I wish Apple would spend some more R&D money fixing up their Mac application-level software, which in my opinion has been on a gradual decline since about 2005.
More seriously though, Apple’s revenue is much higher than these companies, and their R&D budget is still in the same order of magnitude (larger than Qualcomm or Facebook, about the same size as Google). So the answer here seems to be that they have a more efficient business model or participate in larger markets than Facebook or Qualcomm or Google.
Comparing Apple to Qualcomm, Facebook, and Google is a mistake.
Apple is a consumer electronics company. Typically consumer electronics companies don't R&D their components. iPhones use Qualcomm baseband chips. Apple does design some of their components, but that's actually atypical for a consumer electronics company. Even then, Apple needs someone like TSMC to fabricate them.
So a lot of Apple's revenue goes to buying components of companies that are spending a lot on R&D. Qualcomm is making the components. They are doing the R&D because they have to. TSMC is R&Ding building 14 nm chips. Hynix is creating bigger NAND flash drives.
Google and Facebook are different because they sitting on monopolies that print money. They also do much more in house because it's easier to.
Apple has some ability to use their size and existing products to capitalize on new technologies. But it's probably better to just return their profits to their stockholders and let the market fund new R&D.
Then again a lot of cool tech came from monopolies playing around excess profits (Bell Labs, Xerox, etc.).
Then again a lot of cool tech came from monopolies playing around excess profits (Bell Labs, Xerox, etc.).
But notoriously, a lot of cool tech that was developed at Bell Labs, Xerox, and Kodak ended up being so severely misunderstood by upper management there that outside companies were the ones to develop and sell products based on the new technology, while efforts to do so in house were practically or actually discouraged. These include such game changers as Object Oriented Programming, WYSIWYG word processing, Graphical User Interfaces, and Digital Cameras.
However it happens, Apple is good at taking R&D, no matter where it originally happened, and creates game changing products out of it. One could argue that this is baked into the very DNA of the company. (Two of the oldest examples: Microprocessors ==> Personal Computing, and Graphical User Interfaces.) If you like, think of Apple as the anti-Xerox. It's not the company that spends tons of cash on internal R&D, misunderstands it, then winds up being unable to capitalize on it. It's the company that can take anyone's R&D or idea, understand the essentials of it, then executes great products.
Why be the company that invents something, when you can instead be the company that profits from it?
Apple designs its own microprocessors, numerous sophisticated connectors, extremely small speakers, clicking hardware, touch sensors, metal plating processes, etc.
While they partner with folks like Samsung, I don't think its fair to say that they only design "some" components. They are industry leading in many areas, including batteries.
It's an ARM core manufactured by TSMC or Samsung, but neither of those caveats remove "maker" from Apple's role.
Note that Apple is part-owner of ARM Holdings, and that no one except IBM, Intel, and the government have their own fabs these days. Samsung has their own fab, but Samsung also makes tractors -- they're in hugely disparate businesses.
Just like everyone else, Apple does not fab their own chips. But unlike most others, they do design their own chips.
If Apple saw a competitive advantage in running their own fab, they would do so. I'm not sure what definition of "make" you're using here, but if it's just the production part you're talking about, then ok.. Correct but not strategic, in the scheme of things.
Would it be rational to assume that even Apple has a hard time coming by quality people and all their A players are already busy laying the ground work for whatever product category they are about to enter next?
For example, if that might be a car they will need much better software and that from day one, otherwise people will die. The lack of polish on OS X might be an indication that they are working on something big. Not necessarily big for us, but a huge effort for them.
I assume that’s a big part of it. It’s disappointing though, because there are huge possibilities for user interface improvement in systems like file managers, “office” software, web browsers, image/video/audio/&c. tools, developer tools, and so on, for someone willing to invest serious time and money in getting the core abstractions right instead of chasing shiny new small features.
It’s depressing that for example the file manager from BeOS is still better than anything we have in current machines, and that the OS X file manager isn’t fundamentally anything but a mashup of the ones from NeXT and from original Mac, with slightly different chrome.
In most cases, nothing in particular (the file manager is a bit different, as it needs work at the operating system level). But software projects competing in established markets which require many years of development to catch up to “industry standard” tools are hard to get off the ground, because new untested ideas are risky and there are few short-term payoffs. I would love to see new products competing in all these areas.
