How Apple's Big-Picture Ventures Get Small For The Consumer

Taking big ideas and making products that people can use.

- Dan Moren

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. Smart phones, 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.

HEALTHY AND HAPPY

Health and fitness has been an especial focus for Cupertino during Tim Cook's tenure. Much in the way that music was a passion of Steve Jobs, health and fitness seems to be right in Cook’s wheelhouse. And the company has attacked the industry from a variety of angles: the Apple Watch as a wearable device with a strong fitness component, Health Kit as a centralized repository for health information on your device, and Research Kit as a way to push your device into improving health longer term.