I have seen this argument applied to Dell, Microsoft, Apple and others over the years. It is really a straw man argument. Apple will not kill off old hardware just to boost new sales. Apple keeps their offerings fairly current in order to push the envelope. When Apple dropped the floppy drive they were not trying to screw over consumers, they were looking forward and realizing that documents would not fit on a 1.4mb storage medium for much longer and they were right.
It's a matter of leaning forward or leaning backward. Another strategy Apple will likely pursue is to continue to break into new markets. The TV from Apple is likely the next innovation and area of growth that will boost Apple's outlook and get stock values up again. And that may happen this year. And beyond the TV I think Apple will be exploring other areas. We know that smart cars are coming with iOS integration. That will generate a good deal of revenue for Apple. Products like Nest and Bluetooth LE devices will also become quite handy. Just look at the Nike Fuelband, Jawbone UP and Fitbit for examples of new opportunities for hardware which integrates with the iPhone and gives consumers new gadgets to buy which leverage Apple products. Also keep in mind products like Pebble which are smart watches which integrate with the iPhone and Apple may even create their own smart watch which would surely do well given how popular the idea is with Pebble.
Apple does not need to get people to buy new iPads more frequently. They can simply create more products we are willing to buy.
> When Apple dropped the floppy drive they were not trying to screw over consumers, they were looking forward and realizing that documents would not fit on a 1.4mb storage medium for much longer and they were right.
No, they dropped the floppy disk for aesthetic reasons. Steve was adamant about there being only a trayless CD drive, and USB. The original iMac had a CD tray, but it was switched to trayless in the first revision.
This came back to haunt them, as early CD burners only came with a tray, but aesthetics trumped utility.
Actually when Apple dropped the 1.4mb floppy the Zip Drive was becoming popular which was before the USB thumb drive was popular. And now people rarely use thumb drives and instead use Dropbox, Box.net, Skydrive or Google Drive. Maybe it was partly due to aesthetics, but it was also looking at how the average file for many documents (photos, videos, etc) are generally bigger than 1.4mb. It was a good choice. I use to own the early iMacs. I worked on them quite a bit actually. They were great.
It's a matter of leaning forward or leaning backward. Another strategy Apple will likely pursue is to continue to break into new markets. The TV from Apple is likely the next innovation and area of growth that will boost Apple's outlook and get stock values up again. And that may happen this year. And beyond the TV I think Apple will be exploring other areas. We know that smart cars are coming with iOS integration. That will generate a good deal of revenue for Apple. Products like Nest and Bluetooth LE devices will also become quite handy. Just look at the Nike Fuelband, Jawbone UP and Fitbit for examples of new opportunities for hardware which integrates with the iPhone and gives consumers new gadgets to buy which leverage Apple products. Also keep in mind products like Pebble which are smart watches which integrate with the iPhone and Apple may even create their own smart watch which would surely do well given how popular the idea is with Pebble.
Apple does not need to get people to buy new iPads more frequently. They can simply create more products we are willing to buy.