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> For a while Apple was coming out with products on a regular basis that redefined the industry That sentence is carrying quite a heavy load! Can you list some

> For a while Apple was coming out with products on a regular basis that redefined the industry That sentence is carrying quite a heavy load! Can you list some Apple products you consider redefining, and what year they were released? It seems like the strongest cases are for "they are still doing that," or "they've done that literally four times ever, in 30+ years," so I'm curious how your list differs from either of mine.

labcomputer 6y ago
Here's mine: 1. The original Macintosh, 1984 (desktop metaphor GUI for the masses) 2. Newton, 1993 (the original PDA, but not commercially successful--so "redefined the industry" is arguable) 3. The iMac, 1997 (industrial design matters for computers. You could argue SGI got there first, but PCs didn't notice until the iMac) 4. iPod/iTunes, 2001/2003 (capacitive-touch interfaces, buying music online) 5. iPhone, 2007 (too many things to list) 6. Apple Watch, 2015 (the Right Stuff to make smart watches popular) 7. FaceID, 2017 (depth-sensitive facial recognition that is actually secure)
- stouset 6y ago
  AirPods, 2016. iPad, 2010. Note that they’re virtually unassailable in the tablet market, the watch market, and the mobile CPU market. Apple has almost never made products that were completely unprecedented, which is the bar people always seem to hold them to for some reason. They do, however, excel at finding a way to build a complete product that has dramatically more appeal than its earlier or contemporary competitors. The Mac had prior art, the iPhone had prior art, AirPods had prior art, but all of their breakout products were so because they figured out how push the right areas of technology to overcome the things holding that product category back. And then they iterate hard. Whereas other companies seem to use vertical integration to cut costs and retain more profits, Apple appears to be better at using vertical integration to achieve things that competitors can’t, the most recent example of which is acquiring PA Semi to push forward on performance and power consumption, but also to make specialized coprocessors that improve their other features and products (TouchID, FaceID, AirPods, as some examples).
  - labcomputer 6y ago
    Can't believe I forgot AirPods! Agree with all your points--but my interpretation of the phrase "redefined the industry" means something more than just being the dominant seller. I don't know exactly how to define it, but I think it should include things like creating a new product category, or changing how other participants act. So, for that reason, I almost didn't include Apple Watch, and I feel like iPad is iffy. iPad certainly got the Right Stuff for tablets... but it doesn't feel that different than what came before. Tablets already existed and the iPhone already existed, and Apple "just" put iPhoneOS on a tablet. Part of what probably drove iPad sales over other tablets was the existing ecosystem of iPhone apps that would run in scaled mode.
    - stouset 6y ago
      In both the Apple Watch case and the iPad case, it's interesting because Apple is the industry. Nobody else has figured out how to compete here for the time being, and Apple is taking almost the entire profit margin from the product market.
ineedasername 6y ago
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but I'm honestly not sure if you are trolling me here. Apple's track record for industry-defining products is fairly basic industry knowledge. I may be leaving something off here but with 10 entries below + 4 honorable mentions. That's an average of redefining some industry or another once every 3-4 years. Over 40 years, I think it's fair to say that represents enough of a trend to expect that sort of thing from Apple. But we've had about 13 years of small annual incremental changes in iPhones. --Apple II --Mac --Newton (though a market failure, its functionality was copied and gave rise to a new generation of smarter PA's similar to how the iPhone gave rise to the new generation of smart phones) --iMac --Physical Apple stores (strongly influenced retail store designs and had Apple's competitors like Microsoft & Sony scrambling to create their own retail presence) --iPod --iTunes --iPhone --iPad --Apple Watch --Honorable mentions would include voice control assistants, air pods, power mac pcs, and apple tv.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  Okay, so your list, like mine, includes a steady series of new products with huge impacts, and the most recent is just a few years old. You seem to be making the argument that one of the previous products (iPhone) must somehow deliver the same impact as an entirely new product, because... I guess I'm not getting that part. I mean, draw the parallel for the other products you mention. Apple II... was replaced completely by the next generation. Mac has reinvented itself a few times, but they've been spaced out a bit. They're currently in the process of transitioning to entirely new CPUs for the third time (68000 -> PowerPC -> Intel -> Apple Silicon), and have gone through a couple of complete overhauls on the OS side as well. Newton was innovative, ahead of its time, and... iMac is also Mac, but okay, specifically the candy-colored all-in-ones shifted the industry in some interesting ways and the current iteration is very nice, but essentially unchanged in a long time. I mean, using the same lens you seem to be using for iPhone, they haven't really changed the body style since 2004 when they replaced the half-melon with the currently style, or maybe since 2007 when they switched to aluminum. I mean, sure, they updated the screen quality, and there have been some minor tweaks, but put a 13-year-old iMac next to a new one, and they haven't changed that much. I think that's my point. You've picked iPhone specifically and insist that iPhone alone must somehow bear the fruits of Apple's history of delivering industry-changing products, but since 2007 they've delivered substantial iterations in iMacs, PowerBooks, Apple TVs, and iPhones, while also launching iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods, as well as new record-setting CPUs every one of the last ten years. So I dunno. I think somehow you've convinced yourself that there is some new world-shaking innovation possible in the phone space, that Apple not having delivered it yet is somehow a failure, and yet I suspect you wouldn't recognize it if they launched it tomorrow. I mean, set a 2007 iPhone next to the phone they'll launch this year and aks yourself: is it the problem that they ship something every year? If they skipped a few years, and only delivered every three or four years, would they seem innovative, or just iterative? iPhone, iPhone 4 (Retina), iPhone 5S (TouchID), iPhone 6 (5.5" screen), iPhone X (FaceID). I think each of those is a substantial bundle of innovations over the previous, and I'm not even considering the CPU inside them, or many, many, many smaller things that we take for granted today. My iPhone X might as well have been a completely different phone, it was so different from everything that came before. That was announced three years ago. To recap: I think one can either say that Apple's only real innovations are the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, or that they've released innovations every 2-3 years for the past couple of decades, but saying that iPhones are a single innovative product rather than a series of at least 5 and probably closer to 8 real game-changers is mistaken.

