Classics

I am 100% sure that in thirty years, beyond the era of the phone and well into some­thing else, people will look at pics of old iPhones and say, “Why don’t they make ‘em like that anymore?”—just the way they say it about classic cars today.

There are, of course, Rea­sons they don’t: chief among them, that the pretty pic­ture doesn’t cap­ture the whole experience. At the same time, we can acknowledge, these were lovely machines.

Here is a big dif­fer­ence between the classic car and the classic phone, though, and a damning one: 70 years later, I can still fire up the Thun­der­bird and drive it around town. No phone will useful — usable — in twenty years, to say nothing of 70.

This thought occurs as I muse about Apple’s role in the next great era of computing. Here is a com­pany clearly out­matched by events (which, to be fair, have been swift and surprising) yet also a com­pany without man­u­fac­turing peer — an inter­esting mix. Naturally, I’d prefer for the out­come to be that more com­pa­nies become Apple-great at making things, but I sus­pect it will be the opposite: the peak of quality will erode somewhat, and the very best example of the next device, what­ever it is, will simply be cruddier.