The press release seemed to focus on professional use, so their research is probably telling them that there are people who want this such as musicians, photographers and doctors, etc. I don’t think this storage bump is aimed at the bulk of the market. However, I think in this update you might get a hint that the next iPad probably coming in the fall will probably be 32,64 and 128 and they drop the 16GB.

Every computer I have ever seen has seen the hard drives increase as storage demands increase, so I don’t understand why Apple gets singled out for doing the same thing every other manufacturer does. If I had to bet on what major company will drop the next “big thing” I would probably bet on Apple over the other players. BTW, I am not sure I would put the XBox in the class of something like the Mac, iPod and iPhone. It is just another game machine. These others created or changed industries.

Their stock has lost a third of its, admittedly overvalued, price and older models of the iPhone are still outselling the 5. It is pretty obvious that they have reached a degree of saturation in the high-end market and are having to push more in other directions like Corporate and downmarket. Neither of these are going to generate the same levels of revenue in the short-term and let’s be honest, Apple isn’t built to play the commodity field (or Enterprise for that matter). It has never worked for them in the past and I doubt it will now.

@Doug – As to iteration versus innovation. Apple just about iterated themselves into oblivion with the Mac and would still be a niche player if it weren’t for them thinking outside the Mac box. As you said Apple milked the Mac for a very long time before the iPod came along and in the same time, MS built out an Office suite, a Backoffice suite, and Gaming platform that pretty much dominated the incumbents for most of the last decade. I’m not saying MS is better, because we both know better, but Apple has to keep building on that technical mastery instead of continuing to ride the iPod train.

Let’s see there are tools from Absolute Software, Dell KACE, Quest, Solarwinds, Microsoft System Center, Cisco, Juniper and even Blackberry makes management tools for Apple devices. Even basic Microsoft Exchange without the management CAL allows for remote wipe.

Blackberry 10 is the only device that separates personal from corporate profiles on a device and it hasn’t even been released yet.

Windows Phone 8 and Android are junk in comparison for this functionality

Last I checked, my 160gb iPod Classic has more storage.

I work on a daily basis with companies trying to control or manage 100s to 1000s of iOS devices and it is a nightmare to administer.

How do you control iOS devices and reboot them or push OS updates or lock down OS updates on them when it seems Apple doesn’t allow you to do anything of the sort.