Apple: New Business Model (Absoutely Not About The Bakken, Though The Bakken Is Mentioned)

The MillionDollarWay has been a benefit to me in more ways than I can count....okay, in more ways than I have fingers and toes. And thumbs.

Through some excellent educational opportunities throughout my Air Force career I probably took enough courses to earn a degree in .... well, something.... but one takeaway from all those courses, was something called core competency.

Over time, and once out of the military, a background in "core competency" gradually morphed in to "business models." In the Bakken I particularly enjoyed watching the emergence and success of three widely different business models by three different Bakken-centric operators: a) CLR; b) NOG; and, c) Whiting.

I touched on this the other day, but don't recall if I posted a stand-alone post or simply made it part of a longer post, but today, when picking up my granddaughter from Saturday morning band practice, I saw an older gentleman in the hallway on his MacBook Pro, and I thought, "literally, these MacBook Pros are ubiquitous. " It really is quite eye-catching to see the number of MBPs in the Boston area. And that triggered an observation regarding Apple: is Apple changing its business model with regard to product releases?

Macrumors suggests that the next-generation iPad and iPad mini will be launched in March, 2013, just two months from now.

Apple has historically stuck to roughly year-long update cycles for its iOS devices, but the company surprised many observers by launching the fourth-generation iPad in October, just seven months after the debut of the third-generation model. It is unclear whether that shorter interval is the start of a trend for Apple, as it may simply have been a one-time event due to Apple's move to the new Lightning connector.

There have, however, been growing rumors of shorter update cycles being part of a new strategy for Apple as it seeks to remain competitive in the fast-moving mobile device market and smooth out its sales somewhat throughout the year. 

My hunch is that Apple is growing tired of a) folks "waiting" for the next launch; and, b) confusing their customers with "generations."

For newbies to Apple, this is how Apple has tried to address MacOS updates.  I have long given up trying to figure out what version iPad is now available, and whether iPad mini version 2 is now available or if we still have the original iPad mini.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple moves to simply iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, and MacBook Pro, and does away with the version "numbers" and/or "names." At best, they are confusing; at worse, they create artificialities in supply and demand. The retinal and non-retinal versions will eventually morph into all-retinal versions.

For the record, I have a non-retirnal MacBook Pro with whatever operating system it came with. As long as I can still upgrade every time Apple pushes a new upgrade for free, I know my operating system is "current," regardless of how long I've had it. And for the record, I have the original iPad. It appears the library application is not able to be updated (I'm not sure on that yet) and I can't get any new apps, but for what I bought the iPad for in the first place, it does everything I need it to do.

(Interestingly enough, it is easier to "trash" spam e-mail on the old iPad than it is on the MacBook Pro using Yahoo Mail. I tend to use my iPad to delete spam and the MacBook Pro for blogging.)

But I digress. It will be awhile before Apple, customers, and reviewers get away from "new generation" software announcements, but I think we are close to seeing Apple move beyond caring about what generation the hardware is. When people go into an Apple store, they will be told the hardware is the "latest" generation and that's it. Resellers like Best Buy might be at a disadvantage -- or rather their customers might be at a disadvantage.