Apple After Jobs: Pretty Much the Same as Ever ⇥ bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Farhad Manjoo, now writing for the New York Times:

The fact that we don’t know what Apple will do next could be evidence that it has run out of ideas. But you could have said the same thing late in 2001, just before it launched the iPod, or in 2007 just before it launched the iPhone, or in 2010 just before it launched the iPad.

Indeed, people did make such claims then, pointing each time to Apple’s slip into just making incremental improvements, and insisting each time that it meant Apple was done for. History hasn’t been kind to their predictions.

Could those critics be correct now? Sure. The technology industry is brutal, and Apple, like any other company, could fail. But the fact that Apple has gone four years without some category-defining new product isn’t evidence that Apple has lost its way. Instead, it mainly proves that Apple under Mr. Cook is operating just like Apple under Mr. Jobs.

He’s reviewing the tech world’s favourite book, but these three paragraphs are applicable to the predictions from all Apple doomsday prophets.