The 3 biggest mistakes Apple is making right now

Today, Apple turns 50. Half a century since Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne signed the papers in a Los Altos garage and set about changing the world. It's a remarkable milestone, and I say that as someone who has spent a large chunk of a creative career on Apple hardware, Apple software and the particular kind of smugness that comes with both.

But birthdays are also a reasonable time for honesty. So here, with genuine affection and only mild exasperation, I'd like to regretfully identify three mistakes Apple is making right now.

For more on Apple, see our top 100 Apple products and the best Apple ads of all time.

01. Resting on the iPhone's laurels

For years, recommending an iPhone to a fellow creative felt like a slam dunk. The camera led the market. The chips were the fastest. The software was the most polished. In 2026, though, that story is getting harder to tell with a straight face.

My visit to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month confirmed what I'd suspected for a long while. Chinese manufacturers are now building phones that beat the iPhone on almost every metric that used to matter.

The OnePlus 15 carries a 7,300 mAh battery that lasts more than two days. The iPhone 17 manages roughly one. The Xiaomi 17 shoots 8K video, costs less and includes a telephoto lens that Apple's base model still lacks. The Nubia Z80 Ultra starts at $649 and packs more RAM than Apple offers at any price. I could go on, but you get the idea.

The creatives I know who still use iPhones tend to stay loyal out of habit rather than genuine conviction. Apple's standing has always rested on the belief that its products are simply the best. That belief is now doing considerably more work than the products are.

02. Holding the iPad hostage to iPadOS

Every year or so, I talk myself to the edge of buying an iPad Pro (one of the best iPads for drawing). The screen is beautiful, the chip is absurdly powerful and the whole thing is thin enough to feel slightly implausible. But every year, I talk myself back off that edge. Because I know that the moment I need to do any real work on it, I'll hit a wall that Apple built deliberately.

Let's be clear, the iPad's hardware could easily run macOS. Apple simply won't enable it, and the reason isn't hard to find. The moment iPadOS becomes macOS, the App Store model that earns Apple up to 30% of every digital purchase looks suddenly fragile. On a Mac, developers sell directly to users and Apple doesn't see a penny. On an iPad, Apple sees everything.

Yes, I understand the business logic. But that strikes me as Apple's problem, not mine. The brilliant MacBook Neo proves its mobile chips can handle a full desktop OS. But that just hammers home the fact that keeping macOS off the iPad is a revenue decision, and consumers be damned. Not, to my mind, the best sales pitch they could be offering.

03. Leaving the excitement to everyone else

Ask any creative when they last felt genuinely excited by an Apple announcement, and you'll get a similar answer. Something along the lines of "Mmmm… it's been a while."

The most interesting things happening in hardware right now are not happening at Apple. They're coming from the kind of category-defying devices that rival brands are shipping without any apparent fear of asking "what if?".

New Android phones at Mobile World Congress sported cool features including a mechanical zoom lens, an AI-powered gimbal that dances to music, and (I am not making this up) a built-in cigarette lighter. Such products come from engineers who are genuinely free to experiment. The last time Apple made me feel that way was the Vision Pro, which launched at a price that ruled out almost everyone.

Apple's greatest era was defined by the nerve to build things that didn't yet exist. But right now, it looks far more comfortable managing existing categories than inventing new ones. That's a reasonable strategy for a company of its size. It's just not a very interesting one.

Happy birthday, Apple. The next 50 years are yours to define. But I have to warn you, my interest is waning, and I don't think I'm alone.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.