4 ms·

Going through this article I realise that apple had tonnes of innovators and a culture for them. No wonder it became what it became after Steve jobs took cover

by zerop 4y ago

Going through this article I realise that apple had tonnes of innovators and a culture for them. No wonder it became what it became after Steve jobs took cover but I feel that the modern giant tech companies (except Tesla probably IMO) do not have this culture now

scarface74 4y ago
It’s just the opposite. Apple became successful after Jobs came back because he killed all of the “innovations” and started focusing on products that the market cared about. Sure QuickDraw GX, OpenDoc, PowerTalk, etc. might have been “innovative”. But they weren’t what consumers wanted. The iMac on the other hand especially running pre-OS X was technically crap at the time. But it saved Apple. I think this clip when Jobs killed OpenDoc explains it all. https://donhopkins.medium.com/focusing-is-about-saying-no-steve-jobs-wwdc-97-ff0174c171d0 https://donhopkins.medium.com/focusing-is-about-saying-no-st...
- xenadu02 4y ago
  Innovating too early usually fails. Wait too long and it's not innovation. There's an art to innovating enough that people want to buy what you're selling given the limitations of hardware/networks/ecosystems at the time you bring the product to market.
- goto11 4y ago
  OpenDoc is kind of an engineers dream. I remember being fascinated by it at the time (having only read about it). But yeah, it was a distraction. Microsoft also made large investment in OLE (object linking and embedding) at the time which was a similar technology. In retrospect these were solutions in search of a problem. Great that you could embed an Execl sheet in a Word document, but it wasn't what made consumers excited at the dawn of the web.
  - astrange 4y ago
    > OpenDoc is kind of an engineers dream. One would hope it isn’t - the problem with component systems is they’re a Conway’s Law violation, which is the reason the app model works so much better. (in terms of actually shipping, not technical correctness)
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Components are everywhere on Windows, Android IPC, XPC on macOS/iDevices, DBUS, gRPC, and plenty of other RPC reboots
  - NaOH 4y ago
    Relatedly, there's Steve Jobs's thoughtful yet off-the-cuff response when questioned at the 1997 Worldwide Developer Conference about Apple killing OpenDoc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o

by zerop 4y ago

scarface74 4y ago

It’s just the opposite. Apple became successful after Jobs came back because he killed all of the “innovations” and started focusing on products that the market cared about. Sure QuickDraw GX, OpenDoc, PowerTalk, etc. might have been “innovative”. But they weren’t what consumers wanted. The iMac on the other hand especially running pre-OS X was technically crap at the time. But it saved Apple. I think this clip when Jobs killed OpenDoc explains it all. https://donhopkins.medium.com/focusing-is-about-saying-no-steve-jobs-wwdc-97-ff0174c171d0 https://donhopkins.medium.com/focusing-is-about-saying-no-st...

xenadu02 4y ago
Innovating too early usually fails. Wait too long and it's not innovation. There's an art to innovating enough that people want to buy what you're selling given the limitations of hardware/networks/ecosystems at the time you bring the product to market.
goto11 4y ago
OpenDoc is kind of an engineers dream. I remember being fascinated by it at the time (having only read about it). But yeah, it was a distraction. Microsoft also made large investment in OLE (object linking and embedding) at the time which was a similar technology. In retrospect these were solutions in search of a problem. Great that you could embed an Execl sheet in a Word document, but it wasn't what made consumers excited at the dawn of the web.
- astrange 4y ago
  > OpenDoc is kind of an engineers dream. One would hope it isn’t - the problem with component systems is they’re a Conway’s Law violation, which is the reason the app model works so much better. (in terms of actually shipping, not technical correctness)
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Components are everywhere on Windows, Android IPC, XPC on macOS/iDevices, DBUS, gRPC, and plenty of other RPC reboots
- NaOH 4y ago
  Relatedly, there's Steve Jobs's thoughtful yet off-the-cuff response when questioned at the 1997 Worldwide Developer Conference about Apple killing OpenDoc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o