What is Digg?322 Comments
- andersonwill, on 08/26/2008, -12/+191So a computer from 25 years ago could copy and paste...but my iPhone still can't?
- Galaxylander, on 08/25/2008, -23/+115I'd most definitely say my favourite Apple innovation is the MagSafe. That's pretty damn genius.
- Xoti, on 08/26/2008, -4/+91Wait....666.66 for the first mac?
is Steve Jobs the devil? - mareksoon, on 08/26/2008, -2/+69"More than 70 percent of the 2007-model American automobiles offer iPod connectivity"
Kind of sad it took an iPod before auto manufacturers would throw in a two-cent stereo mini-phono plug when all those portable CD players had to use that stupid cassette adapter. - Pake, on 08/26/2008, -14/+66There's a difference between being an innovator and a great marketer. Apple is the latter as they don't exactly innovate, rather, they manage to market the product better than their competitors.
- inactive, on 08/26/2008, -3/+46"invested in some sorta fruit company or something"
- upick, on 08/25/2008, -12/+51LOL photo of steve in the younger days (#4)
- slugicide, on 08/25/2008, -9/+44Really? Then I suppose you'll be surprised to find out they didn't come up with that idea. The copied it from household deep-fryers.
- inactive, on 08/26/2008, -5/+39The first Apple computer looks like a P-P-P-Powerbook.
- dreamparacite, on 08/26/2008, -3/+36Yes.
- lougoose, on 08/26/2008, -1/+25Probably more than it did originally.
- eth3l, on 08/26/2008, -5/+28#3 - "The first Microsof Mouse does not roll out until 1987" ... MS did not start out as a hardware company like Apple did. the Diss to MS was unnecessary and misplaced there.
- digitalpencil, on 08/25/2008, -6/+28yeh, how they got away with the patent on that is a bit laughable really.. still, they're the first (if not only) to have implemented this design in laptops and it's saved my proverbial bacon more than once!
- Tenoq, on 08/26/2008, -0/+22Clearly not: he's .66 greater than the devil.
- Virgule, on 08/26/2008, -0/+20reference: http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/
- anyone4apint, on 08/26/2008, -6/+25Lets take a closer look at this article as it seems to be very one sided towards to great God that is Apple without actually being fair to the market of the time...
1976: Apple 1 is released and gives nothing that other manufactures were not providing at the same time. This isnt innovation, this is simply a company seeing an emerging market and jumping onboard.
1978: Apple release first consumer friendly and well priced floppy drive. I dont consider this to be inovation, I see this as commercializing a technology which had proven itself in the business world and making it cheaper for the home / enthusiast market. Its good stuff, I'm not complaining or slating them, but that in itself is not innovation.
1983: Apple release Lisa which is according to this article one of the first GUIs and is innovative. The GUI / Mouse system used in Lisa was liscenced from Xerox who were doing it 10 years before back in 1973 with the Alto. Lisa may have taken it to the home market, but as with the floppy drive this was not innovation, it was simply taking an existing technology to the home market at a viable price point.
1989: Apple release their first laptop. Is this really innovation considering that Epson and Osbourne had laptops available in 1981? Ok these systems were huge, but the innovation of the concept of a laptop was demonstrated many years before Apple released a product.
1993: Apple release the newton which the article says is innovative because it allows applications to talk to one another. What?! This is 1993 not 1973, applications had been sharing information for the past 10 years and to suggest that this is the first time a portable device could do this is ridiculous. In 1993 Apple were one of MANY companies trying to cash in on the electric filo-fax and yuppy boom, this is not innovative stuff.
1998: Apple release the iMac. For the first time out of all of the products listed in this article I will agree that this is inovation at its finest. One could say that the iMac is just a regular Mac in a pretty box thus isnt innovative, but it is oh so much more than this as when it was released it was part of the late 90s culture. By introducing the iMac the way that they did Apple invented the concept that computers can be cool and invented the lifestyle computing concept by which they have made their living off ever since. As a collection of chips and plastic the iMac is not innovative, but with regards to the marketing surrounding it then the iMac was genuinly groundbreaking.
2001: Apple release the iPod. Sorry but in 2001 the iPod was NOT inovative, it was nothing more than one of many MP3 players on the market and back in 2001 the first generation iPods were regarded as rubbish. They worked on firewire and initially only on Macs and they were basically rubbish back then. In 2001 the iPod was anything but innovative.
2001: Apple release iTunes. This is the second example where I will admit that it is genuinely innovative and groundbreaking. In 2001 digital music was obtained by ripping CDs and / or dodgy download sites. iTunes changed all of that and re-invented the way in which people get their music for ever. Much like the iMac, if you look at iTunes as some lines of code to download files then it is not innovative, but the revolutionary change that it brought and the way in which Apple managed and manipulated it made it genuinly groundbreaking. iTunes is more than the sum of its parts as it changed the way we get music forever and in that respect it is innovative.
