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By Dan Moren for Macworld
How Apple’s big picture ventures get small for the consumer
Sometimes it’s fun to think big.
Apple as a company usually focuses on products: things that it builds that consumers will end up using. Smartphones, computers, tablets, and so on. While other tech companies sometimes put forth their moonshots–big, costly ideas intended to reshape the world, but which rarely do–Apple generally seems content to operate by pushing the envelope on the here and now.
But that doesn’t mean that the company hasn’t got larger ambitions: it just doesn’t talk about them. In many cases, that’s probably because those ideas haven’t yet reached the point of becoming discrete products that the company can create and ship. When you’re taking on a large idea, especially one in an entrenched industry, it can be tough to distill that big idea down to the atomic level of a product.