Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks
I sold my Apple stock about 8 months ago. These are the relevant data points:<p>- Apple is a superb company but the stock price is still too high.<p>- Apple faces increasing competition from its own older phones that still work just fine.<p>- The older phones work just fine because Apple was caught crippling the older phones to preserve the life of the $20 battery inside the phone, and ended up having to simply replace batteries rather than sell new phones.  This should be considered a scandal on par with the Volkswagen emissions scandal.  I suspect the crippling was timed to make the shiny new phone seem all that much more appealing.<p>Note that Google recently rolled out Android updates that default a lot of battery killing AI features to &quot;on&quot; even on older devices, dramatically reducing their battery life.  This may have been an attempt to boost sales of new phones, or it may be that Google thinks the AI features are so compelling that they will drive new purchases.<p>- Apple has continued its practice of small, steady improvements to iOS, but has also dramatically increased the price of the phones. I had to chuckle when I realized I spent $1K on my last iPhone.  Wow.<p>I&#x27;d argue that the incredible Moore&#x27;s law-like growth of mobile technology has actually held back a lot of innovation, and now that the platforms are more mature we&#x27;ll see bigger investment in platform technologies that were risky before when the target devices two years out were largely unknown.<p>Apple has still shied away from trying to defend its market share by entering the low end market.  Like Github&#x27;s decision (far too late, after Bitbucket nearly caught up) to offer unlimited private repos, Apple will eventually enter the low end market, but only after its lunch starts to be eaten by competitors.<p>What happens when new big budget production apps don&#x27;t prioritize iPhone by default as the first platform to launch on?  Apple has no strategy to deal with this, and has neglected its development tooling substantially.  This is basically the position Microsoft was in (and a nearly identical strategy) right before it took its own nose dive.<p>Apple should:<p>- Release a $199 iPhone as quickly as possible, and a $199 iPad also.<p>- Team up with Facebook to make React-Native a first class citizen for iOS development, even if this is a hostile fork and a blessed version released directly by Apple.<p>- Institute some programs (battery replacement, etc.) that show that the devices are the only one anyone would ever consider buying.<p>- Work with software vendors to create apps that actually do require the latest hardware features and the newest phones. Most apps do not need these.<p>- Make the devices fully waterproof so I can throw mine in the dishwasher once in a while to get it clean.<p>- Create car radios that are &quot;CarPlay Only&quot; that can be retrofitted into vehicles that didn&#x27;t ship with one.<p>- Release a version of OSX that works (and is supported on) Intel NUC hardware.