Apple: Ten Years Forward
If I were Tim, the next ten years would primarily be:<p>* Car; not happening.<p>* Connected home; this is a crowded space, but it also represents a class of products that people are willing to invest in, then keep for years; Apple is great at this. The most obvious product would be a thermostat, then extending into cameras, sensors, and door locks (imagine a camera which uses the FaceID laser array tech to build a 3d representation of some interior space, for more powerful object detection). The reason why I think this is an &quot;obvious&quot; next play is because it very naturally leads to a new billable service; right now, iCloud storage plans include some amount of homekit secure video storage, but its easy to imagine a new &quot;Apple Home+&quot; plan which includes that, plus other stuff like 24&#x2F;7 on-call security and advanced object alerting.<p>* AR; positioned primarily as a value addition to the iPhone like Airpods. I think this will be less popular among older adults, more among younger people. I&#x27;m only slightly interested, and I&#x27;m late-20s; people younger than me will be far more interested, and that does matter. For me: if they look enough like normal glasses, have some kind of health angle to them (idk, EDA sensor by the ear? read my brain waves?), and &quot;built-in Airpods&quot; via bone conduction tech, I&#x27;ll likely pick them up; I already wear glasses, why not make them smart.<p>* Watch; continue to grow sales by investing in health-focused monitoring and services. Noninvasive blood glucose would be the biggest possible thing they could do here, and would massively drive sales, even if it were isolated to a (even) more expensive &quot;Apple Watch Pro&quot;; anything below $1000 would be an instant buy for many diabetics, of which there are... so fucking many.<p>* General health; continuing to invest in preemptive detection technology. This class of tech, mostly algorithms and new sensors, is the biggest, safest, craziest moat Apple will ever build for itself. Its definitely a bit of a FUD marketing angle (&quot;Apple Watch can detect if you may be developing parkinsons&quot;, ok i never had that before but now I need it). Very curious to see whether Apple starts locking more advanced detection&#x2F;trends algorithms behind a subscription service (Health+, or another), similar to what Fitbit does; could see it go either way.<p>* Mac; there is <i>so much</i> potential in converting Windows users, between the value statement of M1 and the lukewarm response to Windows 11 (its still ~10&#x2F;90 split!). Gaming needs to be the short-term focus here. It just Makes Sense. A proton-like compatibility layer seems easily within the capabilities of Apple&#x27;s engineering team. Additionally, Apple should work with just a couple major developers to bring support to a few keystone titles. Combined with a large marketing push (its what Apple does best) and the continued graphics card shortage (no end in sight yet), this would be a relatively small investment to grow Mac marketshare by single or even double digit percentages. The value statement for developers is way too good, they just need a push; release on Mac, gain near-zero-configuration access to iOS, iPadOS, and Apple TV devices if it makes sense for your game.<p>* Fintech: An Apple checking account is inevitable I think (imagine Apple Cash, with a debit card and direct deposit, that&#x27;s all it takes, even a competitive interest rate isn&#x27;t necessary anymore). This will be an obscene source of liquidity for the company, as an entire generation of affluent young customers eschew traditional antiquated banking services. I don&#x27;t believe we&#x27;ll see them touch cryptocurrency in the next ten years; as another said in this thread, Apple is the Disney of computing. Crypto is still too &quot;weird&quot; for them, even looking beyond the environmental implications.<p>* VR; I&#x27;m much less certain Apple will ever get into VR, but I think the argument is stronger than many people admit. The technology is here already, unlike AR which still feels like people don&#x27;t know what it is. They have an extremely powerful SoC which can fit inside a Quest-like AIO (this is the current challenge Valve is facing competing with Oculus, but they&#x27;ll get there). Most critically: the only people who believe &quot;VR is for gaming&quot; don&#x27;t have a VR headset; VR&#x27;s strongest use-case, bar none, is exercise-gaming (this is why Oculus recently acquired Supernatural and Beat Games). That&#x27;s why I think it makes sense for Apple; its a nexus of two domains they&#x27;re very strong in today, and have expressed desire for growth.<p>In short, I don&#x27;t believe there will be a &quot;next killer product&quot; for Apple, or any company. The low hanging fruit has been picked, and the next phase of computing (more accurately, the one we&#x27;re in right now) is the &quot;last 10% is 90% of the effort&quot; work in making everything we already have do more, better.