2007: Apple release the iPhone. This is probably my most controversial point, but whilst the iPhone is a very nice phone (I have a 3G and love it) it is not inovative. It is nothing more than a pretty package with a fairly good feature set, it doesnt give or do anything that other high end mobile phones give us or do - all it does is present it to us in a nice way. One could argue that this presentation in itself is inovative, but I would argue that in a market which is a rapidly evolving as the mobile phone industry then the iPhone gets no inovation points for looking pretty. Innovation in the mobile phone world comes from things like high speed data access, moving from black and white to colour screen thus allowing us to send movies and pictures to our friends, moving from a huge late 90s handset to a tiny handset.... it is these big things that quality as inovation in the phone world, not a pretty interface. iPhone is a GREAT phone, but it really isnt all that inovative.
2008: Apple releases the MacBook Air. Not really inovative, other laptop companies have been doing it for a while now, its nothing new.
So there you have it. I am not an Apple hater, I am writing this on a MacBook and I have an iPhone and after reading this article I have decided to eBay myself a first generation iMac. However, it does annoy me when reputable publishers like NewsWeek jump on the 'Apple invented everything first and are the best innovators in the world' bandwagon as it is simply not the case. Apple are a great company, they make great products and they do occasionally come out with fantastic innovation, but over their history they have had a lot of misses and have taken credit for other peoples ideas because they had more success with it.
The chances are that most people reading this are Mac fan boys anyway so go for it and Digg me down as I dared to point out a few of the issues with articles such as this. What is a real shame about articles like this is that they do not focus on many of the genuinely innovative things which Apple have come up with over the years that were not all that successful as this is where you will find many of their true gems. - Spire3660, on 08/26/2008, -3/+22I would hardly call the Macbook Air an innovation. More of a compromise really.
- AFHCO, on 08/26/2008, -7/+26Here we go again...
- jggube, on 08/25/2008, -1/+19I wonder how much the Apple I computer sells for now.
- supermanred, on 08/26/2008, -4/+20Actually, it's one of the best features on my Macbook. It's probably saved my Macbook from about 5 drops.
I own a Jack Russell. Nuff said. - cToyos, on 08/26/2008, -5/+20...just like everything else
- macbookbill, on 08/26/2008, -0/+15Was it the cornballer?
- m1zl3d, on 08/26/2008, -3/+17Another one of these comments, really? Awesome, there's just not enough of these on Digg!
FYI it was filed under All » Technology » Apple - sudowrestler, on 08/26/2008, -1/+15"The last Apple-1 that was auctioned by the Vintage Computer Festival in April of 2002 sold for $14,000. The highest known amount paid for an Apple-1 is $50,000." From a 2003 auction announcement.
- Vodd9, on 08/26/2008, -7/+21Title is kind of misleading. Innovation in what? I'd say their marketing by making their products appealing to the custommers, but technologically, forget about it.
- ptFoe, on 08/26/2008, -3/+17Apple steals Xerox, Bosch
- Virgule, on 08/26/2008, -5/+17Safari
Satan
The Finder logo is pretty much an inverted cross (its subtle)
666.66
The logo is the fruit of the original sin
yadda yadda
COINCIDENCE?!?! lol...... :D - rehrer, on 08/26/2008, -2/+14I'm more of a PC person but I give Apple props for said innovations and I'm a fan of the simplistic route they've gone down in recent years.
- Myztry, on 08/26/2008, -1/+12A 32bit Amiga from 1985 could multi-task, display thousands of colours, copy and paste between applications, render using DMA hardware acceleration, and use a 2 button mouse on the GUI.
The defining attributes of modern computing. It's not all glory for Apple, or Microsoft for that matter who both came to those things much latter. - OpaqueMurdock, on 08/26/2008, -2/+12Interesting, yet I didn't see any other computer companies rushing to fix this problem. I don't know how many tines I have tripped over my cord, felt that rush of panic and then relaxed and chuckled at such a simple and elegant solution. Innovation can come in the form of knowing where to LOOK for solutions. Nothing is created in a vacuum. The fact remains that no one else seemed to be able to imagine this in a laptop, make it work or could make it compact enough. And that all is something you just can't poof away by saying that something similar existed before.
If what you are saying is true, (needs citation) then I applaud the people that came up with the idea originally and then I also give Apple due credit for recognizing that it could be used in other ways. This is pretty much the way everything works...
Now lets go back and scrutinize what inspired the people who made the magnetic fryer plugs... Who even Knows what innovation inspired them? But then we don't tend to dislike deep fryer companies and their "arrogant" users for no apparent reason...