labcomputer 6y ago

Here's mine: 1. The original Macintosh, 1984 (desktop metaphor GUI for the masses) 2. Newton, 1993 (the original PDA, but not commercially successful--so "redefined the industry" is arguable) 3. The iMac, 1997 (industrial design matters for computers. You could argue SGI got there first, but PCs didn't notice until the iMac) 4. iPod/iTunes, 2001/2003 (capacitive-touch interfaces, buying music online) 5. iPhone, 2007 (too many things to list) 6. Apple Watch, 2015 (the Right Stuff to make smart watches popular) 7. FaceID, 2017 (depth-sensitive facial recognition that is actually secure)

stouset 6y ago
AirPods, 2016. iPad, 2010. Note that they’re virtually unassailable in the tablet market, the watch market, and the mobile CPU market. Apple has almost never made products that were completely unprecedented, which is the bar people always seem to hold them to for some reason. They do, however, excel at finding a way to build a complete product that has dramatically more appeal than its earlier or contemporary competitors. The Mac had prior art, the iPhone had prior art, AirPods had prior art, but all of their breakout products were so because they figured out how push the right areas of technology to overcome the things holding that product category back. And then they iterate hard. Whereas other companies seem to use vertical integration to cut costs and retain more profits, Apple appears to be better at using vertical integration to achieve things that competitors can’t, the most recent example of which is acquiring PA Semi to push forward on performance and power consumption, but also to make specialized coprocessors that improve their other features and products (TouchID, FaceID, AirPods, as some examples).
- labcomputer 6y ago
  Can't believe I forgot AirPods! Agree with all your points--but my interpretation of the phrase "redefined the industry" means something more than just being the dominant seller. I don't know exactly how to define it, but I think it should include things like creating a new product category, or changing how other participants act. So, for that reason, I almost didn't include Apple Watch, and I feel like iPad is iffy. iPad certainly got the Right Stuff for tablets... but it doesn't feel that different than what came before. Tablets already existed and the iPhone already existed, and Apple "just" put iPhoneOS on a tablet. Part of what probably drove iPad sales over other tablets was the existing ecosystem of iPhone apps that would run in scaled mode.
  - stouset 6y ago
    In both the Apple Watch case and the iPad case, it's interesting because Apple is the industry. Nobody else has figured out how to compete here for the time being, and Apple is taking almost the entire profit margin from the product market.

