Facebook innovated by displaying your Facebook email address as your primary one and hiding all others.
Facebook innovated by putting more ads in your news stream.
All these innovations were designed to create profits for Facebook and therefore shareholder value. But did any of them make us stop and say: "Wow -- I didn't see that coming." Clearly, no.Mind you, no one saw Windows 8 coming; we just wonder if we'll notice its passing.
So, yeah - Apple is innovating like a startup.
Carolyn Ann
Funny you should mention Windows 8. It is the epitome of Microsoft's innovation... elimination of the start button and pretty much everything intuitive about Windows... elimination of DVD support (this really irked Jack, because he tried to burn a disc and discovered that he couldn't)... forcing "gestures" on every user, regardless of whether they have a touch screen (quite annoying when something as simple as moving the mouse cursor across the screen is read as a "swipe" and switches you to a different app). Yes, innovation... Microsoft-style.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever seen the movie "Idiocracy"? I am reminded of that movie when I think about how things are going in the computer world.
Can't say I've ever heard of it, Angel!
DeleteBut yeah, that review I linked to the other day was pretty accurate, I think :-)
And the last thing that Apple innovated was??? (serious question!)
ReplyDeleteI've not used Windows 8 yet, so can't comment - but Windows 7 was the best OS in a long time (I even know a complete Apple Fanboy that converted to it!)
Apple changed the music business, changed the computer business, changed the phone industry and have introduced some truly unique ideas into their products. Steve Jobs also changed the movie business with Pixar, bringing in innovative ideas that literally changed how movies are made.
DeleteWould all of these have things happened without Steve Jobs and Apple? I don't know. Some of them are obvious (the magnetic power cord, for instance - Apple owns the patent and they don't license it), some are badly executed (iTunes), some aren't necessarily positive (only selling individual songs) and so on. But the iPhone was innovative, as was the iPod. The iPad was a fantastic idea executed brilliantly; the MacBook and MacBook Air products are beyond "using a laptop" - they're a tactile sensation, a truly pleasurable experience for many.
You might not agree those are innovations, Stace, but I think they are. And so does the investor community - they value Apple far higher, and on far more potential, than Facebook, Google, Amazon or Microsoft. (Sure, it also means there's considerable pressure to keep on producing products that sell so well). Samsung has an innovative, competent and desirable, response to the iPhone (which is why Apple is trying very hard to make sure it reach the market). But they're not openly traded (I know they're at $1,350 on the Korean Exchange, but that price reflects overall earnings potential. The markets are *starting* to think Samsung could take on Apple's iPhone; perhaps, once they're out of their patent trials, they can take on the iPad, too?). Nokia flunked. RIM did, too. FB, etc are valued on their current earnings - because there's no little to no potential for innovation. Android is a response, Win8 is a marketplace disaster, Amazon is trying to be the Walmart of the internet (big profits, not much else) and Facebook is, essentially, a one-product company led by someone who doesn't understand that he's one of the major problems.
Microsoft, could have taken on Apple, but became a palace intrigue waiting to be split up. It relies on its cash cows (Office, .net, XBox), massive licensing fee increases and hasn't exploited its one true innovation (Kinnect) with any enthusiasm or even much acknowledgement it actually exists. Its main problem is Steve Ballmer, but it has numerous smaller problems, too. Including the Office team.
Like 'em or not, and I know you don't, Apple is clearly out-innovating everyone! Not all of their ideas are "original" in the sense that Apple came up with them, but their implementation of the ideas they've used has been pretty much flawless when right and an embarrassment when it didn't. They've changed, and continue to change, how people use technology. That's innovative. :-)
OK I was expecting (the absolutely not) examples of the iPod and iPhone.
DeleteDisney made Pixar what it is, not Apple - Jobs was trying desperately to offload it when Toy Story was flatly baulked at by Disney in its first guise. He wanted a technology company, not an animation company. Only when they bowed to Disney's wishes for the approach to Toy Story did they make money. And then he was pleased that he was unable to sell it! It’s what made his money for him.
You can't be serious with the MacBook Pro and air? Aluminium clad Intel PC’s that are limited in capability. OK… Not the first to offer Intel. Or Aluminium cases (they were very late to that party). They were a long way behind the curve in terms of screen resolution until the retina screens were introduced. Though I will admit they have the highest I’ve seen (the best I have had was 1920 * 1200).
