Well, right now. Sort of. And other qualifiers.
There have been a spate of news articles lately squabbling about whether or not Apple has lost its mojo. I was going to sit down and spout off about that in typical fashion, but instead I’ll show this little infographic.
As you can see, there were five years between first beginning a new product line and bringing it to life. I’d make a pretty strong case that the iPad wasn’t a new product line but an evolution of the iPhone , as well as a return to the goal of the original project.
If we take these carefully arranged assumptions as true (watch my magic trick here), then we can go one step further and observe that at the time the iPhone was released, Apple was still a smaller company, R&D wise, than many and most likely could devote resources to one major new product at a time (I’ll back that up with observing that if development on a new project started in 2002 then that would be just a year after the iPod was released in 2001). Rolling along with that, that would mean that a new project would have gotten fired up around 2008 – 2010 (dependent on how much effort the iPad took). Which means we are in line for a new product sometime around this year which, let me check my notes, yep, they are promising.
But far more important is this: if I’m right (and I’ll bet you a donut I am) and new product lines were being developed shortly after the first iPhone, then señor Jobs was directly involved in those projects. Whatever the next few products are, people are forgetting that they will likely have been worked on for years beforehand.
This means we easily have one or two product cycles left before we actually start discovering what a Jobs-less Apple is like, one way or the other. That might not be the case if a horde of monkeys had magically taken over since Steve passed, but as we have all been made incessantly aware Apple is currently run by those who were most aligned with his vision. Further, even after these immediate new products, we’ll only get a chance to see the next round of new ideas another several years down the road.
So. I suggest we all take a big speculation chill pill when it comes to the future of Apple. Instead, we should speculate wildly about what is about to be released, because you know, rumors aren’t milling themselves.