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But they are always ditching features everyone else is convinced are vital – hardware keypads, removable batteries, floppy disk drives. In that sense they're do

by mattdw 16y ago

But they are always ditching features everyone else is convinced are vital – hardware keypads, removable batteries, floppy disk drives. In that sense they're doing the unimaginable.

stcredzero 16y ago
It's not so much doing the unimaginable as it is the ability to exercise awareness about the essential functions of a device. They don't lose sight of the device forest for the feature trees.
- tjogin 16y ago
  When Apple released the iPhone, I distinctly remember Steve Ballmer laughing it off, saying it won't make a significant impact. He summed it up as the world's most expensive phone. To him, the success iPhone achieved was unimaginable, and Steve Ballmer ain't no nobody in the industry. We can pretend that everybody else knew how and why the iPhone would become a staggering success, and only the very top guys in the industry were too blind to see it — but then we'd be lying to ourselves. Nobody saw this coming. The concepts for what an "iPhone" would be, prior to Apple announcing it, were pathetic. Our collective imagination didn't go further than to imagine a regular phone with an Apple logo on it (or, how about a phone with an iPod click-wheel). The iPad was largely being written off as a "big iPhone". The iPad is a "big iPhone" the way a swimming pool is a big bathtub — everything changes with scale. Played water sports in your bathtub lately? Unimaginable — or lack of foresight due to insufficient imagination. That about sums it up.
  - tensor 16y ago
    The idea of a touch-only PDA device has been around in science fiction literature for decades. Perhaps nobody expected a company to implement it when Apple did with the iphone, nor did they expect Apple to to be the one doing it. But the idea is far from unimaginable. After it came out, I doubt many people really thought it would fail. The potential was pretty obvious. Of course competitors will claim it's going to fail. What do you expect them to do? Encourage people to buy their competitions product? The iPad. It is a big iPhone, with a few new interface elements. Yes, you can do more with it, but scaling up a bathtub hardly a stunning idea. Perhaps the first swimming pool was an engineering feat, but not a feat of imagination.
    - tjogin 16y ago
      It is not a feat of imagination to scale an iPhone up to the size of an iPad, but it is extremely unimaginative to not realize that it makes a world of difference in how and for what it can be used. I'm not saying Apple is enormously imaginative, I'm saying its critics often are unimaginative; they are unable to imagine the applications. The same way a swimming pool is just a big bathtub, it makes all the difference in the world. You can't do the same things in a bathtub as you can in a swimming pool, or a lake, or an ocean. Scale changes everything.

by mattdw 16y ago

But they are always ditching features everyone else is convinced are vital – hardware keypads, removable batteries, floppy disk drives. In that sense they're doing the unimaginable.

stcredzero 16y ago

It's not so much doing the unimaginable as it is the ability to exercise awareness about the essential functions of a device. They don't lose sight of the device forest for the feature trees.

tjogin 16y ago
When Apple released the iPhone, I distinctly remember Steve Ballmer laughing it off, saying it won't make a significant impact. He summed it up as the world's most expensive phone. To him, the success iPhone achieved was unimaginable, and Steve Ballmer ain't no nobody in the industry. We can pretend that everybody else knew how and why the iPhone would become a staggering success, and only the very top guys in the industry were too blind to see it — but then we'd be lying to ourselves. Nobody saw this coming. The concepts for what an "iPhone" would be, prior to Apple announcing it, were pathetic. Our collective imagination didn't go further than to imagine a regular phone with an Apple logo on it (or, how about a phone with an iPod click-wheel). The iPad was largely being written off as a "big iPhone". The iPad is a "big iPhone" the way a swimming pool is a big bathtub — everything changes with scale. Played water sports in your bathtub lately? Unimaginable — or lack of foresight due to insufficient imagination. That about sums it up.
- tensor 16y ago
  The idea of a touch-only PDA device has been around in science fiction literature for decades. Perhaps nobody expected a company to implement it when Apple did with the iphone, nor did they expect Apple to to be the one doing it. But the idea is far from unimaginable. After it came out, I doubt many people really thought it would fail. The potential was pretty obvious. Of course competitors will claim it's going to fail. What do you expect them to do? Encourage people to buy their competitions product? The iPad. It is a big iPhone, with a few new interface elements. Yes, you can do more with it, but scaling up a bathtub hardly a stunning idea. Perhaps the first swimming pool was an engineering feat, but not a feat of imagination.
  - tjogin 16y ago
    It is not a feat of imagination to scale an iPhone up to the size of an iPad, but it is extremely unimaginative to not realize that it makes a world of difference in how and for what it can be used. I'm not saying Apple is enormously imaginative, I'm saying its critics often are unimaginative; they are unable to imagine the applications. The same way a swimming pool is just a big bathtub, it makes all the difference in the world. You can't do the same things in a bathtub as you can in a swimming pool, or a lake, or an ocean. Scale changes everything.