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60% of current sales are from iPhone and iPad which were launched in the past 3 years.
by brianpan 16y ago
60% of current sales are from iPhone and iPad which were launched in the past 3 years.
- mkr-hn 16y agoThe question was what is meant by "didn't exist."
- tvon 16y agoas in "the Apple product didn't exist"
- photon_off 16y agoHe answered your question. "Products that did not exist three years ago" can be replaced by "iPhone and iPad." It would appear to mean "products made by Apple"
- derefr 16y agoThe iPhone and iPad are products. Smartphones and tablets are product categories. There's a clear (if unconscious) distinction in the usage of the two terms, at least in press-release-speak.
- ra88it 16y agoThe iPhone did not exist before Apple released it. Is that controversial?
- mkr-hn 16y agoThe wording could have been taken to mean the general product any of those are based on. I'm sorry for seeking clarification. Won't ever happen again. I was kind of hoping HN was the sort of place where I could ask that without being jumped on as some sort of anti-Apple instigator. Some people are upvoting, so yay. Maybe it is. :)
- jamesaguilar 16y agoTo be fair, it was a bit of a snarky question. You knew whether phones existed before the iPhone, so it's not like you could have been asking that in good faith. Similar with touchscreen tablets.
- mkr-hn 16y agoI should have put more time and thought in to wording, but the intent was positive.
- wtallis 16y agoSo, what general product do you think the iPhone was based on? The Blackberry, or perhaps the Treo, since that had a touch screen? In order to say that Apple didn't come up with the idea behind the iPod or the iPhone, you have to generalize the category to the point that it was painfully obvious to anybody even remotely aware of what's going on in the industry. MP3 players are an obvious idea to anybody who has heard of the Walkman and knows that computers can store and play music. The idea of using a tiny hard drive in one is similarly obvious. So is the idea of making a phone that can surf the web and also be an MP3 player. When people praise Apple's ingenuity with the iPhone and iPod, they are referring to the fact that almost everything other than the most fundamental idea was revolutionary or at least clever. In other words, every aspect of the product that actually affects its success in the marketplace was invented or re-invented.
- mkr-hn 16y agoAlmost every post I make in this thread ends up with 3-4 downvotes no matter what, so I'm hesitant to answer this with any kind of thoughtful response. I want to, but I was looking forward to hitting 200, and now it's pretty far off.
- eru 16y agoJust wait a bit. The early votes here have become quite insane in the last year or so. The scores still tend to normalize to sane levels later on, though. I wonder how long that will last. I've upvoted most of your comments in this thread: While they are not brilliant in my book, they are not bad either. And certainly not bad enough to deserve large negatives.
- jfarmer 16y agoNobody is jumping on your because you're being "anti-Apple." They're down-voting you because you're being pedantic, whether intentional or not.
- mkr-hn 16y agoOne interpretation makes this a post about the success of an innovator. One interpretation makes this post one giving false credit for the creation of entire industries. It is something I've seen from a minority of Apple users. It's a valid question.
- derefr 16y agoOne interpretation is being charitable to the intelligence of the community who chose to upvote it; the other presumes they were either fooled, or that the minority you refer to has infiltrated HN and is on a mission to block-upvote Apple propaganda. A combination of the Principle of Charity and Occam's Razor makes the latter seem improbable.
- jfarmer 16y agoHe obviously meant that most of Apple's product line is less than 3 years old. The iPad, per se, did not exist three years ago, though of course the concept of a tablet computer is decades old.
- Herring 16y ago>the concept of a tablet computer is decades old And it's been dead in the water the whole time. There were many failed attempts at flying machines before the Wright brothes.
- pyre 16y agoTrue, but I think the people saying things like "Apple didn't invent..." are about spaces like the smartphone market, or the mp3 player market (or even selling mp3s online). While many might describe the iPad as "just a larger iPhone," I think that it's different enough from other tablet offerings to give Apple some amount of credit.
- ShardPhoenix 16y agoWow, the iPhone only came out in 2007? Somehow it feels like it's been around much longer.