Yours is not an uncommon sentiment, but it’s not really a fair picture: Observers often see the Apple of the past decade as releasing a category-definer every few years (iPod, iPhone, iPad), and awaiting the next one (iWatch! iScreen!).
Really, though, Apple's blockbusters of the 2000s are best seen as one continuous thing: the iPod paved the way for well-designed, vertically-integrated mobile devices (that it was a music player is almost incidental) and the iPhone and iPad are really bookends of a single smart device revolution.
Seen this way, Apple has had two world-changing category definers in its history, the Mac and the iOS device. That’s one every 24 years, if we count to the midpoint between the iPhone and iPad introductions. Will they do it again? Maybe, but I wouldn’t expect it to be just around the corner.
The original iPod (and modern iPods minus the Touch) don't run iOS at all. The iPod gave Apple the time to stall until they could build what Steve wanted to make in 1999, but the world didn't have the capacity to create yet.
These days, Apple is the forefront of both industrial design and fabrication capacity. They aren't in the past—they are in the present and they are moving the world along with them, not waiting for it to catch up to them anymore.
Your parent is grouping iPod/iPhone/iPad. Yes, the original iPod didn't run iOS, but he's just using it as a moniker. We could call them iDevices if that pleases you more.
The iPod wasn't just an infusion of cash to keep the company alive, to me it really looks like the start of the whole mobile line that today runs iOS.
Apple Maps has come a long way since the iOS 6 launch. Google Maps is still undoubtedly better, but Apple have been working hard on it.
iOS 7 is not bad. People are still afraid of change (look at what they said about the original iPhone, now look where we are) but ultimately it was in need of a refresh.
> Google Maps is still undoubtedly better, but Apple have been working hard on it.
The big difference is that Apple only allows Apple to make things better, where Google allows the world to do its work for it.
Example: The URL for the Boston subway system (the T) is "mbta.com". Nearly every single T stop showed up as "mTBa.com" in Apple Maps when it was released.
In the intervening time, they've fixed maybe 1/3 of the stops to be the correct URL - and almost all of that 1/3 in the last two months. (I've been watching, because I thought it was interesting.)
First of all, you'd think if they fixed one, they'd fix all of them.
Second, this is the sort of thing that when you report it to Google Maps team gets fixed within DAYS.
Again, Google has had a lot longer to get this right. I still use Google Maps whenever possible but Apple are hiring for multiple positions in my country for Maps staff shows they're at least /trying/ when we don't even have an Apple store.
iOS7 is more like iOS6 than any it is anything else.
iOS has certainly adopted features from other platforms over time. But what has been adopted in the other direction is far greater.
If you are referring to the removal of skeuomorphic style elements, then it's true that android and windows phone were always less skeuomorphic than iOS, but that's irrelevant to the technology.
It depends on whether upper management gives special projects the importance they need or not. Almost every large company has a research division, but in most, it is the playground where they keep the guys that are too smart and competent to fire, but that have ideas too radical for main divisions' heads to accept.
