TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Dieter Bohn writes for the Verge that Apple is taking a risk-averse approach to iOS:

Apple has supplanted Microsoft as both the biggest and the most influential company in consumer electronics and technology. Like Microsoft in the 90s and early 2000s, it is taking a very conservative approach to updating its core UI in the name of accessibility and consistency. Apple is keeping the iPhone in a very familiar and safe zone, but does it really need to? It’s risky, taking something that’s massively successful and trying something new and different with it. Most companies don’t do it, but Apple has a reputation built making those kinds of bets. Perhaps it doesn’t deserve that reputation anymore.

Nonsense.

Apple’s approach has always been to get something right on the first try, and then iterate to substantially improve it. Apple did this with Mac OS X, with the iPod, with its notebooks, and now with the iPhone as well. That’s how Apple works, so interpreting the iPhone 5 or iOS 6 as a sign that Apple isn’t willing to take risks anymore is, to be charitable, ridiculous. It’s based on a false understanding of Apple’s history over the last fifteen years. Apple certainly does take big risks, but it does so very deliberately, when they believe they have something great. They don’t take risks for the sake of taking risks.

I would argue, too, that Apple’s restraint with changes to its products is actually much more of a risk. By releasing new versions of the iPhone, iPad, MacBooks, iOS and OS X that don’t look very different from the previous version, Apple’s taking the chance that customers will recognize they’re fantastic products and will still get excited, despite not looking very different. A more conservative position, I think, would be to release unique looking versions each time for the sake of looking different. Apple has confidence in the quality of its products and in their customers’ ability to make decisions based on more than simply how the new version looks.