Why Apple Stinks at Services
Analyst Ben Thompson takes a hard look at Apple’s organizational structure to explain why the company excels at hardware but performs poorly with services. Using DuPont’s shaky pivot from gunpowder to paint, Thompson illustrates why it will take a major organizational shakeup for Apple to succeed in services. With its executives indicating that they believe services are important to the future of the company, Apple may have no other choice than to create a new division with a corporate structure better suited for online services, while separately maintaining the existing structure that has been so successful with hardware.
One of the services that Apple has crippled is specialized Apple software. The loss of support for Bento, iWeb and Aperture has made it difficult for Mac users to be productive without having to expend major efforts when their producing Web pages and photo albums. Deprecating these programs has forced many users to replace them with inferior products. Considering that Apple has maintained service for Filemaker over many years, it would seem that incorporating these “lost” programs within a Mac apps service program along with the current applications would restore these productive tools to many users, old and new.
Apple need to lift their computer hardware efforts too, and build in more upgrdability. Their failure for Mac Minis graphics card to keep pace with modern CAD software like Vectorworks, means that after being an Apple user since the SE20, we are now migrating to PeeCees for their upgradability.