"Damn them and their fresh cooked frys!" Everyone KNOWS oven baked crinkle cut frys are better AND they are cheaper! : ) - LemmingJesus, on 08/26/2008, -1/+11Kind of like getting mad at a band for not inventing the record.
- digitalpencil, on 08/25/2008, -10/+19magsafe, ambient light/gyroscopic sensors, multi-touch and the battery meter are probably my favourite features.
- Urkel, on 08/26/2008, -3/+12Well, after getting dugg down (two posts up) for simply pointing out the truth about my magsafes burning then I guess I'll throw in another real-world complaint about Magsafe for you ***** babies to pretend doesn't exist.
3rd Part Magsafe Connectors
Seriously, what's with not licensing this out to 3rd party. There still is no car adapter, the airplane adapter cost way too much and universal adapters like the Kensington one don't have a Magsafe tip because Apple refuses to make one for them. It seems a bit tough.
Okay, digg this down because the best way to solve a problem is to hide it with your powerful downward thumbs. - WhoRadley, on 08/26/2008, -0/+9This is amazing.
- btschul, on 08/26/2008, -6/+15Generalizations are fun!!!!!!!
- Thekirby45, on 08/26/2008, -0/+9Itunes is a innovation? Oh god.
- btschul, on 08/26/2008, -2/+11Check this out: http://uri.cat/software/LiquidMac/ it's an app that uses the macbook's gyroscopic sensors to move an animation of liquid around on the screen based on how you tilt the computer.
- lead2thehead, on 08/26/2008, -3/+12Reminds me of the time I tried to ford the river and my wagon tipped over...
- LemmingJesus, on 08/26/2008, -2/+10Have you ever tried to use the mighty mouse? It isn't designed for human hands.
- inactive, on 08/26/2008, -2/+10Not to mention that the first mouse Microsoft put out still kicks ass over any mouse Apple has ever made.
- ineptsavant, on 08/26/2008, -1/+9actually it's more than just a miniphono plug. for instance, the bmw connection plugs into the bottom of the ipod and grabs all the track information and allows you to use the steeringwheel buttons to select the songs. I'm sure most cars are the same.
- RogerStrong, on 08/26/2008, -1/+9>> MS did not start out as a hardware company
Yup.
And Microsoft Word came bundled with mouse in 1983, the year before the Mac was released. - gerrylazlo, on 08/26/2008, -0/+7Not enough computers with wooden cases, if you ask me.
- jaycalgary, on 08/26/2008, -4/+11did the newton have copy and paste?
- kraetos, on 08/26/2008, -0/+7Well, it was actually Woz's idea. He likes repeating numbers.
- inactive, on 08/26/2008, -1/+8because a social bookmarking site is the best place to get news.
*****. - BrainInAJar, on 08/26/2008, -0/+7mightymouse is a 4 button + 2 axis mouse... What you just said hasn't been accurate for years.
- MadOgre, on 08/26/2008, -6/+13I miss my Newton.
- RogerStrong, on 08/26/2008, -1/+8>> The whole PC world had standardized
>> on USB years before Apple brought
>> it to consumers, right?
Call it a dead heat. Once people agreed on a standard, everyone started using it. Windows supported it it with Win95 OEM Service Release 2.1 in mid 1997.
Apple's claim to fame was the first computer to drop the "legacy" ports. But then this was something Apple routinely did - releasing computers who's ports were incompatible with even *previous Macs*.
Having four different Macs at the time might require four different microphones because of different connectors. (Yes, really) And they kept changing the serial port connectors, didn't have a parallel port at all, and when they did finally have bus connectors, they kept changing the connectors and card dimensions.
PC users don't put up with this cr@p. Until USB became popular, PC's used the serial and parallel ports that were industry standard even *before* the PC, more than 20 years before. And PCs *still* use the same microphone connecter common on tape recorders long before the first PC.
>> The whole PC world was using the Mouse
>> when Apple finally caught up and built the
>> Macintosh, right?
Microsoft Word was bundled with a mouse the year *before* the Mac was release. The Mac may have been flashy, but Word had the numbers.
>> PCs were running Windows and
>> then APPLE suddenly thought
>> the GUI was a good idea, right?
It was Xerox who pioneered the GUI. Both Gates and Jobs got to see it, and both decided to produce their own GUI.
Windows was demonstrated at Comdex the year before the Mac was released. Once the Mac was shown to the public, they changed Windows to look less like it.
The Lisa and Mac were released first, but then Windows was a more ambitious project: They wanted it to run on a variety of computers, video cards (heck, the Mac didn't even support *color* until years later), screen resolutions, mice, ports, etc. And they wanted it to be backward compatible with existing software.
Bonus trivia:
Q: Who produced the first Unix-based OS released by Apple for it's computers?
A: Microsoft. - atomicfireball, on 08/26/2008, -1/+8Dude, go fix your shift key.
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