Making product to hurt his rivals is dangerous

Making product to hurt his rivals is dangerous

That’s a massive bummer, because (a) TV needs to be reinvented; and (b) Apple makes the best user interfaces in the world and is uniquely positioned to do something creative and exciting in this space; and (c) although the iPhone and are still booming, they won’t be forever, and Apple must conquer a new market and get working on the Next Big Thing.
That said, there are still some exciting (sort of) new things coming out of Cupertino. Here’s a rundown of new products, and some lessons we learned from this week’s announcements:
1. Apple just announced the best computer it has ever made.
The new 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display, the flagship of Apple’s product line, boasts a gorgeous screen with a mind-blowing 2,880-by-1,800 pixel count. It may be the most beautiful display ever created, nicer than the one on the new iPad. The new portable is almost as thin as a MacBook Air, weighs 4½ pounds, runs a super-fast quad-core processor, and uses flash storage instead of a hard disk drive. Downside: all that goodness comes at a pretty steep price—$2,200 for the cheap version, $2,800 for the high-end model, which has a slightly faster processor and more storage space.
2. Apple is making desktop and portable computers look more like mobile devices.
A new flavor of Apple’s Mac operating system, code-named Mountain Lion, takes on more than 200 new features, including some that make a Mac look and feel more like Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS. Apple has tossed out iChat, its IM system, and replaced it with iMessage, an SMS-style app originally created for the iPad and iPhone. There’s a new notification system that alerts you to new email or Twitter messages, and a dictation feature that lets you do things with voice commands, the way you can on an iPhone with Siri. There is a built-in connection to iCloud, Apple’s online storage service, and built-in links to social networks, so it’s easier to share stuff on your social sites. And it will be easier for a Mac to share documents and photos with Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Mountain Lion ships in July.
Desktop computing is dead.
Well, maybe not completely dead. But almost. How do we know? Apple spoke not a word about the iMac. And after the keynote Apple quietly updated the specs on its high-end Mac Pro and called it “new,” but the changes were so small and so ridiculous that hardcore Mac fans were outraged. The Mac Pro, which can cost nearly $4,000 in some configurations, hasn’t really been updated for two years.