Submission + - Is Apple Abandoning the Consumer?
PainMeds writes: Author and longtime iPhone hacker Jon Zdziarski has written an article predicting that Apple will soon abandon the consumer. He cites the recent loss of AppStore developers for more open platforms, such as Android, and Apple's abandonment of Macworld as the beginnings of a cycle that will eventually end in a "big box" retail strategy for Apple. From the article, "I predict that Apple is headed in the direction of distancing themselves from both consumers and developers in exchange for the benefits that come from the volume sales generated by cheap equipment sold into cookie-cutter markets.". Towards the end of the article, Zdziarski suggests that Apple has lost its sense of innovation and has stagnated, re-selling the same products in different cases. His final prediction suggests that competitors will eventually overtake the company's mobile dominance and that Apple might lose the edge that make their hardware more "appealing" to the consumer.