Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that none of what Apple brought about in the last decade was "significant" in the same way that sanitation, ..., public health are. They primarily brought combinations of things we were already doing in slick and usable packages. They produced a bunch of great products, no doubt, but I cringe whenever someone calls an iThing "revolutionary".
The GUI is a revolution from the command line. The personal computer is a revolution from the mini-computer and the mainframe. Apple invented both of those. The touch interface is revolutionary, compared to plastic buttons, and Apple invented that. I find it amazing that people can claim, with a straight face that Apple "combined things were were already doing in slick and usable packages" about things that did not e…
Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
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Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that none of what Apple brought about in the last decade was "significant" in the same way that sanitation, ..., public health are. They primarily brought combinations of things we were already doing in slick and usable packages. They produced a bunch of great products, no doubt, but I cringe whenever someone calls an iThing "revolutionary".
The GUI is a revolution from the command line. The personal computer is a revolution from the mini-computer and the mainframe. Apple invented both of those. The touch interface is revolutionary, compared to plastic buttons, and Apple invented that. I find it amazing that people can claim, with a straight face that Apple "combined things were were already doing in slick and usable packages" about things that did not e…
Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
#33Somewhat related: You know how we in the startup world are constantly chanting, "It's the execution that matters, not the idea?" Well, many of the discussions around Apple seem to boil down to one person saying that Apple copied/stole the idea, or the idea was inevitable, and the other person saying "Yeah, but Apple pulled off he execution ." To the extent that all of Apple's ideas in GUIs, mobile devices, music reta…
I would imagine a lot of startups find themselves in a situation where people simply aren't ready for the solution that is brought to the table.
Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
#34Article summary: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Wow, I think your comment is a perfect illustration of one of the author's points and the reason he had to speak up in the face of people going too far in extolling Apple's virtues.
Apple makes fantastic products, but to compare any of them or even the aggregate of them (and I'm including the Apple II and the original Mac in this, both of which I think are actually bigger game changers than anything 1997+) to any single thing in the list you just rattled off is insanity.
Apple has changed the world of industrial design, sure, and they make wonderful products, but none of that is a real sweeping history-altering game changer.
Let's recognize the great 10 year run they've been on, but let's not get crazy about it.
Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
#35Somewhat related: You know how we in the startup world are constantly chanting, "It's the execution that matters, not the idea?" Well, many of the discussions around Apple seem to boil down to one person saying that Apple copied/stole the idea, or the idea was inevitable, and the other person saying "Yeah, but Apple pulled off he execution ." To the extent that all of Apple's ideas in GUIs, mobile devices, music reta…
(which is not to say Apple has never had an original idea in their life)
Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
#36Article summary: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
#37I really don't understand the need to denigrate Apple. It almost seems as this spawns from an instinctive respect for the significance that Apple, and Steve Jobs specifically, have actually had. Apple invented the GUI (using some ideas they licensed from Xerox), as part of a project that Steve Jobs led. The NeXT cube inspired the web to some extent and made the first browser much easier to write. Apple invented the t…
Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
#38There is a good argument to be made that Google is a more influential company than Apple, but this article doesn't present it. Once you take away the unsubstantiated (at least in the article) fluff, such as "Google preaches openness because it benefits the company", here are Google's concrete accomplishments, according to the article: 1) Their core technology, Google search. 2) The fact that they bought YouTube. This…
Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
#39I really don't understand the need to denigrate Apple. It almost seems as this spawns from an instinctive respect for the significance that Apple, and Steve Jobs specifically, have actually had. Apple invented the GUI (using some ideas they licensed from Xerox), as part of a project that Steve Jobs led. The NeXT cube inspired the web to some extent and made the first browser much easier to write. Apple invented the t…
"I really don't understand the need to denigrate Apple." Me either, but I also don't really understand the need to sanctify them, and I don't see how anyone could read this article as a denigration of Apple unless they've already made them sacrosanct in their heads. Also, I don't think your history of Pixar is really correct. Lucas sold Pixar pretty much solely because he needed the money because of his divorce. It i…
For the past 30 years I've been reading people denigrating Apple based on innumerable falsehoods and misrepresentations. Ever since the Apple II had competition, there have been fans of competing systems who felt the need to attack Apple, at that time, because it was the dominant system. During the windows era, because Windows fans felt vaguely insecure about the computer they were talked into by a salesman, and nowadays, by google fans because they want to believe that it is ok for google to rip off the iPhone and give away a counterfeit operating system. All of these people have both a motivation to denigrate Apple and, since they know that Apple is one of the few genuinely innovative companies in the industry, they end up having to make up stories to try and make Apple's innovations less significant than they are.
One of the ways people denigrate Apple is to pretend like there is really no difference in usability or performance of Apple products, while also claiming that they are more expensive (even when they aren't) and thus that anyone who buys them is obviously a victim of a Reality Distortion Field. For these people they cannot debate the purely pragmatic reasons that people choose Apple products, and so they attempt to portray Apple users as part of a cult, and often speak using religious terminology.
Ironically, it is those who talk about the "Reality Distortion Field" who have actually substituted ideology for pragmatism, otherwise they'd have pragmatic arguments to make.
Re: Apple changed everything? Yeah, right.
#40I really don't understand the need to denigrate Apple. It almost seems as this spawns from an instinctive respect for the significance that Apple, and Steve Jobs specifically, have actually had. Apple invented the GUI (using some ideas they licensed from Xerox), as part of a project that Steve Jobs led. The NeXT cube inspired the web to some extent and made the first browser much easier to write. Apple invented the t…
This is why people feel the need to "denigrate" Apple -- people have serious misconceptions about the history of computing, resulting in a new history in which Apple is penciled in as the creator of everything. Their contribution to the history of computing is significant, but claims that they "invented" all these things give too much credit to Apple and too little to the companies and researchers who had the same ideas but lacked the resources, capitalist desire, or business acumen to profit from them.
See raganwald's comment regarding execution: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2934813