The one I’m most familiar with, Photoshop-style image editors, is based on core abstractions dating from research done on 1970s graphics workstations with far-too-literal adaptations of darkroom photography practices with 19th century ideas about how color works embedded deeply, and there is huge room for improvement if someone is willing to reimplement everything from scratch on better foundations. It’s a several-year multiple-developer kind of effort though.
I’m sorry about Apple in particular because it seemed like their Mac application software teams were on a roll from ~1997–2005, but have sort of stalled since then. (Some of what they’ve done since has been awesome, but overall in my opinion there’s been substantially less great stuff in the past 10 years than in the 8 years before that, and many apps feel severely neglected.)
I am thankful that Apple (with help from Qualcomm, Samsung, Intel, etc.) keeps pushing the hardware side though. The new stylus, “retina” displays, better battery life in thinner computers and tablets, etc. are wonderful.
Careful about ditching too many paradigms at once; you'll end up with something like Kai's power tools, which everyone agreed were revolutionary but always remained a curiousity. This industry does not like having to retrain.
But... it's still odd that Apple cares so little about OS X that there's been almost no effort put into the UI of Finder since forever. Even the most vocal Apple fans don't think much of it. (Nor did Steve Jobs, by all accounts.)
In 10.6 there was a rewrite from Carbon to Cocoa, but not much changed on the outside. So it's been reliably disappointing for nearly 15 years.
Considering Apple's exploding cash mountain and the relatively tiny resources needed for an update (at the absolute max, a month or three for design, and a handful of developers for a year for implementation) it's hard to understand why there's been no movement.
It’s purposefully very simple, as I hope to not expand too quickly and make something new that is also complicated. But I actively develop it and have some interesting features in the works, such as something similar to Smart Folders. Also, I love users’ feedback!
Why spend resources focusing on the Desktop, when Mobile dwarfs it in size by orders of magnitude? Mac had around 7 billion in revenue last quarter report (http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy15datasum.pdf) but Mobile had 36 billon. 5x more.
Would it matter that much if you spend a bunch of resources to increase that 7 billion to 7.5 or 8? Are those resources better spent making the next 30 billion, or even just further servicing that 30 billion? No matter how much money you have, resources are always finite and must be spent accordingly. Even if its just mental resources.
May as well apply the same logic to Nvidia & AMD on Discrete GPU chipsets. Are the 30 million desktop discrete GPUs worth chasing compared to the 300 million mobile ones? Desktops seem to further increase their reliance on onboard GPUs as they service the majority of desktop needs well enough. Seems like everyone is chasing Mobile.
I don't see Apple as any different viewed in this light.
Desktop is still the tool to create Mobile. Both software and hardware. When I look at it this way it makes sense to me that Apple might want to invest in making it better.
It seems to me that you're ignoring some of what they're doing. For example, the latest version of Final Cut Pro is a big step away from the tradition of track-based video editing. As for developer tools, they've invested a lot in clang and even created a new language (Swift). Even Safari was aimed at cutting out the cruft from the browser (originally) to make it more streamlined and standards-compliant.
I wonder how much Apple's draconian employee secrecy policies hurt their recruitment. Developers that like to blog and contribute to open source are probably wary of joining Apple.
I think the car business is not where Apple should be looking. After all, once the driverless cars become a reality, people will not need to own their car. Transportation will become a service, rather than an "owned" product. Apple would have to totally reinvent itself to become active in such a market.
The issue is really incentives. If you have access to the capital of Apple, Google, etc. then it's simply giving a green light to spending more than might make sense, and doing so in a way that makes sense.
Instead of a more efficient business model, I'd offer that it's actually the difference between being a hardware and software company.
Being a year or two late in software can often mean you product never has a chance to disrupt the first to market (assuming roughly equal quality product). Contrarily, Apple has shown time and again they can be several generations behind in specific technology (until they can "get it right") and still maintain demand for their products.
What about their margins ? It seems commonly accepted that Apple has much better benefits for every piece of hardware they sell than any other players.
More seriously though, Apple’s revenue is much higher than these companies, and their R&D budget is still in the same order of magnitude (larger than Qualcomm or Facebook, about the same size as Google). So the answer here seems to be that they have a more efficient business model or participate in larger markets than Facebook or Qualcomm or Google.