[JoeD]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

I tend to agree -- with Steve Jobs gone and Samsung gearing up, Apple's best days are behind them. New products are just incremental upgrades of old ones. No new designs or ideas.

We don't know there's no new designs or ideas been worked on. We won't know until Apple decide to release that information, they're notorious for their secrecy (for good or bad).

For a while Apple was just a Mac company, then they released the iPod, itterated and it took off. They did the same with the iPhone and are doing the same with the iPad. They may not have been first to market with any of those products and their first attempts were often lack-luster, but they have managed to gain incredible traction with later revisions.

There's no reason to expect that trend not to continue with other product lines (AppleTV is one they're pushing at the moment and you have the rumours about an actual Apple TV too).

Also, slowly buyers come of age and "it just works" may not be good enough for those who grew up with technology. They are not fazed by little issues they can easily work around if a product offers more flexibility. If you watch closely, Apple's list of new features usually are just things that others had as much as a year earlier.

There's always going to be a split between those who want to be in control of what their gadgets do and those who would rather it be a little more limited but just work. I don't think that split is as easy as these people are techy and these are not though.

I've grown up with computers, I love messing around with tech, and most of my hardware purchases over the years reflect that. (GP2X for example) Yet when it comes to Macs I'm a recent convert to the just-works camp (with the exception of XCode which when they say just-works, they mean "only just" works

With so many things to "play" with (raspberry pi being the latest) some times you want certain products that are very low maintenance so that you can use them as needed rather than spend time tweaking. That leaves time for playing around with more interesting things (like the Pi

Macs have a nice balance between just working and yet being tweakable, more so I find than windows. Linux is the ultimate for tweaking, yet I always found myself spending more time than I wanted keeping it running. As for the iPad, it's not a device I want to tweak in the slightest, I turn it on, use it, turn it off. As long as there are makers out there with tablet products that are tweakable though, we can all be happy

My only fear is the Apple form of control over devices is taken onboard by too many companies and we eventually lose control over the bits of hardware we do want to play with.