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Apple’s product lines follow a very specific pattern: start small, and then grow into something bigger and more complex. There was originally one Mac, one iPhone, one iPad, one Apple Watch.
Over time, the product lines got more complicated. Sometimes too complicated, as anyone who remembers Steve Jobs returning to Apple with a four-quadrant grid in his back pocket, driving out an ocean of Performas and reducing the Mac to four simple products.
Too often, people take Jobs’s move to simplify an overcomplicated product line a bit more literally than they should. The Mac product line Jobs found on his return was too complex, yes, but as he rebuilt Apple he knew he would have to simplify and focus things to get started. After the Power Mac, PowerBook, iMac, and iBook all shipped, Jobs was happy to toss in all sorts of Macs that didn’t fit into the grid, including the G4 Cube and Xserve.
Similarly, as modern Apple has grown in the years since Jobs, it has done so in part by dropping the simplicity and offering many different variations of its products. It just makes sense. And over the next few years, we may find new versions of familiar products that go far beyond what we’ve come to expect from Apple.