As far as Cook. There is no next iPhone. The iPhone was a once in a lifetime product. There were already 1 billion phones being sold a year when the iPhone was introduced - Jobs said he wanted to sell 10 million phones and capture 1% of the market. The smart phone (not the iPhone) has 70-80% penetration. What we call an electronic communication device that’s always connected may change, but there is no larger conceivable electronic market.
As much as HN poo poos the Apple Watch and the AirPods, from a technical standpoint it is much more innovative than the iPad - the last product that was introduced under Jobs. Once you have the iPhone, using the same technology in something with less constraints was easy. The Watch is just the oppposite.
From a financial standpoint. The Watch already produced more in revenue and profit than the iPod at peak. As does the AirPods.
Not to mention that Apple could have never shipped in volume without Cooks supply chain management expertise.
Then there are the upcoming ARM Macs that will probably be the fastest personal computers in the industry in a year or two. The $399 iPhone SE is already faster than any Android phone at any price.
The iPad merely replicated the already known notebook and tablet workflow. The Apple watch originally tried to be a smaller iPhone (and failed at it), but Apple was smart and innovative enough to pivot to a new workflow which smartphones can't easily replicate.
Technically? It’s easy when you have more space, larger batteries and higher thermal limits to have more features. But the original iPad had technically inferior processor (256MB RAM vs 512MB than the iPhone that came out 3 months later).
The Watch being smaller, it’s technically much more impressive that it has an always on display, cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, heart rate sensors, altimeter, gyroscope, 32GB Storage, and it still gets 12-16 hours of battery life.
While the Apple’s A series is already 2 or 3 years ahead of everything else in the mobile market, nothing is even coming that close to the S series chip.
As much as HN poo poos the Apple Watch and the AirPods, from a technical standpoint it is much more innovative than the iPad - the last product that was introduced under Jobs. Once you have the iPhone, using the same technology in something with less constraints was easy. The Watch is just the oppposite.
From a financial standpoint. The Watch already produced more in revenue and profit than the iPod at peak. As does the AirPods.
Not to mention that Apple could have never shipped in volume without Cooks supply chain management expertise.
Then there are the upcoming ARM Macs that will probably be the fastest personal computers in the industry in a year or two. The $399 iPhone SE is already faster than any Android phone at any price.