The only people I know personally who prefer them to Windows machines have never used a "decent" Windows machine. Sure, they are better than 500 euro lump of rubbish (that most Mac converts replace with their 2000+ euro machine), but compared to what this is being typed on? Nope, they don't even get close. Not in weight, performance. I'll give you that the MacBook Air matches it in Size, but the best MacBook Pro fails to match in terms of performance. And the screen on this is way better than the air has.
The iPhone innovated what exactly? Fluid user interface... I'll grant you that. But the icon layout and touch screen phone were nothing new.
The iPod is poor take on a digital music player. Poor encoding and decoding of music, poor method of transferring music to the device and not the most user friendly interface in the world either. There were better machines before, and after, the iPod on the market.
The iPad is the biggest mystery to me. I wanted them to be good, really - a small touch screen computer that means I don't need my laptop to work on the move. Nope. A toy. I tried one and got a headache after 5 minutes due to the supremely poor screen they used. They took an iPhone and made it bigger. Again, hardly an innovation.
I'll agree that the other companies are not innovating. But neither are Apple. They take old technology and use good marketing and pretty boxes to sell it. That isn’t innovation; that is popularisation. And they do that very, very well I’ll agree
And of course the Jobs reality distortion field worked. The iPhone 4 had the worst antenna on the market and people believed it was their fault for holding the phone wrong all these years. And so they sold second rate products at premium prices. Making for very good returns. And investors jumped on the bandwagon, which snowballed to the value of the company today.
Oh, wait. They did innovate something. Patenting old technology and then trying to sue their competitors out of existence. Though it’s not an innovation I like!
So what do you count as innovative, Stace?
DeleteI totally disagree with you on Pixar. Disney wanted it because of what Steve Jobs had done with it! For sure the man needed someone to provide direction - Disney accomplished that.
As far as the Mac goes, I've used good Windows machines; I've even built a couple! (My favorite was a dual CPU machine with tons of RAM and about half a dozen disk drives about a decade ago. One big drive was dedicated to CD-images so I could quickly restore it after one of the endless "fatal" crashes Windows XP used to have as a matter of course. It was a pretty extreme machine for its day.) I've used good laptops from Sony and IBM. I carried a high end IBM around for awhile. With the exception of the dual-CPU machine I built, I never thought of them as aesthetically pleasing. On the other hand, right behind me is a still-working Mac Cube. A machine so aesthetic, innovative and daring MOMA put one on display. I'd place it in the same aesthetic category as my Ducati Monster: beautiful and functional. I just enjoy looking at the Duc and the Cube. They're both a deeply satisfying aesthetic experience; minimalist in their own ways, but what has been left out isn't needed and the basic form is just so perfect.
When I carry my MacBook Pro around, there's a satisfying tactile sensation. Using the machine is a satisfying experience. It goes way beyond marketing slogans or lifestyle statements; it's just an enjoyable experience. For me - your impression is obviously different!
I've never considered Windows to be aesthetic; the first few versions, 3.0 and on, were aesthetically adequate. XP started out good, but was laden with visual cues and clues pretty quickly. I didn't use Vista or 7 and 8 sounds horrendous. Office is powerful but that interface is a disaster. You have to get used to it! Heck, as part of my Health IT certification, Office was considered to be so complex, the governing body stipulated that we were required to take a (short) course on the thing! (I took mine as part of the H.I.T. course, fortunately!)
But I think the proof is in the pudding [so to speak]; when I had a choice of machines, I invariably gravitated to the MacBook. I still do if I have a choice. There's some parts of OS X that annoy the heck out of me. I sit at the laptop for over 12 hours a day; it had better be a machine I like using - and my MacBook Pro is precisely that.
Is Apple perfect? Hardly. I'm in a pretty major dispute with them at the moment. They've done some things in the past that are baffling; perfection is an impossible goal. And no one can argue that Steve Jobs wasn't a willful, arbitrary and difficult man; by all accounts, he was pretty awful to know and work for. But look at what he did and tell me you're not impressed! How many other people have successfully built multi-billion dollar businesses?
Look, we're not going to agree on this. I like the Mac and the iPad and the iPhone; I have the Mac, I don't have an iPad or iPhone. I'm working my way to affording one of each - because I like them. I'm building a business around them - because I like them. What can I say? You don't like them, and I do. I think Apple has a bright future, and I think Microsoft is stagnating and will ultimately become irrelevant. I think Facebook's design is barely adequate and that they haven't done anything of particular note since their founding. Google is too data driven; it will, eventually, be challenged and maybe replaced. Amazon is what its owner is: a sanctimonious, greedy entity that wouldn't know taste if it was bit by it. Apple is challenging to challenge; infamously opaque, absolutely thin-skinned and not at all wise. But what it is, deeply innovative, has the rest of them beat. :-)
Doing something that no one has done before!
