Apple and innovation
Ok, I don't rate Apple as much of an innovator, especially recently. The early Apples were based on ideas and kits that were available if you knew where to look. I looked. Many people knew where to look. Lots of us read stuff in the early 70s, even without the Internet ;-)
Credit where it's due, though. That the Steves were able to visualise a popular form of the microcomputer was cool and notable, and that they delivered on it was about it for innovation. They took past product ideas (from other areas, not just computing) and modeled a novel, workable PC out of it. But they weren't alone. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I know, and yes it did look great at the time... but at the time also we saw plenty of alternatives and different boxes with different operating systems. Certainly more so than now. The whole micro area was a hot bed of innovation of which Apple represent just one of the longer-term winners from that era. We tend to forget all the other players who have faded from the market.
So what about the Mac? Again Apple had the foresight to take other people's ideas and make it work as a whole. That's innovation;, taking ideas and bringing them to life. They were right about GUI and the mouse, but it still wasn't earth shattering to DOS and CP/M users. But the Apple II and the Mac were far more left-field than the iPod. What exactly is it? A portable music player? Didn't we have that already? So again they simply took an existing idea and in this case layed on a new twist. They have sold a lot of 'em because they were pretty close to first to market and won the marketing battle. They certainly thought it all through as a package, right down to the Internet integration. Apple - perhaps Jobs? - was more comprehensive in approaching the market than any competitor. To me that was the key innovation, linking the iPod with music delivery via the Internet.
At which point I'll stop my rave and point you here, to a Forbes article on Apple's perceived failure to grow the PC market via the iPod "glow".
Credit where it's due, though. That the Steves were able to visualise a popular form of the microcomputer was cool and notable, and that they delivered on it was about it for innovation. They took past product ideas (from other areas, not just computing) and modeled a novel, workable PC out of it. But they weren't alone. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I know, and yes it did look great at the time... but at the time also we saw plenty of alternatives and different boxes with different operating systems. Certainly more so than now. The whole micro area was a hot bed of innovation of which Apple represent just one of the longer-term winners from that era. We tend to forget all the other players who have faded from the market.
So what about the Mac? Again Apple had the foresight to take other people's ideas and make it work as a whole. That's innovation;, taking ideas and bringing them to life. They were right about GUI and the mouse, but it still wasn't earth shattering to DOS and CP/M users. But the Apple II and the Mac were far more left-field than the iPod. What exactly is it? A portable music player? Didn't we have that already? So again they simply took an existing idea and in this case layed on a new twist. They have sold a lot of 'em because they were pretty close to first to market and won the marketing battle. They certainly thought it all through as a package, right down to the Internet integration. Apple - perhaps Jobs? - was more comprehensive in approaching the market than any competitor. To me that was the key innovation, linking the iPod with music delivery via the Internet.
At which point I'll stop my rave and point you here, to a Forbes article on Apple's perceived failure to grow the PC market via the iPod "glow".
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