What's next for Apple?

After looking at the latest Apple media event and reading most of the comments from different pundits around the web I had a small revelation. Everybody is talking about Steve Jobs leaving Apple due to his health, but I think no one has come up with the real reason.

If you take a look at the Apple hardware line you realize that except for the Apple TV and maybe the Iphone, is very difficult to improve hardware wise the products that are already there. Think about it. How would you change the latest notebooks? Maybe replacing the LCD with OLED? Maybe replacing the battery with some fuel cell battery? I thought about it for the week and came with no other improving options. The same can be said about IMac, Mac mini, MacPro or the Apple Monitors (it’s obvious that the old 30″ will be replaced sooner or later with an LCD based on the technology from the 24″ monitor just released). For all these (let’s say the MAC division) there are going to be evolutionary hardware changes but I do not think is going to be something revolutionary in the next few years. (I know that making a prediction like that in this industry could be seen as coming from a crazy non educated person )

Also it’s clear that IPhone is also almost perfect hardware wise, but here because the technology is still evolving rapidly we could get revolutionary things in the next year or so.

I am sure that the next differentiator for Apple is going to be software based and most probably we will see the first steps in the Snow Leopard release. If you are agreeing with me so far let’s speculate further.

Without new products (not evolutionary but revolutionary) some time in the next 24 months Apple won’t be able to grow anymore. And I am almost sure that the income coming from the Itunes and the Iphone app store won’t be able to compensate. When you have your vision completed (in this case Steve’s vision) is very easy to get bored and work becoming less fun that it used to be. Combine these 2 reasons with Steve’s age and most probably these are the combined reasons which are making Steve thinking about leaving Apple.

The alternative scenario is that Apple is going to be able to open new markets and I am not talking now about a tablet mac or an ebook reader. I hope to get something totally new maybe something related to domestic robots. I am sure that if the job is interesting enough, Steve will stay at Apple forever. It will step down from the CEO position but for sure is still going to be involved in the product design.