ineedasername 6y ago

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but I'm honestly not sure if you are trolling me here. Apple's track record for industry-defining products is fairly basic industry knowledge. I may be leaving something off here but with 10 entries below + 4 honorable mentions. That's an average of redefining some industry or another once every 3-4 years. Over 40 years, I think it's fair to say that represents enough of a trend to expect that sort of thing from Apple. But we've had about 13 years of small annual incremental changes in iPhones. --Apple II --Mac --Newton (though a market failure, its functionality was copied and gave rise to a new generation of smarter PA's similar to how the iPhone gave rise to the new generation of smart phones) --iMac --Physical Apple stores (strongly influenced retail store designs and had Apple's competitors like Microsoft & Sony scrambling to create their own retail presence) --iPod --iTunes --iPhone --iPad --Apple Watch --Honorable mentions would include voice control assistants, air pods, power mac pcs, and apple tv.

pwinnski 6y ago
Okay, so your list, like mine, includes a steady series of new products with huge impacts, and the most recent is just a few years old. You seem to be making the argument that one of the previous products (iPhone) must somehow deliver the same impact as an entirely new product, because... I guess I'm not getting that part. I mean, draw the parallel for the other products you mention. Apple II... was replaced completely by the next generation. Mac has reinvented itself a few times, but they've been spaced out a bit. They're currently in the process of transitioning to entirely new CPUs for the third time (68000 -> PowerPC -> Intel -> Apple Silicon), and have gone through a couple of complete overhauls on the OS side as well. Newton was innovative, ahead of its time, and... iMac is also Mac, but okay, specifically the candy-colored all-in-ones shifted the industry in some interesting ways and the current iteration is very nice, but essentially unchanged in a long time. I mean, using the same lens you seem to be using for iPhone, they haven't really changed the body style since 2004 when they replaced the half-melon with the currently style, or maybe since 2007 when they switched to aluminum. I mean, sure, they updated the screen quality, and there have been some minor tweaks, but put a 13-year-old iMac next to a new one, and they haven't changed that much. I think that's my point. You've picked iPhone specifically and insist that iPhone alone must somehow bear the fruits of Apple's history of delivering industry-changing products, but since 2007 they've delivered substantial iterations in iMacs, PowerBooks, Apple TVs, and iPhones, while also launching iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods, as well as new record-setting CPUs every one of the last ten years. So I dunno. I think somehow you've convinced yourself that there is some new world-shaking innovation possible in the phone space, that Apple not having delivered it yet is somehow a failure, and yet I suspect you wouldn't recognize it if they launched it tomorrow. I mean, set a 2007 iPhone next to the phone they'll launch this year and aks yourself: is it the problem that they ship something every year? If they skipped a few years, and only delivered every three or four years, would they seem innovative, or just iterative? iPhone, iPhone 4 (Retina), iPhone 5S (TouchID), iPhone 6 (5.5" screen), iPhone X (FaceID). I think each of those is a substantial bundle of innovations over the previous, and I'm not even considering the CPU inside them, or many, many, many smaller things that we take for granted today. My iPhone X might as well have been a completely different phone, it was so different from everything that came before. That was announced three years ago. To recap: I think one can either say that Apple's only real innovations are the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, or that they've released innovations every 2-3 years for the past couple of decades, but saying that iPhones are a single innovative product rather than a series of at least 5 and probably closer to 8 real game-changers is mistaken.