What Happens When [the] Apple Begins to Rot?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I don’t think it’s a matter of if Apple will begin to rot, I think it’s a matter of when. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Jobs & Apple fanboy like all the rest of them, but something about the New iPad launch and the public’s reaction really disturbed me. It disturbed me to the point that I realized Apple has hard days ahead of itself and made me wonder what happens when Apple begins to rot. What does it mean for not just Apple as a company, but what does it mean for all of us?

Apple products have been so consistently good fucking amazing over the last decade that they have shifted multiple technological paradigms. They have gotten so good at this that every time we hear about an upcoming Apple product launch, the world goes nuts. The anticipation has been building for so long that people have even gone so far as to design elaborate concepts of what the product will look like based on an iPhone case leaked from China.

The expectations are consistently very high. They are so high, in fact, that when they ship a product like The New iPad (iPad 3), people think it’s not good enough. I can’t even count how many people conveyed a sense of being underwhelmed by the product. We have to keep in mind though that The New iPad is freaking incredible. The display, the camera, processor, the apps, all of it - it’s a really good product. That being said, it isn’t good enough for us. Our expectations have gotten SO high, that even Apple can’t meet them.

Apple is going to start to rot not because their products suck, but because our expectations of Apple’s capabilities might be starting to exceed reality. Don’t get me wrong I want to be right here. I want Apple to prove me wrong just as bad as the next guy, but I think we might just be pushing it here.

So this begs the question: what happens when Apple begins to rot? Apple has been such an important company in terms of pushing the ball forward technologically in the last decade that the company has practically defined my generation (more than any other company at least). This is especially true for those of us employed by web and mobile companies. Not only has Apple killed it on building awesome products people want to use, they have inspired so many of us to do the same thing. 

I don’t want this to be another “Who’s the next Steve blah blah Jobs blah blah?” I’d like to hear from people what they think will happen WHEN or IF Apple begins to rot. How will it affect us from a standpoint of having great new tools to build things, but also from the standpoint of inspiration.

Let me know your thoughts on Twitter @SparksZilla.