These changes in Apple’s hardware products best represent the “next decade”-Apple

In the first quarter of 2021 alone, Apple’s actual revenue reached 110 billion U.S. dollars, twice that of Samsung Electronics (56.4 billion U.S. dollars) and nine times that of Xiaomi (11.9 billion U.S. dollars); Years ago, Apple’s performance in the first quarter of 2011-26.7 billion US dollars, is also a huge increase of four times.

Every hour in the past, Apple has made $52 million in the hands of users around the world. When you click on this article, Apple is also continuously “sucking money” from all over the world.

From a business perspective, Apple, led by Cook, has handed over an answer that is sufficient for investors to be impeccable, but the controversial voices about Apple in Cook’s era have never disappeared in the past decade.

By August 2021, Apple in the “Cook era” has been accompanied by countless controversies and cheers for ten years; whether it is the existing iPhone / iPad / Mac series hardware in the Jobs era, or after Cook took over Apple, New products such as Apple Watch/AirPods released have become product series with important market shares in their respective fields.

But these are the answers given by Cook in the first ten years, and the development layout of wearable devices such as Apple Watch and AirPods, as well as the iPad’s exploration of application ecology and hardware, represent to a large extent the future of Apple. Ten-year development layout.

AirPods: a star product that stands out from the crowd

The moment the first-generation AirPods debuted on stage, there was a lot of controversy: when Apple released the first iPhone with a 3.5mm headphone jack in 2016, the iPhone 7, the first-generation AirPods appeared on the same stage naturally. It is understood by many people that Apple’s move is just a new method of “gathering money” found outside of the iPhone. At the time when this shift was not yet accepted by mainstream users, the AirPods priced at 1,000 yuan were naturally pushed to the forefront. Within a period of time just released, no matter which social media platform, you can see a lot about The mocking comments of AirPods, few people are really optimistic about the long-term development of this product.

However, in the few years after its release, AirPods successfully relied on the almost seamless connection experience in the Apple ecosystem, excellent non-inductive design, extremely low latency when used with iPhone, and the best comprehensive experience to make its sales and the market. The feedback “drives low and walks high” together, and finally stands out in the wireless headset market.

Later, Apple also launched more high-end noise reduction products such as AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. And by adding “spatial audio” and other functions to the iOS/macOS operating system, the actual experience of the AirPods series products is further improved.

Even when TWS true wireless earphones have become a boom, and even a pair of digital peripherals for all people, AirPods is still one of the best true wireless earphones with the most comprehensive experience; the insensible experience makes many AirPods users even longer Wearing time will not be noticed, and it has become the same “necessity” as glasses and watches.

At the same time, judging from the current information from the industry chain, AirPods will also provide users with more health detection functions by adding accessories such as ambient light sensors in the future. These will allow AirPods to be combined with Apple’s more intelligent hardware and software services. More closely updated content.

Apple Watch: “The next decade” in Apple’s eyes

From the original Apple Watch update to the present, it has gone through six hardware upgrade iterations in six years. Even within Apple, it is difficult to find such a hardware product with a “big win” in market share.

Wear OS led by Google may be the only rival that is ecologically capable of competing with Apple Watch. However, due to the fragmentation of the Android system and the wobbly development of Wear OS within Google, Apple has not appeared in the smartwatch market today. Watch is a real competitor.

In the early stages of development, Apple Watch also made many attempts under the framework of smart watches: in previous generations of Apple Watch publicity, Apple often emphasized the attributes of Apple Watch as a “fitness aid”; Apple also tried to use it in Apple Watch Replicating the success of the traditional watch industry, it launched an 18K rose gold case version with a luxury jewelry positioning and a price of up to RMB 120,000.

But even if the Apple Watch is already second to none in the traditional smart watch market, the awkward positioning of the smart watch itself limits the sales of the Apple Watch; but Apple’s positioning of the Apple Watch is obviously more than just a smart watch.

After the initial exploration of positioning, Apple began to insert more and more health monitoring functions into Apple Watch: from heart rate detection to cooperation with medical institutions/universities, with the help of Apple Watch hardware, a series of medical applications The researches have proved Apple Watch’s determination to bet on the direction of health monitoring.

