When the iPhone was released, I was excited. When I saw the iPad mini and the iPhone 5, I didn't really care. I just...didn't care. If design should excite and I wasn't excited, has Apple become irrelevant or is it just me?

I think relevancy and excitement are two different things - only new, novel products generate excitement, while relevancy... Design doesn't have to excite; I think it just has to do the job well, and Apple is still doing the job well.

I suppose that the advent of Android and WP8 have made it such that Apple is no longer the only player - so perhaps it has a lost a bit of love in that way - but don't you think that plenty of people still love iPhones and iPads?

I think that there's always a "relevancy lag" in the tech industry and it seems to be largely ignored. The big point I'm making is that Apple may already be on the decline. We see the long lines when products come out and we hear from the people who love Apple. That much is true.

But what about the people who bought the iPhone and aren't terribly thrilled about it? What about the consumers who bought an iPhone 4 and didn't realize the difference between 3G and 4G until they compared their phone with their husband's Android powered phone?

I think that the the last 2 products (the iPhone 5 and iPad mini) have clearly been derivative but no one seems to be saying anything about it. I find that kind of strange...

I don't feel it is that apple is on the decline. From a design standpoint the iPhone 5 is the nicest looking phone I have ever used. From my perspective I feel it is the software UI on the phone that I find disappointing. Even that I feel is more of a malaise because it has gone unchanged for so long. I remember when I switched from OS9 to Windows XP I enjoyed it immensely simply because it was different. Felt the same way when I jumped to OSX. I'm getting that same excitement with Windows 8. iOS just feels tired. Still great functionally, but the interface offerings from Android and WinPhone8 are just more exciting looking because of the difference.