It is widely known that Apple has a very short time period between different generation of devices. This feature has always been treated as one of the company’s business strategy, which is the technical innovation. However, when facing this phenomena in an opposite way, according to Vittotio Chiu’s blog The Ethics of Apple’s Business Model, the company is actually tricking the customers.

According to the opinions displayed in this blog, I personally agree with the writer. By applying changes that are not mandatory on the devices, Apple gained lots of profits from the “planned obsolescence”. The writer takes the new product Iphone 7 as an example, the abatement of traditional 3.55mm headphone jack is biggest change, direct influence is that customers who keep up with the Apple technical trend have to buy a totally new Iphone, as well as they have to use Iphone 7’s new headphones. The change of the headphone setting is not mandatory at all, however it does push lots of Apple supporters to buy a new device, The most important is that the change makes the switching cost from Apple to other electronic brands even higher, as the headphone setting of Iphone and other brands of phones are totally different now.

At the very last of the blog, “compromises” are mentioned by the writer. In my own opinion, more analyzations of the compromises could be added to the blog in order to make the work better. However, the writer’s mentioning about one of Apple’s Value Proposition is very valuable. Apple has claims of “Environmental Advancements”, however there exist both short time periods between Apple generations and the recycles barely been applied. These actions declare that Apple does not follow its environmental value proposition well. Also, the Customer Segments of Apple could be added. By offering creative, good-quality electronic products, Apple mainly focuses on the customers with high requirements, who are always interested in creative technology and who have high consumption levels.

Combing the Value Proposition the writer mentioned and the Customer Segments above, I personally think that the “future compromises” of Apple is to focus on developing new technologies for devices and to offer customers with better user experiences, what is the most important, the unethical using of “planned obsolescence” should be reduced or even abandoned.

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