Apple gets real: Confronts growth-starved reality with new business model

With its most important product category not growing anymore, Apple Inc. on Tuesday confronted its changing circumstances by doing two unusual things: hustling hard and displaying a willingness to change its business model.

The hustle is all about Apple’s willingness to do something against its nature: go wide in the number of devices and internet-tethered products it offers. The company used to brag that all its products could fit on a single table. It was a symbol of Apple’s focus on a small number of devices that it could make obsessively perfect, along with software and apps that made them more useful.

Hustling is more in Apple’s bag of tricks these days. The company’s annual iPhone extravaganza on Tuesday showed starkly that the table of Apple products would need to be the size of a convention center.