For Apple, the iPhone can be regarded as a money-making machine for the next ten years, but Cook has repeatedly stated that he hopes to build the Apple Watch into the world’s largest healthcare platform, based on existing personal health test data. As long as Apple still hopes to treat healthcare as a new business direction, Apple Watch will always be an important part of the “next decade.”

iPad: The future is not “turned into a computer”

In the era when Jobs was at the helm, the iPad has always been considered by Apple as the “personal computer of the next era”, which can replicate the revolutionary success of the iPhone in the computer market through interactive methods such as touch.

But in Cook’s ten years as CEO, even though the iPad product line has made many adjustments that “contrary to the ancestral motto”, whether it is in the press conference or in advertising, the iPad’s various “touch porcelain” PCs have always been Apple’s The focus of iPad publicity has also resulted in many controversial issues caused by definitions.

Unlike Apple’s desperate effort to shape the impression that “iPad can be equivalent to a computer”, the iPad’s experience is actually subject to the attributes of iOS’s own mobile operating system for a long time; this is the case even after Apple’s release of iPadOS in 2019 No obvious change is seen.

Compared to making the iPad itself a real computer, Apple has been trying to find the product positioning of the iPad itself in the past few years, so that the iPad can find a unique use scenario between the computer and the mobile phone.

In the 2019 WWDC, Apple announced the iPadOS at the same time that it also released the “Side Air” function: Let the iPad become a secondary display of the Mac computer, without data cable transmission, can also be done directly on the iPad using touch/writing methods More actions.

In 2021, this feature has been further added, introducing the Universal Control feature, allowing users to directly use the Mac keyboard and touchpad to control the iPad. The whole experience demonstration looks very simple and seamless, and it can even locate the positions between different devices in real time, without manually setting the device arrangement.

Even in the past few years, the iPad and Mac product lines have initially completed a huge change in hardware from Intel’s X86 architecture to self-developed ARM architecture processors, but the deeper changes still come from Apple’s gradually thinking about iPad products. position.

At present, the core competitiveness of the iPad does not directly compete with traditional laptops. Even though the iPad has surpassed many thin and light laptops in performance, Apple still rejected the call for the integration of iPad and Mac.

Even if exploring the unique usage scenarios of the iPad, it seems to many people like a false proposition, but with the unification of the M1 chip and the development of cross-platform applications that Apple vigorously promotes, the productivity of the iPad is also rapidly increasing; we are likely to see It is not the day when the “iPad with macOS” is on the market, but the iPad itself has been continuously improved to make it as an independent product line to find a suitable balance between iPhone and Mac.

end

Even though the iPhone and Mac series have been the most profitable hardware for Apple hardware in the past decade, these can only represent the current hardware development trend in this decade.

In fact, Apple’s true innovation has never been limited to trying new technologies in the industry chain on its own hardware devices; it is five or even ten years ahead of its competitors to lay out the next generation of hardware ecology.

One of the most significant hardware changes under this strategy is that Apple uses self-developed ARM chips to unify the full-platform architecture. The same is true for Apple’s cross-platform application ecology after the unification of the hardware. These can well reflect the next decade of hardware ecology that Apple is building under the leadership of Cook in the past decade.

Of course, as far as hardware is concerned, we have also seen in the past some products that could not be overcome due to technical difficulties and were finally abandoned-they once attracted a lot of attention during the press conference presentation, but were finally confirmed by the official 550 days after the release. The cancelled Apple wireless charging board AirPower is such a product.

However, with stable sales, strong product strength, and advanced R&D support, Apple has proved in the past ten years that even as a commercial company, Apple still has the ability to provide users with first-class consumer-level digital experience. New product.

At the same time, Apple is also exploring more usage scenarios for more of its own hardware through its involvement in content services and health detection functions. This allows Apple’s smart hardware products to get rid of the original hardware shackles of watches and headsets and explore more usage scenarios. And possibility.

In 2007, with the help of the release of the iPhone, Jobs revolutionized the application scenarios of smartphones and established Apple’s status in the era of smartphones in one fell swoop.

Apple in the Cook era now also needs such a change.