DeleteI totally, 100% disagree – and find it rather insulting the creative geniuses behind Toy Story to say that the guy trying to get rid of the failing business (without success) should take the credit for what the employees working in the division that he didn’t even want managed to do by listening to the marketing people from Disney.
Really rather insulting. He got lucky that very cleaver people listened to people who know the market very well and produced an outstanding feature length computer animated movie.
So let’s talk examples of what I find innovative. The first smartphone (Nokia IIRC – please feel free to correct) back in the 1990’s. A phone with a PDA built in. You could work on word documents, send email, make appointments and install new applications. It was a brick, as were most phones of the time, but it was innovative.
The valve mechanism that Ducati use – that was truly innovative. Something that no one had thought of before. As were the pneumatic ones that the Japanese companies had to come up with because Ducati wouldn’t license it!
The production system used for the Model T Ford was innovative. I don’t think the car wasn’t, it was a pretty standard car at the time, but the production process used to build it meant that it could be mass produced.
One of the early Cadillac’s was innovative. And we can all thank it for the simple to drive cars that we have. A British company saw it thought it was a great idea and used it in one of the most popular models in the UK at that time. And then it stuck and spread. The British company wasn’t innovative for popularising it, the Cadillac (which I believe was a commercial failure) was innovatie.
The Dutch wood saw windmills were innovative back in the 1700 hundreds. How to use wind to drive a wood mill, where the saw and transport are interlocked. Seems so obvious now, but at the time it was like nothing else and made the tiny county a king of the seas and very rich.
Ikeas original flat packed furniture! There is another one (IIRC they were first). Take stunning designs, and make them in such a way that they can be transported flat and easily built when you get home. One that many people have tried to copy, but failed.
The original Sony Walkman was innovative. All that music whilst you are on the move! Back in the 1970’s. Wow! And the company that came up with the first MP3 player, a 2.5” HDD, with a screen and controls and the ability to listen to hundreds of albums on the move.
The MiniDisc player, the perfect replacement for Cassette. Tiny optical disks that can be changed magnetically. And all in a machine barely bigger than the disc itself!
The WiiMote – it changed the way people saw consoles, saw the death of many a TV and made Sony and MS sit up and think about what they were doing!
The Kinect (though it is an answer to the WiiMote) is quite innovatie.
(Continued!)
DeleteThe Original Mac that was conceived in a garage in California by Jobs and Woz
All these things I count as innovative as they were new. They did not take someone elses machine, place it in a pretty case and market it well. That is the strength of the Jobs era Apple.
BTW, I don’t count the monster either. Lots of companies have made naked, short tailed street machines from their racing bikes. All they were doing was following the market. But as I said, the engines most certainly were!
You talk about aesthetically pleasing. I’ll concur. My Sony DTR that Mrs Stace now uses is an ugly lump of plastic. See we do agree on that Apple make pretty cases. But that is not innovation!
A ridiculously powerful lump of plastic, but a lump all the same. We both agree that the Apple is prettier. Neither of us choose to use the Apple over it, as its style over substance.
The one I am typing on now though, the Vaio Z, that is a pretty little carbon fibre (but not chav in your face carbon fibre) laptop. The type of case that I believe Apple is trying to patent as ‘innovative’ at the moment.
You also talk about that feeling you get from the Apple when carrying it. That is not innovative either. That is marketing – and is a lifestyle statement. You are happy when carrying your Apple. I am happy when using my Sony. Actually I felt a complete twonk when using my Apple on the train. With a Sony, even a damn good one, you are just using a machine to do work. With the Apple you are ‘making a statement’ even when you don’t want to.
You are right, we won’t agree. You love Apple and I’ve bought and tried their products (iPhone – good in 2007, but is still there now and the market has moved on, iPod – lots of space which is the reason I bought it but terrible sound quality and MacBook Pro – took a risk and have been regretting it since) and they are just not for me.
But loving a company does not make them innovative. I love Volvos. They have been innovative in safety devices. But for the rest they are behind the curve when it comes to innovation. They follow the market for gadgets rather than lead.
And just what were you doing to your XP machine? I was a developer on an XP machine working 10 hours a day on it, installing all sorts of crap to test and try out to see if they would help our product, and even then I only reinstalled once every few years just because I wanted a blank slate! No blue screens, no scary refusing to reboot.
Stace
PS I’ve been in Holland too long! Everytime I wrote ‘innovative’ I ended up writing ‘innovatie’ (Dutch for innovation!) Gah :P
Hmm. We have slightly different definitions of "innovative".
