What’s the next act for Apple? Let me start by listing off a partial list of somewhat expensive products that are painful to use, contain at least some electronics, and that would be relatively easy to improve:What Apple was good at was forcing the existing channel (e.g. AT&T with the iPhone) to make the changes needed to enable their insanely great game changing technology (said tongue in cheek but only partially tongue in cheek; they really forced some changes at AT&T). Some of the ideas here would require a similar change in the channel - i.e. cable TV delivery would have to be different or the idea above just wouldn't work.
Apple’s superior profitability seems to stem from the spectacular stupidity of other companies and sometimes industries.
- big-screen televisions and Blu-Ray players (whenever I want to use one the device decides that it is time for it to download and upgrade its software)
- cable television (flipping up and down through a list of 1000 channels?!?! How is it that an interface developed for a TV with a rotary knob to select among 10 possible channels was ported to the 1000-channel case?)
- compact digital cameras (a million buttons and menu items, almost none of them relevant to a photographer’s objectives in making a picture)
- Windows 8
- Android tablets other than Amazon’s (I have the Google Nexus 7 and it simply cannot hold a charge so it is essentially limited to being plugged in full time; ridiculously poor power management compared to the iPad)
- automobiles (start with the fact that the speedometer is front an center rather than a moving map; why would I care about my speed if I’m in heavy traffic (which I always am, since I drive in the U.S.) and/or if I am traveling at a legal speed (which the car knows from its navigation system database))
- houses (even a toilet knows when you’re standing in front of it; how come all of the stuff in a recently built house isn’t smart enough to detect the “nobody is home” case and turn down the heat?)
Interesting thought, though.