I think the point he was making was: once you see a master chef make mayonnaise you realize the reason you failed. You tried too hard. And now you can make mayonnaise.
Tablet makers (iPaq, MS, etc) tried too hard. Apple showed them don't try too hard. And now they can make tablets too.
So yes, the excellent chef can be the first to make mayonnaise, however, with out patents on mayonnaise so can everyone else now. The idea of a patent is that the master chef spent years learning to not mix the ingredients too hard, now that he has showed the world the way to make mayonnaise, the only thing stopping the world from stealing the fruits of his work are patents.
The point being if Apple never created the iPhone and iPad we would still have phones like the iPaq and the clunky MS tablets in the year 2012. I whole heartily agree with this.
If it wasn't for Apple, every other phone and tablet company today would not be making anything of the flavor of the iPhone or iPad. Android and Win Mobile Phone are of the flavor of Apple.
So why is it right for them to taste like "L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon" (Apple) in the year 2012 if they would still taste like "Taco Bell" (MS, iPaq, etc) in the year 2012 if it wasn't for Jobs' iphone and ipad. Obviously with out a parallel universe for us to visit together I can't prove this to you. However, I do feel the overwhelming facts of 20 years of failure by iPaq, MS, etc show the trajectory they were heading for and we can guess where they would be in the year 2012:
- Stylus pen, or clunky touch screen that you have to press very hard.
- Lots of ram, lots of CPU power.
- Very heavy
- Very large and thick
- Poor quality materials
- Mediocre software that does not come any where close to the current android software.
- Buggy software
- no App store, lots of viruses and other security issues.
- Expensive and running full Windows 8, no RT version.
So if the products Samsung and MS were selling today fit the above recipe, I agree Apple shouldn't be suing them. But this isn't what is happening. Apple is being robbed blind. Every technique and recipe Apple created is being meticulously stolen and engineered into Android and windows phones. These are recipes that Jobs, Ive and the whole Apple company put years of effort into, they poured their heart and soul into these recipes.
The reason so much of the tech media don't see it this way is they have no taste buds. Most people have terrible taste buds. Well, they have great unconscious taste buds but their conscious taste buds are almost worth less. So they see things like the iPaq and those old MS Tablets and think "Well Gee golly, that food sure was tasty, sure android is tastier but not much tastier, apple doesn't really deserve much credit for androids improved taste."
As some one with excellent taste buds (I am a UX/Product designer, I have predicted the success and failure of almost all major tech product that have come out in the past 10 years, you can read the comments in my HN history as I defended the iPad to almost 99% of HN thinking it was stupid when it came out, I predicted the failure of the Zune, I predicted the success of Apple as whole back in 2004, and predicted MS' current decline) I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty how different iPaq and android taste.
What android and Win Phone are doing is sneaky. It is so sneaky you don't realize how many subtle but important details they have stolen. They can do this because you don't have the conscious taste buds necessary to notice it.
These details may be subtle but they are far from small. If you ever watch a grand master play chess. Every time he makes a great move you think to yourself "Gee golly that was an obvious move". No. No, it was not. Once you see a chess move you can no longer look at it objectively. The way to objectively judge a chess move is to try to figure it out on your own before some one shows it to you. After spending hours and hours and more hours looking for this move before finding it, you then fully appreciate the move.
The tech media is watching a chess game from the sidelines Apple is the grandmaster, Android and windows phone are the people building a database of the grandmaster's moves to beat people at chess.
Most people won't be able to comprehend or believe the next sentence: A non Expert Chef or food critic (Expert Product Designer) will never be able to appreciate the Gigantic chasm between the taste of Apples products and any of their competitors, however, on an unconscious level everyone will be drawn to Apples taste so strongly that if the competitors don't copy it, soon Apple will have no competitors still in business. This is the natural Monopoly the iPod almost had for a few years. In 2010 "The latest research by NPD Group claims that iPod had a 76 percent share of the MP3 player market in US in May this year."[0] This monopoly would have been true if Samsung, Google and Microsoft were not spending the past 5 years perfecting their ability to hire Expert Product designers to steal Apple's recipes. From 2001, when the first iPod came out, until about 2010 MS, Google and Samsung went through a phase of denial, trial (trying to steal ideas) and then finally some succes (actually stealing ideas). It took them about a decade just to get good at stealing ideas from Apple. The Zune was an example of how hard it is to steal ideas from apple. A non Expert Product Designer would think the Zune was good thievery, however, it was a sloppy job, it wasn't until windows phone and android, that these companies started to be good at stealing ideas.
[0] http://www.ithinkdiff.com/the-ipod-has-76-percent-of-mp3-pla...
You are going to hate me for saying this, and you won't agree with me but the truth is that: you don't on a conscious level know what is going on. You are Unconsciously Incompetent. And Android and Win Phone are using this to their advantage. Its the same way Europeans stole land from Native americans. The native americans were Unconsciously Incompetent when it came to the idea of "Owning Land". They saw the land as owning them. Thus they signed documents that seemed to have little importance. This is what Android and Win Phone are doing. They are using you to steal from Apple.
That said Jiro [1] doesn't patent his Sushi, he simpley makes the best sushi. And he does quite well for him. If I was Apple I would spend a lot more of my time in the kitchen making the best Sushi in the world and a lot less time in the courtroom.
[1] http://www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/
Note: I am sorry if I come off as arrogant by calling myself an "Expert Product Designer" and claim most people won't understand what I understand, but I don't say this out of arrogance, rather out of fact.
I have spent more than a decade to be as competent as I am in Product Design. This is not small feat. In college I was a talented student when it came to Physics, in particular my introduction to Quantum Physics and special relativity class. If I had chosen to pursue the path of Quantum Physis I am quite confident I would be an Expert Quantum Physis today.
And if this was so, it would not be arrogant for me to say such things as: "light is both a particle and wave, most people will never appreciate how amazing this is, only expert Quantum Physis', such as my self, will come close to appreciating this statements full glory." This would not be arrogant, rather it would be a fact.
The sad fact is that "Product/UX Design" doesn't get the same respect as the hard sciences. From my point of view it should. I use just as much if not more of my brain power to wrap my head around design solutions when I am designing a product as I did when I studied the particle and wave form duality of light and the intricate details of space and time learned through special relativity.