It makes sense considering Apple is all about diminishing physical technology (iMac: the screen is the computer). AirPods, Watch or something else as tiny or completely invisible will be the next platform, once they solve the performance and UI problem, which they will.
> Apple is all about diminishing physical technology
That's an interesting perspective. Theoretically, the best way to get rid of hardware is to move as much as possible to "the cloud"[1], yet Apple isn't very good at cloud. (At least, not as good as Google and Amazon.)
So let's say we're headed to a future where the only physical electronics anyone owns are wearables: watch, glasses, ear buds. No phones, tablets, laptops, or desktops. Just wearables.
In that scenario, who wins? Apple is best suited for making that hardware (by a long mile), but Google and/or Amazon are better suited for handling the software in the cloud.
I'd place my bets on Apple catching up on cloud faster than Google or Amazon catching up on hardware.
However, if we took it a step further and went full Mana[2], tapping right into the nervous system, my bet would be on Google winning that one. They have the cloud capabilities and expertise, but Alphabet also has some experience in health and biology (if I'm not mistaken).
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[1] I know, I know. "Cloud" is just someone else's computer. It's also more than that.
I think apple is very good at cloud. They don't sell cloud services so comparisons to GCP or AWS is unfair, but their cloud integrations are pretty top notch from my perspective. My phone backs up automatically. My photos are available on all devices with the swipe of a single slider. iCloud is so tightly integrated with their products that a lot of people don't even know they are using it. I think that's a pretty good implementation of cloud.
I would argue that Apple has fewer cloud products, but most of their cloud products are very good. Amazon and Google have many cloud products of varying degrees of quality.
> Apple is all about diminishing physical technology
That's an interesting perspective
It's Steve Jobs' perspective. He talked repeatedly about technology disappearing into the background, and one day we would have technology so good that we wouldn't even see it. It would disappear into the walls.
To me, it's the ultimate expression of making computers work for us, not the other way around, which is mostly what we have now.
> Theoretically, the best way to get rid of hardware is to move as much as possible to "the cloud"[1]
An alternative view is that Apple’s biggest product puts enough compute in your pocket to make “cloud” unnecessary in a lot of cases. My phone is somewhere between a t3.medium and a t3.2xlarge (based on ram and cpu cores respectively). That can provide a lot of local compute for my wearables. And those wearables are gonna need network anyway, so either that all end up with 5G cellular radios (and 4/3G fallback) and enough battery to run that, or one device provides the network hub and the tiny things in your ears and the glasses sitting on your nose can have lower power radios and smaller batteries.
I reckon watches/glasses/earbuds(/cars/tvs/etc) all relying on a phone is a reasonably sensible model, rather than each of those devices having completely stand alone capabilities.
(And, the idea of Google tapping into my nervous system??? No thanks... I’ll proudly be a data center smashing neo-Luddite before that happens to me...)
I really enjoy the data addons for IPad and Apple Watch because they allow me to be connected without having a phone in my pocket. What I desire is connectivity (be able to see messages, make calls, etc), but iPhone often encourages disconnection via mindless scrolling. I enjoy the times I can get away from my iPhone, and I am not excited about this hub future you describe.
I actually think Apple is about integrating different hardware to create unique interface experiences which are cross-device. I suspect it's not going to be 'one technology' any time soon, it's going to be lots of devices working together seamlessly.
For example, if I am playing music on my Airpods from my iPhone and my phone is in my pocket, turning the crown on my apple watch is a really neat and intuitive way to change the volume. The first time I did it and it worked it felt like magic.
Similarly walking down a street and getting audio directions on AirPods almost works - but if that's combined with a small map on my watch it works much better - better than a phone.
But at the same time, neither a watch or Airpods are going to be the right way to send a private text message on a quiet bus, and because a giant new unifying technology isn't with us yet, I suspect a hybrid approach is going to be with us for a while.
