14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has often been accused of copying rivals, and the iPhone X in particular is one such example. Cupertino introduced wireless charging years after Android OEMs did the same thing, but as far as CEO Tim Cook is concerned, there’s no copying happening here.
In an interview with FC, Tim Cook discusses Apple’s investments in innovations, explaining that even though it might not be the first one to bring a certain feature to the market, there’s a good chance it was the first to start development.
And the reason Apple isn’t the first to bring it to its devices is that it just wants everything to go smoothly, Cook explained. Of course, this doesn’t make sense when looking at wireless charging, which has been around for many years before Apple brought it to the iPhone X.
“I wouldn’t say ‘follow.’ I wouldn’t use that word because that implies we waited for somebody to see what they were doing. That’s actually not what’s happening. What’s happening if you look under the sheets, which we probably don’t let people do, is that we start projects years before they come out. You could take every one of our products–iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch–they weren’t the first, but they were the first modern one, right?” Tim Cook replied when asked how he sees claims that Apple follows other companies.
“We have patience”
Cook goes on to explain that customers don’t need to become beta testers, and the reason why some features arrive later than on Android devices is because the company invests more in refinements that are implemented before the go-ahead is given.
“In each case, if you look at when we started, I would guess that we started much before other people did, but we took our time to get it right. Because we don’t believe in using our customers as a laboratory. What we have that I think is unique is patience. We have patience to wait until something is great before we ship it,” Cook said.
Without a doubt, Apple played a key role in the evolution of the mobile industry in the last decade, but trying to convince customers that they’ve always been the first to think of a future is just wishful thinking. Buyers are smarter than companies seem to believe and this strategy could always backfire quickly.