, all because it was sitting back and admiring it’s current glory.
It would be insane to assume Apple is over, but I believe the road from here may well be harder than Apple and Jobs would like to think.
David Cameron sat down at his desk in Number 10 just over a month ago and could probably struggle to grasp how he had managed to become Prime Minister just as the country was going to have to face some of the worst cuts it has ever known.
The £6billion announced cuts by George (Gideon) Osbourne recently was a teaspoon in an ocean of what has to be done. Less than a teaspoon. The National Debt currently has an interest of £42billion. Six billion pays off less than 1/7 of the interest on the debt.
Whatever you may or may not say about David Cameron, in his shoes is not somewhere many people today would want to be. In his own words the coming cuts ‘will affect the lives of everyone in Britain’. He is introducing a Canadian-style X-Factor, where each Department has to go before a team of high-ranking ministers and explain why they believe that their department should receive the money that they do. This system worked in the mid-nineties in Canada, when the then government turned a debt of close to 12% of GDP into a surplus.
Canada however, had the neighbouring USA, which at the time was going through an economic boom under the eyes of Clinton and piggy-backed on it’s success. Our neighbours, the Eurozone, could not be said to have had the same luck recently. At least there’s the Italians to match Clinton’s sleaze levels..
When the cuts happen they will be fast, and they will be deep. There is no getting away from the fact that we have been living on borrowed money for far too long. As soon as confidence is lost in consumers (we British do like to worry) the markets will follow the trend. As soon as the markets attenuate, so does the chance of Britain keeping it’s coveted AAA standard.
However, there is a get out. The national high that comes from winning things on a global scale is almost unmatchable. The buzz that surrounded the Olympic winners lasted for months and mulled over the collapse of Northern Rock and the start of the crisis. If England win the World Cup this Summer, people are not going to care being put out on the street, as long as they get to see the game. The longer England stay in, the more likely that the country will survive whatever Gideon can throw at us.