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Apple has a history of surprises and engaging keynotes. Google, for all its success, has never launched a category creating product. Every Google success I can
by axg11 4y ago
Apple has a history of surprises and engaging keynotes. Google, for all its success, has never launched a category creating product. Every Google success I can think of is a follow-on product, even search.
Apple’s category creation resume:
- iPod
- iPhone
- iPad
- Apple Watch
- AirPods
- ARM Mac/Apple Silicon (still early but looks like an industry shift)
Apple’s successes above weren’t necessarily the first in the category, but they were the first to make the category significant. Watching the corresponding Apple keynotes for each of these launches was a window into the future. What’s the advantage of watching Google IO when they’ve rarely if ever dictated the future?
- sprash 4y agoYou forgot: - The original Macintosh (first viable mouse/window based user interface for consumers) - The first iMac (the end of the "beige box" era of computers) - OS X in general (several new user interface paradigms never seen before like the dock, Exposé, GPU accelerated desktop rendering)
- DonHopkins 4y agoUmm, the Apple ][? Apple's been around a LOT longer than Google.
- sprash 4y agoIt was never "announced" at a major apple event though.
- greggman3 4y agogoogle maps? If you're going to claim mapquest existed before that then you'd need to remove ipod, iphone, ipad from the list above. All of those had products that came before but weren't hits.
- Twisell 4y agoWell technically OpenStreetMap seems to predate Google Maps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap
- greggman3 4y agoDo you have some evidence that OpenStreetMaps had a user experience similar to Google Maps in 2004? My recollection is it did not. It was like at best like mapquest. Click an arrow on the edge of the map, wait for the page to reload. There were several maps before Google Maps but they didn't provide the smooth experience that Google Maps provides. Just like there were 100s of PDAs before iPhone but they didn't provide the smooth experience of iPhone.
- suture 4y agoIn addition to maps Gmail, and Google Search were category defining implementations. They bought YouTube and have steadily increased it’s capabilities and have made it into a category defining implementation.
- jsjohnst 4y agoGoogle Search wasn’t fundamentally different than Altavista, just marginally better. Had Yahoo! not bought Altavista, there’s a chance it might’ve stayed competitive with Google.
- suture 4y agoI strongly disagree with this. Just the fact that the homepage was minimalist and just a search field and the results made it category defining. And the results were way better as far as my memory goes.
- jsjohnst 4y ago> Just the fact that the homepage was minimalist Sure, the homepage of Altavista was a relic of the 90s. The SERP however wasn’t as radically different. If a minimal homepage is enough to be “category defining” to you, we can just agree to disagree and move on.
- oarsinsync 4y agoHaving used excite, Infoseek, Lycos, yahoo, askjeeves, Altavista, and even astalavista, my recollection is that they all (bar yahoo’s manually curated index) sucked for any high quality content. Then google came around, yahoo initially integrated them for non-catalogued content, and they took off, absolutely dominating the competition. There’s a reason we “Google it” and don’t “altavista it”. ISTR altavista’s pitch over yahoo was that they indexed the entire web, they just couldn’t return meaningful results. Google could.
- 4y ago
- jsjohnst 4y agoGoogle Maps was the first good “AJAX” like map (god it’s been a long time since I used that term), so yeah, I’ll give you that one. Google Earth however was a rebrand of Keyhole which they acquired.
- jaredsohn 4y agoFWIW, a lot of Google Maps came through acquisitions, too. But I think Google gets credit in this context for AJAXifying it and integrating tech/data with it in category-defining ways. "Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a real time traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005.[2] The service's front end utilizes JavaScript, XML, and Ajax. Google Maps offers an API that allows maps to be embedded on third-party websites,[3] and offers a locator for businesses and other organizations in numerous countries around the world. Google Map Maker allowed users to collaboratively expand and update the service's mapping worldwide but was discontinued from March 2017. However, crowdsourced contributions to Google Maps were not discontinued as the company announced those features would be transferred to the Google Local Guides program." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps
- jsjohnst 4y agoYep, I was aware of the acquisition. The work to make what we think of as Google Maps today happened after the acquisition. That’s why I mentioned Google Earth as a counter example, as it fundamentally didn’t change (obviously got better, but didn’t change in a foundational way) post acquisition unlike Maps did.
- axg11 4y agoYou’re correct - Maps is a good example. I think the relative point still stands though. On the whole, Apple releases fewer higher-signal products and a better track record of industry wide impact.
- gamblor956 4y agoPortable music players existed before the iPod, and were quite popular. Unless you're too young to have heard of the Walkman? (Here's a hint at to how long portable music players have been around: they're an important part of the plot for the current season of Stranger Things...set in the 1980s.) People used to call the iPhone the Apple Blackberry when it first came out. Fitness watches were big before the Apple Watch (remember FitBit?). ARM Mac is not the revelation that Apple fans think it is. It has literally zero impact outside of the Apple echo chamber, and the products based on the Apple chips are underwhelming, considering that Apple has full control of the hardware and software. I guess if you're doing that weird Apple revisionist thing where you just ignore history, yes, Apple has "created" product categories that existed before Apple got into them, s the same way that Elon Musk "founded" Tesla and Al Gore "invented" the internet.
- closewith 4y agoI have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. 2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue. 3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- indymike 4y ago> What’s the advantage of watching Google IO when they’ve rarely if ever dictated the future? The difference here is hardware vs. software. Android and ChromeOS devices are mostly not marketed as Google products (aside the Pixel stuff), so there's really not a need for big launch events. Apple's entire year can be made by a great launch, and no one does it better than Apple.