Gruber Lists 10 Top Issues Facing Apple Today

John Gruber from Daring Fireball addressed the 10 most pressing issues facing Apple today during his MacWorld 2010 presentation.

Fortune has presented a summary of his key points which we have summarized further below...

1. Steve Jobs. The pessimistic view is that Apple is a supremely well-organized company organized around one irreplaceable guy. The optimistic view is that Jobs has structured it to run like his other company, Pixar, which manages to turn out hit after hit, year after year, without a charismatic celebrity leader.


2. AT&T. AT&T so desperately needs the iPhone that Apple can extract far better terms from them than it ever could from Verizon. However, AT&T's service problems are draining Apple's good will.

3. Computers. If you are sitting on a couch and you need a computer, most people are going to reach for the iPad, not the MacBook Pro. Gruber suggests the two products overlap and eventually the iPad will kill the MacBook.

4. The App Store. There's never before been a tightly controlled system with 150,000 apps. "If it proves unsustainable," asks Gruber, "what are they going to do?"

5. Security. Gruber is increasingly worried about Apple's sluggish response to its own publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Apple is the last vendor to respond, when it ought to be the first.


6. Mobile Me. It's great for syncing your iPhone to your Mac, but what's the point of Mobile Me's Web apps?

7. Back Ups. Time Capsule is the right idea, but it's not really a solution for all those people who don't even know they're supposed sync their iPhones to their Macs. "Ultimately the long-term solution is to be in the cloud," says Gruber.

8. Apple TV. Gruber likes the Apple TV, but says there is no where near enough content. Using Hulu's freak out over Boxee as an example Gruber concludes, "how Apple can get from where they are to where they need to be when they are negotiating with people that stupid."

9. Arch Rivals. Apple's closest rival in smartphones is not Google but Palm, whose WebOS he admires. "I'm convinced," says Gruber, "that it would be good for us — and good for Apple — for Palm to do well. But not too well."

10. About Box Credits. If software is a form of art, as Apple insists it is, "artists should get to sign their work."

Hit the link below for more details about these points and the presentation.

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