That hasn’t been the case at Apple for well over a decade: New hardware appeared right at the beginning of the year with the MacBook Pro and Mac mini, although the manufacturer otherwise avoids the weeks after the big Christmas business for product launches. It quickly became clear that the Macs with the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips should have been on the market in autumn 2022, but were delayed by several months. After that it got very quiet, and Apple seems to have done without a “special event” with new products, which usually takes place in March or April at the latest.
Apple’s spring events aren’t usually fringe events just to unveil iPhones in a new color. After all, last year’s keynote brought a completely new desktop model with the Mac Studio, which closes the huge gap between Mac mini and Mac Pro. While the professional notebooks have now jumped on the M2 train, the first update of the Mac Studio is still pending, as is the long overdue switch to the Mac Pro, which is the last Mac to still be delivered with Intel processors – instead with Apple chips.
Supply chain upside down: relocation away from China
It is clear that the upheavals and problems in the supply chain triggered by the corona pandemic have messed up a lot and have also left their mark on Apple. It wasn’t long ago that the group had to warn of massive delivery problems with its iPhone flagship – and thus by far the most important product – which ultimately weighed on the business result in the Christmas quarter. The triggers were lockdowns in the huge Chinese factories where contract manufacturers assemble the hardware for Apple.
The lockdowns are now over, but Apple’s supply chain is facing what is probably the biggest upheaval in recent decades: In order to reduce its immense and increasingly risky dependence on China, the company is accelerating the relocation of manufacturing capacities to other countries such as Vietnam and India (see also giant market and Production location India: Why Apple breaks away from China).
But it’s not just in the distant supply chain that things are crunching, but also at home in Apple Park: Unlike the other US IT giants, Apple has so far refrained from mass layoffs, but there is a noticeable “brain drain” at the upper management level register. A large number of top managers, some of whom have been with us for a long time, have left the company in recent months, including the head of machine learning, who apparently did not want to be forced to return to the office from the home office. Overall, Apple is currently considered to be poorly positioned in the large AI arms race, at least as far as large language models such as ChatGPT are concerned (see also Where is Siri 2.0? The magic of AI – and what Apple has to catch up).
Apple without a design boss
Probably the biggest gap gapes in Apple’s once so powerful and central design department, which will probably soon lack leadership: hardware design boss Evans Hankey is leaving the group, it was said in October, a successor was not named. The group’s product designers will not report directly to CEO Tim Cook, but to the head of operations. At the top level, no designer has had a say at Apple since Jony Ive left. Steve Jobs’ Apple, whose products set the course for entire industries for over 15 years, is finally history.
Jony Ive (left) shaped Apple’s design for a good 20 years – from the iMac and iPod to the iPhone to the Apple Watch. Now the group seems to be doing without a design boss altogether.
(Image: Apple)
The forthcoming regulation in Europe through the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act will undoubtedly also tie up many resources. For the first time, legal requirements will have a massive impact on iOS & Co. The group’s developers are reluctant to work on interfaces for sideloading and alternative app stores, which Apple has successfully resisted for so long. The opening of the platform for full browsers, the release of the NFC interface for other payment services and the interoperability specifications for iMessage, which was previously limited to Apple devices, will certainly tie up internal resources.
“Reality Pro”: Apple headset ties up resources
However, the elephant in the room is Apple’s mixed reality headset. The final sprint to the launch of the first major new product category in around ten years should have the highest priority and put many other projects on the back burner. After the introduction of the headset was initially expected for 2022, then for the beginning of 2023, the rumor mill has now zeroed in on the WWDC developer conference in June.
After the unusual start to the year, Apple could soon find its way back to its usual rhythm: In addition to iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS 14 and watchOS 10, Apple is likely to present a new headset operating system with “xrOS” at a packed WWDC keynote, including SDK and other developer Tools for the headset. There are also signs of fresh Macs, which could also appear in June, including a 15″ MacBook Air. However, some observers are only expecting the overdue Mac Pro, a new Mac Studio and an updated iMac later – and the iPhone will already be available in September 15 and newer Apple Watches.
(lbe)