Apple is one of the largest and most influential tech companies in the world. When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were envisioning their company, they would have never imagined in their wildest dreams that their company would one day be worth a trillion dollars.
The path to success hasn't been an easy one and at one point Apple almost went bankrupt. But thanks to Steve Jobs visionary leadership and the thousands of sleepless nights put in by Apple employees, the company is where it is today.
As a result of innovative products that "just work" and a knack for aesthetically pleasing design, Apple has enjoyed a cult like following from its customers for decades but in the recent times, there has been a sense of change in the air.
Recently, more and more customers, tech pundits, reviewers alike have changed their tone regarding Apple as a company and their products. The cult like following slowly seems to be dissipating.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. While this saying may not be directly applicable to Apple, you can get a sense of what I am trying to say. Apple has simply gotten too big now and there seems to be a huge divide between it and it's customers.
The company, during its press releases or its coveted events, never fails to mention that the customer is at the centre of everything they do but their actions seem to point towards a different direction.
More and more people are now inclined to think that their ultimate goal is to maximise profits and to squeeze every last dollar from its customers. The increased prices across all of its products is just one among a ton of things that point towards this.
I guess, when you are that big, the law of huge numbers start kicking and you just have to work extra hard, to continue on a growth trajectory to keep the shareholders happy. This is just an opinion by the way, as I have no way of knowing the reality.
Still, as a past customer, I just feel like Apple has become too big to care. I mean take a look at the keyboard debacle with the MacBook Pro lineup. A computer that expensive shouldn't have a keyboard that fails immediately after purchase.
Thousands of customers have also had problems with their screens where they just stop working. If you're unlucky to be out of warranty, the costs to replace them can be half of that of a new computer. These are just two tiny examples among a great number more which point towards the fact that the customer may no longer be at the centre of Apple's focus.
