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Are you kidding? Apple reinvents every space they enter with profound invention. Do you remember computers before the Mac? Notebooks before the Macbook? Music

by rjurney 12y ago

Are you kidding? Apple reinvents every space they enter with profound invention. Do you remember computers before the Mac? Notebooks before the Macbook? Music players before the iPod? Phones before the iPhone? Tablets before the iPad? And in a month you'll think: watches before the Apple Watch?

andrewchambers 12y ago
Yes I do remember all those things, they were pretty good.
- prewett 12y ago
  Yeah, they were pretty good until I used the Apple version... :) (Exception: MacOS 9 laptops, MacBooks pre-titanium) My phone before the iPhone was horrible, though. Partly that was my fault for getting a Razr. The user interface somehow managed it so that my thumb was always in exactly the wrong spot for what I needed to push right now. It was a joyous day when I found someone to give that thing away to. (On the good side, it woke up two years after I stopped using it, plugging it in, etc. to give me an alarm I had set. Now that is a reliability!)
Gigablah 12y ago
> watches before the Apple Watch Yes, I remember the iPod nano
wpietri 12y ago
I think their skill is more profound commercialization. I do in fact remember all of those things. I even owned all of those things before Apple entered those markets. Apple invented very little for any of them. Their strength lies in taking existing technologies, rebuilding them with a strong user focus, and then marketing the hell out of them. So much so that many people apparently forget what came before.
- rjurney 12y ago
  Most of their success is owing to the invention of new interfaces that fit new form factors. Before that, only dissatisfying shit is available, and the market is mostly novelty. After that, new device categories have actual features a human can use, and a market happens and knock offs compete.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    Which interface were you thinking they invented? the WIMP-style interface was borrowed from Xerox PARC. The MacBook was a shiny laptop. The iPod had a menu system much like other MP3 players of the time; they mainly made it a well-organized, consumer-friendly menu system with a bigger screen. The iPhone's main interface innovation I can think of was making the screen bigger; they did use a virtual keyboard, but so did the Palm Pilot and the Apple Newton of years before. The iPad, interface-wise, was basically a big iPod Touch. Don't get me wrong; those are all very polished products, and they took a lot of technical smarts. They were much more usable to a mainstream consumer audience. But the non-Apple versions of those products were generally fine for non-consumer audiences. And Apple's marketing is masterful; I've never seen a tech company so good at generating hype.

by rjurney 12y ago

andrewchambers 12y ago

Yes I do remember all those things, they were pretty good.

prewett 12y ago
Yeah, they were pretty good until I used the Apple version... :) (Exception: MacOS 9 laptops, MacBooks pre-titanium) My phone before the iPhone was horrible, though. Partly that was my fault for getting a Razr. The user interface somehow managed it so that my thumb was always in exactly the wrong spot for what I needed to push right now. It was a joyous day when I found someone to give that thing away to. (On the good side, it woke up two years after I stopped using it, plugging it in, etc. to give me an alarm I had set. Now that is a reliability!)

Gigablah 12y ago

> watches before the Apple Watch Yes, I remember the iPod nano

wpietri 12y ago

I think their skill is more profound commercialization. I do in fact remember all of those things. I even owned all of those things before Apple entered those markets. Apple invented very little for any of them. Their strength lies in taking existing technologies, rebuilding them with a strong user focus, and then marketing the hell out of them. So much so that many people apparently forget what came before.

rjurney 12y ago
Most of their success is owing to the invention of new interfaces that fit new form factors. Before that, only dissatisfying shit is available, and the market is mostly novelty. After that, new device categories have actual features a human can use, and a market happens and knock offs compete.
- wpietri 12y ago
  Which interface were you thinking they invented? the WIMP-style interface was borrowed from Xerox PARC. The MacBook was a shiny laptop. The iPod had a menu system much like other MP3 players of the time; they mainly made it a well-organized, consumer-friendly menu system with a bigger screen. The iPhone's main interface innovation I can think of was making the screen bigger; they did use a virtual keyboard, but so did the Palm Pilot and the Apple Newton of years before. The iPad, interface-wise, was basically a big iPod Touch. Don't get me wrong; those are all very polished products, and they took a lot of technical smarts. They were much more usable to a mainstream consumer audience. But the non-Apple versions of those products were generally fine for non-consumer audiences. And Apple's marketing is masterful; I've never seen a tech company so good at generating hype.