I do my best to watch the tech market very closely. No one is perfect, of course, but I believe that there is one thing people starting to widely agree upon: Apple is beginning to have problems. You may have heard this once or twice, but really; how can anyone tell how Apple is doing?

It's a fair question that I feel has not been appropriately answered by the media. Here's my opinion on the matter.

I am throwing my voice into the wind of people who think Apple is on the verge of internal collapse, but why do I think so? Apple is so tight-lipped about everything that it's hard to get a launch date out of them, let alone someone saying "yes, we're about to fail".

However, there are signs.

One: Before Steve Jobs, Apple had a very fragmented product line, similar to Microsoft. Their computers has confusing hardware setups, and it was difficult to find a Mac that worked for you. On top of that, the price for the systems seemed unjustified and at the time it was. So what did Steve Jobs do? He killed a lot of the products in Apple. Apple's line shrunk don to just a few products, and these exclusive pieces of equipment were then remarketed as a "high-quality, premium product" to justify the price. Each product was made with high quality material, and designed to do one thing: run fast.

While Steve Jobs was in power, this model worked phenomenally for them.

Now that he is gone, however, it seems that things are beginning to change. Apple has added a lot of new product, including an iPad Mini, several new Mac Books, a new line of color options, etc. Now, there is even rumors of a new iPhone line for the budget shoppers, and silly useless gadgets such as an iWatch floating around.

Seems a little...fragmented. Doesn't it? It does to me, and that tells me that the unification Steve Jobs created is beginning to fall apart on the inside.

Two: The iPhone 5 seems a little cheap, don't you think? It sure seemed that way to me when I put my hands on it. The back of it has echoes of the plastic on the Samsung Galaxy series, and is a far cry from the glass of the iPhone 4 series. This tells me that Apple is beginning to toss out the "premium parts, premium price" motto and instead focusing harder on their profit margin, which in my opinion is a bad move. Granted, the iPhone 5 is probably more durable, but there are other ways to make a phone harder to kill. The Nokia Lumia 920 can survive a fastball with virtually no damage. How? It's that new Gorilla Glass 2 that does the trick. Had this been utilized in the iPhone 5, it may have been a real home run.

Three: The lack of changes from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 5 seems to have upset a lot of users; many people feel as though they bought the new phone for nothing, or simply decided to wait for the iPhone 5s. This lack of change has prompted Apple to kick iOS 7 into overtime by borrowing developers from OSX to pump out the new iOS in time for the iPhone 6. However, this seriously concerns me.

It has been rumored that iOS 7 will be drastically different from iOS 6, forcing users to re-learn a system that is already very familiar to them. Granted, we don't know this for sure, but I can sure bet that it will be at least a little different. I just hope that Apple builds on functionality instead of changing it. Companies are known for making drastic changes in functionality when times get tough (look at RIM and WP) and this isn't always a good idea (as in the RIM example).

Meanwhile, as Apple scrambles to overhaul iOS, the question of the iPhone 7 emerges. It has been confirmed that the iPhone 5 and 6 were pre-designed before the death of Steve Jobs, and this has left everyone wondering is Apple is prepared to redesign the phone without him. Can they do it? In my opinion, I believe that their handling of iOS 7 should give us a good idea of the answer to this question.

So what does all of this mean in the end?


It seems to me that these are the factors everyone is examining when considering the future of Apple. These are the markers that we find our path with, and try  to predict the fate of the giant. My opinion? I truly believe that right now, the fate of Apple rest on iOS 7. If this does well, it could restore the faith of investors. If they flop with this new OS, then who knows. Maybe we'll see the rise of the Windows Phone.