DeleteWhat Apple has done, for the iPhone and the iPod, is take existing ideas and repackage them in an innovate way. They produced something no one else did. They *created* markets, by technical prowess and by savvy marketing. Microsoft did the same in the 1990's! IBM bases its entire business strategy on it, as does Red Hat.
I remember something about pneumatic valve springs being a Formula One invention?
The desmodronic valve system on Ducati's isn't a Ducati invention. According to Wikipedia, they're first mentioned in 1896! (Learn summat new every day! :-) )
I mentioned the Duc not as an example of innovation - although it is aesthetically innovative - but as an example of aesthetic design. It's a beautiful machine, and quite a thrill to ride, as well. (The new (2008+) Monsters aren't beautiful machines; they're fashion statements. I'm not particularly keen on them.
The tactile experience of my laptop isn't a result of marketing - it's the result of good design! Good marketing can't replace good design; it can help bad design, but that's about all.
I'm not saying I love Apple and that's what makes them innovative! Not at all. I am saying that I love using Apple's products and that they are innovative.
We'll have to agree to disagree about Pixar, as well. I recall they were going bust before Steve Jobs turned up and put in a whole boatload of cash ($50M, according to Wikipedia). I do remember when it all happened because I remember thinking "Why that?" Mostly because the soap opera happening around Apple at the time was interesting. And I was wondering if that company would survive. They almost didn't - until Steve Jobs resumed the reins.
(I've never had a "working" XP installation. Even on the Dell I bought that was supposed to be "turn on and go". I'll tell you how bad it was: I wired my desk so I could switch the power off "at the source" in order to get Windows XP machines to boot up after they'd crashed for whatever reason. Aesthetically it was competent, but technically? I'd play my Flight Simulator and Boom! Down it went.
And as a network manager, I had to develop a set of procedures to deal with Windows NT failures. They were technical and "marketing", as in "I've got to explain why this multimillion dollar investment keeps going down". I was the one who brought NT servers into that company, and I was the one who spent weekends in the server rooms fixing the blasted machines. Sun Solaris? Reboot them every so often, just to make sure that when they needed rebooting - they would! I know XP was built on an NT foundation, which probably explains it. (And no, it wasn't bad installs; the vendor was MS certified, etc; I had MS certified people on staff and so on.) NT took my very hard-won uptime stats and turned them into a mockery.
The personal stress those machines and their operating system produced was phenomenal! As you can tell, I'm not a fan of Windows for a reason.
Yes we do. Apple took an existing idea, stripped it down and put it in a pretty box. Really not innovative in my book. Quite the opposite.
ReplyDeleteAs with the Duke (which I must admit being a race fan he Monster isn't my first choice, that would be a 996) it's a pretty bike (if you like that sort of thing). I don't see where the innovation in design is?
I guess we just have to agree to disagree on why the 'Ahhh' feeling when carrying a sub-par notebook clad in over engineered aluminium :)
And with Pixar. I've seen a documentary with the technical team explaining how they were on the verge of going under when Disney told them to take their idea for Toy Story and never darken their doors again. Jobs bought it to create a new technology company (and pumped an amount of cash into it - quite a lot it actually as it hemeraged cash, trying to sell 'Pixar' workstations. It didn't work, and the costs kept mounting. He tried to offload to Microsoft amongst others who politely declined to buy the cash consuming company.
Then a technical bod and creative bod changed the premise for Toy Story to something more Disneyeque and they tried again. Disney liked the changes and the rest is history. But it was not a Jobs success, he didn't want the company as a production machine, he wanted a technology company so that he could get back at Apple.
Actually it was a really interesting documentary - if I could remember the title I'd recommend it (it came out at about the time of Toy Story 3)
I never knew that the Ducati valve stems back so far! I wonder what they did to the design to be able to get a patent that is still valid today!
Or that it was F1 that had the pneumatic valves first :) As you say, learn something new.
And I really, really don't know what what was wrong with your windows machines.
In every professional job I have had I've made applications for Windows NT servers, and never once had I had the consistent trouble you talk about. Maybe a server crashed occasionally, or someone did something wrong in code, but I've worked on server farms allowing 20000 access to web applications using DCOM to talk to business layer machines which got their data from a SQL Server database and they went down maybe once every year, and always due to a coding error. And things have only improved with Server 2000, 2003 , 2008 and 2008 R2.
As an example we currently work to the 5 9's for uptime. Windows 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012. What causes our outages? Network components failing. The machines just keep on running.
Stace