John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Apple Has “Amazing” Stuff Coming, Says Cook — But Not Until Fall

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Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

2013 has been a sparse year for Apple special events. We’re already a third of the way through it, and the company hasn’t hosted a single gathering to debut a new product. Nor does it seem likely to until its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. And even that event is looking to be light on product news; CEO Tim Cook said as much during Apple’s second-quarter earnings call.

“Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services that we can’t wait to introduce this fall and throughout 2014,” Cook said Tuesday in an unusually bald bit of expectation setting. Translation: No next-generation iPads and iPhones until at least September.

Disappointing news for folks who had been expecting a new iPhone (or iPhones) in June, and for Apple’s easily rattled shareholders. No substantial new products until fall means Apple will have gone nearly a year without a major update to its portfolio. That doesn’t bode well for sales. And perhaps that’s the reason that Apple’s guidance for the June quarter appears weak.

But, come fall, things should get interesting. And on this point, too, Cook’s remarks are worth noting. “We remain very optimistic about our future,” he said. “We see great opportunities in front of us, particularly given the long-term prospects of the smartphone and tablet market, the strength of our incredible ecosystem which we’re planning to augment with new services, our plans for expanded distribution and the potential of exciting new product categories.”

Exciting new product categories.

That’s an unusually explicit hint coming from Apple — one designed to stoke expectations. Cook isn’t talking about a new iPad or Mac. He’s talking about an entirely new product line, or rather, entirely new product lines; the word he used is “categories,” plural.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus