Apple is absolutely on a downward spiral. Steve Jobs was Apple. The company was on life support and doctors were already thinking it was a matter of time before the plug got pulled, but Jobs came back and brilliantly guided the company to consumer tech dominance. Already in the two years since his death we have seen Apple's meteoric rise essentially stop (and in terms of stock price plummet back to Earth). Now Tim Cook has decided to ditch the premium pricing and fat profit margins to play the volume game.
In a sense, the fact that Apple crushed three home runs in the iPod, iPhone, and iPad in such a short timespan is working against them now. Everyone is waiting for that next big, revolutionary product from Apple and anything that isn't that is bound to disappoint a lot of people. iOS on my wrist? *yawn* That is like those Casio calculator watches from the 80's. A brief curiosity and that is it.
I think an Apple TV (a real TV, not the thing they have now) could be that hit people are looking for and frankly I am surprised we haven't seen one by now considering they already have been selling high-quality displays in the Apple Cinema Display for ages now and they could sort of merge a large Cinema Display with an Apple TV. Maybe they are trying to do something really creative and are working with content companies in the background.
Until iOS 7, I got the sense that people were starting to view iOS and its ridiculous skeuomorphism as dated and felt like it really wasn't that much different than the original iPhone OS. I guess Apple got the memo too because iOS 7 is a pretty big change that brings things more in line with what is going on with the simple and mostly flat Windows Phone 8, BlackBerry OS 10, stock Android 4.x, and HTC Sense 5. That said, this is the first time in a long time that Apple looks like the follower rather than the leader.
Edit: As if on cue, I saw the following article while I was at lunch. It's from ZDNet, which is basically click bait these days, but the article says some of the same things I said here.
http://www.zdnet.com/apples-race-to-2014-six-big-unknowns-7000018744/
