Apple Might Be Having Its Windows Vista Moment, Says Analyst

Is Apple experiencing a “Vista-like drift into systemically poor execution?”

That was a question posed by well-known technology analyst Benedict Evans, in a recent blog post covering Apple’s innovation and execution, or seemingly lack thereof as of late. He is referring to Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, which was widely criticized when it launched in 2007 due to software bugs, performance issues, frequent warning dialogs, polarizing design changes, and several other problems.

Evans said Apple stumbled with the Vision Pro headset, which he believes was not ready to launch. Then, it previewed personalized Siri features at WWDC last year that were merely conceptual, and are now delayed.

“This is a concern,” said Evans.

His thoughts on the Vision Pro:

The Vision Pro is a concept, or a demo, and Apple doesn’t ship demos. Why did it ship the Vision Pro? What did it achieve? It didn’t sell in meaningful volume, because it couldn’t, and it didn’t lead to much developer activity ether, because no-one bought it. A lot of people even at Apple are puzzled.

He said the personalized Siri delay is a “mirror image” of the Vision Pro situation:

Apple showed a demo, and it only does demos when things are nearly done, and it said it would ship ‘later this year’ and it never misses deadlines like that. So we should be using it, today.

And now we find that we didn’t really see a demo, only a mock-up of a great concept, and that this product won’t ship until maybe late 2025, and possibly (going by the rumour-mill) 2026, or even 2027.

All of this led to his “Vista-like” comment:

The failure of Siri 2 is by far the most dramatic instance of a growing trend for Apple to launch stuff late. The software release cycle used to be a metronome: announcement at WWDC in the summer, OS release in September with everything you’d seen. There were plenty of delays and failed projects under the hood […] but public promise were always kept. Now that seems to be slipping. Is this a symptom of a Vista-like drift into systemically poor execution?

Nevertheless, Evans acknowledged that critics have been claiming that Apple is no longer innovative since at least the 1980s, and that the company has historically continued to deliver more innovative and category-defining products over the years. Still, he said he is left wondering if that Apple still exists today.

Evans’ full blog post, highlighted by Techmeme today, is worth a read.

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