Tariff are an opportunity for Apple to reset its priorities

Tariffs! Are they off? Are they on? Are they halved, doubled, super-tricksy inside-outified? Nobody really knows.

While my colleague Jason Snell already gave some concrete ideas for how Apple can deal with the wild world of import taxes, I’m taking a more speculative bent. Specifically, how could tariffs be an opportunity for Apple?

That seems counterintuitive, I know, but hear me out: not everything Apple does needs to be directly impacted by whatever the administration of the United States decides to do this particular week/day/hour. And given the current volatile situation Apple (and the rest of the economy) finds itself in, maybe taking a beat to try and find the silver lining wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

It’s the software, stupid

What makes Apple primarily vulnerable to these capricious tariffs is that a large part of its business is in hardware–physical goods that need to be moved from one place to another.

Of course, Apple isn’t just a hardware company: it also builds the software for (primarily) its products, which makes it unusual amongst many of its competitors. And the good news is that software largely isn’t affected by tariffs. Which in and of itself makes it a good area to prioritize, just as the company is surely doing for its likewise unaffected Services division.

Moreover, the broad consensus among watchers of the company over the last several years has been that Apple’s software often feels like it’s lagging behind its incredibly successful hardware. So maybe the timing is perfect for Apple to spend a little more time focusing on software. There are any number of projects that could use some more attention, and not only can Apple afford to spend the time, but it can also benefit the company long term.

Those lovely intangibits

There are two types of software challenges that Apple could undertake. The first are the big swings: things like Apple Intelligence’s overhaul of Siri. These are the opportunities for the company to go back to the drawing board, to take a hard look at a feature and maybe rework it from the ground up, something that reports indicate is already happening with the voice assistant.

The second is the kind of smaller problems that plague software in general, and certainly Apple’s software in specific: bugs, inconsistencies, design improvements, and enhancements. While these may not be showstoppers or big marquee features, they are the kind of quality-of-life problems that impact users every day.

Apple

What kind of benefit does this accrue to Apple? Well, the bottom line is that improving its software makes its users happier and that, in turn, leads to both repeat customers as well as making said same customers more likely to extol the products’ virtues to others. It’s a long play, to be sure, but Apple has never shied away from taking the long-term view.

And, just to be clear, I’m not simply advocating throwing more people at Apple’s software problems–a strategy that’s largely been shown to be ineffective–and, more to the point, I’m certainly not saying that the people building hardware for Apple’s devices are the same people building hardware and that you can just swap them out.

No, this is ultimately a matter of institutional attention. We’ve all seen the endless videos and ads of Apple showing off every curve and smallest element of its hardware. I’m simply asking what would happen if it lavished the same amount of love, attention, and pride on every infinitesimal design details of its software.

Hardware that lives long and prospers

This focus on software has other long-term benefits, too. While Apple obviously doesn’t want to cede sales of its new devices if it can help it, it’s already been contending with another challenge in this arena for some time: whether its hardware is too good. With Apple’s devices generally retaining their utility longer than many of its competitors, upgrade cycles have lengthened.

Part of that is from Apple’s own efforts: its latest software releases tend to reach fairly far back. Last year’s iOS 18 runs on devices back to 2018’s iPhone XR/XS, which were also the oldest phones supported by iOS 17. Especially in the era of Apple Silicon-based Macs, we haven’t really ended up with a situation where new software or capabilities won’t run on a recent Mac, and Apple’s even maintained backwards compatibility with late Intel Macs for some time.

So, arguably, improving software pays dividends for Apple because it’s immediately applicable to a large number of their devices and users. But making software better and better also has a counterweight approach when it comes to Apple’s hardware. If Apple does have to raise the prices of its hardware, providing a better software experience is another pro in the column when it comes time for people to decide whether or not they’re going to buy. “Sure, Apple’s products are expensive, but how could I use anything else?”