iOS 7 will define Apple's future going forward

What is Apple these days? The first real Steve Jobs-less product will tell us

It’s here! The flatness! The pastels!

As you might have surmised, iOS 7 is kind of a big deal—not only for the tech community and Apple customers, but for Apple itself. IOS 7 marks the first real design project in the post-Steve Jobs era. It could seal Apple’s fate in terms of whether or not it will truly sail forward sans Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs was a noted design freak. The look and feel of Apple products were carefully crafted to give the user a “magical” experience. Jobs was also a noted tyrant who micromanaged details to death. While the company innovated and launched industry-creating tech, suggestions of a design change came with a big fat “abso-f*cking-lutely not.” (Paraphrased.)

Remember all the hype about the new white iPhone? And what does Apple do one year later? It launches iPhones in six new colors.

Remember when Steve Jobs said that Apple would never produce a tablet smaller than the original because to use such a tablet, people would have to file their fingertips down to a quarter of their current size? BOOM! Seven-inch tablet right after Jobs dies.

In the year since Steve Jobs’ death, Apple hasn’t so much reinvented itself so much as it’s simply broken all of its own rules. In some ways, it suggests a mad scramble to get back into Wall Street’s good graces. Shortly after Jobs’s death, Apple missed its first quarter in years. Every quarter since has missed estimates, and Apple’s mad rush to break all the rules seems to indicate a panic of sorts.

Now Apple has broken the biggest rule: you don’t mess with the design. It’s hard to imagine what Steve Jobs would think of the iPhone 5C, as he reiterated time and time again that Apple was all about quality, not quantity. Yes, we all get the logic: Apple needs to broaden its market reach, specifically among the emerging markets. But while the iPhone 5C looks cheap with its plastic casing, its $499 unsubsidized price tag says otherwise.

So where does that leave iOS 7? At the risk of sounding bombastic, this could be the product launch that defines Apple’s future. With all the rule-breaking going on, who/what is Apple now? Now that Scott Forstall is out and Jony Ives is in, the company doesn’t just have a new CEO, it has a new design engine. As more users weigh on in iOS 7, it could spell promise or disaster for Apple’s future.    

Image source: cdn.com