Small Things

The retirement of Aperture and iTunes U arguably signals Apple's focus on big business at the expense of small things. Perhaps Apple felt others are better at it, but there is charm people find in small things that big business lacks.

Aperture's retirement made Adobe Lightroom the ubiquitous photo-editing app. The target user for Lightroom is professional photographer. For journalists, businessmen, and scientists that need a professional photo-organization app, however, Lightroom is way too fancy and artistic. It's fine for Lightroom, but for Aperture, what a loss!

iTunes U's retirement followed the stagnation of the app. There is little innovation into the field of learning and research. It's a pity that next generation of app and content ecosystem for tablets isn't there yet, or perhaps iTunes U's fate would be different.

Other small things that Apple didn't form a market for business include fonts, stationeries, stickers, etc. Would Apple collect them to make its devices nicer and more personal than Google's?