Airpods-those dinky things we plug in the sides of our heads-did 3x Twitter's annual number just during the fourth quarter. The 2021 revenue of Twitter, the company that has drawn so much attention during the last month as Elon Musk has positioned a still-not-done deal to buy the company, was $5 billion. Apple sold 90 million pairs of the earpieces in the fourth quarter of 2021, accounting for something like $15 billion in revenue (Apple doesn't break these numbers out). Introduced in late 2016, the company's wireless Airpods earpieces have become ubiquitous and are an enterprise to themselves. One issue Apple has now, as a public company and the most valuable one on earth, is that for any innovation to matter to it as an enterprise, it has to cross a tremendous threshold in terms of potential volume.Дespite this constraint, Apple has found hits. That was certainly the case when it came to the headphone jack, particularly given that Airpods were in the offing.ДЄs for the book, the idea that Apple has run out of innovation juice is simply oversold. Even with a large chorus bemoaning some iPhone changes, such as when Apple removed the traditional headphone jack, the company usually appears prescient. The Macbook changes seem especially puzzling given the company's steady hand with iPhone design moves. Looking back, those all seem like nods to designers bent on the simplicity and dazzling nature of form before function. It wouldn't have ditched the magnetic power cord for universal USB-C. It wouldn't have favored a bizarre touch bar that looked cool but offered very little in the way of usefulness compared with traditional F1-F12 keys. If that was wholly the case, however, then Apple never would have adopted a terrible keyboard in the name of shaving a few millimeters off the thickness of its machines.

The article implies that the artistry and innovation inherent in Apple products has been stripped away in favor of cold business-school style economics and a focus on productivity and profit-a calculus that would favor product managment and plodding user stories over bold strikes of design. The Times recently featured an article adapted from the book that follows legendary Apple designer Jony Ive as he copes inside an Apple without Steve Jobs. It's an interesting dichotomy from the theme of a new book written by The New York Times' Tripp Mickle, вЂњAfter Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul.вЂќ Those in charge of the iPhone continually enhance it through efforts that are closely shepherded by product managers and a process that is considered the best of its kind.Д«ut when it comes to MacBooks, it seems the company's choices were not chosen for utility or actual users but instead driven by blind hunches and nods to overall form factor. Apple is like 10 highly successful product companies gummed together, including what is perhaps the most profitable product of all time, the iPhone.

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