Genuine question.
I know they were the scrappy startup doing different cool things. But, what are the most major innovative things that they introduced, improved or just implemented that either revolutionized, improved or spurred change?
I am aware of the possibility of both fanboys and haters just duking it out below. But there’s always that one guy who has a fkn well-formatted paragraph of gold. I await that guy.
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The graphical user interface.
They don’t invent it (xerox PARC did), but Apple correctly identified that the user experience of existing computer systems was holding it back from being a thing everyone owns, and made computers a bad fit for many types of work that seem extremely obvious now (digital media creation particularly)
They did this more or less again with the smartphone: business folks and super nerds were the smartphone market before Apple. Now it’s the average person’s computer.
The graphical user interface.
A million times this. Not only did they popularize the ideas, but MacOS’s UI design was so ahead of its time that it’s barely changed since then. It was by far the most polished operating system at the time. Old Apple actually was innovating while the market was kind of stagnant.
This screenshot was in 2007. The competition was Windows Vista. It’s a night and day difference. I had this version of the iMac at the time and was super impressed, even if I did switch back to Windows a couple of years later. Looking back at it, it still looks quite “modern”.
Well, KDE3 could look cool too.
I’ll admit, back then I really wanted a Mac.
Just after trying to use them a few times I know that behavior is more important than appearance on screenshots. Also such looks exhaust you emotionally.
There’s an old saying in computing. “you improve usability by taking away options and features” apple didn’t necessarily invent this mindset. But they perfected it.
They took BSD, a security focused, but not very user friendly, offshoot of Linux/unix and made it “popular” by adding several layers of polish and doing a lot of the configuration work for you and made it osx. This was a time when Linux usability/management on the personal/newbie scale was garbage. If you wanted to install a certain distro of *nix, you better make sure you have supporting hardware and the right up to date tutorial, which is managed by an unknown volunteer, which was usually some person bored on the weekend a few months ago and never updated, they’ve made *nix installation and management a lot better though recently.
They also did this with music. People used to have large collections of unorganized mp3s in the early 00s, unless you were really anal and had a lot of time in your hands, because you were likely downloading them from several different illegal places, and legally buying mp3s were all over the place. You could buy the album off this weird obscure website that you didn’t want to trust with your CC information, because there were a lot of mom and pop music stores online. Then apple brought out iTunes and allowed both buying and managing (and eventually upgrading, traveling around with) music to be dead simple.
For smartphones, they stole a LOT from BlackBerry, but they took it to the next level. Blackberry had email, a private messaging network, and mobile web scrolling waayyyy before anyone. And so many people loved it so much that even Obama famously didn’t want to give his up when he took office. Then apple came out with the iPhone, and blew it away with a bigger screen and again, a lot more polish.
Innovation happens in small steps over years. Apple didn’t invent mobile phones, smart phones, tablets, or computing, they didn’t invent security, encrypted audio/video calls, or music management. They’ve done a lot of crappy stuff, and they charge super high amounts of money for less than state of the art hardware. Their innovation could be summed up by this profound statement I remember a friend said to me once around 2003/4.
“Osx, because making Linux pretty was easier than fixing Windows”
Perfect description, they made very complex functionality accessible by the general public.
Steve Jobs in particular was extremely anal in removing whatever he deemed “not needed”. The first mac nearly didn’t have arrow keys for its keyboard. He hated the function keys of keyboards so much he once personally removed the keys from a person who asked for an autograph
Marketing
Nobody has mentioned the scroll circle thing on the iPod. Not sure if you’ve ever used one, but that made it so much faster to navigate.
Also, Apple started the touchscreen phones revolution.
They seem to have a knack for taking something and making it palatable for the masses when it comes to UI and such. I don’t agree with a lot of it, but then again I am not “the masses” in the computing demographics.
The insane amounts of vertical integration that they’ve become known for. They can do really interesting and fascinating things with a bunch of very low-level/hardware-oriented optimization that simply isn’t possible unless you have full control of and visibility into ALL the hardware and software that goes into your devices.
Ease of use
And then started to undermine that innovation in their UIs instead of paying to use patents that are better than what they have come up with in its place.
Marketing for electronics is definitely a big one, nobody else really has the same cult following, and when somebody like Samsung gets close it feels like whatever the cult version of a knockoff is.
I’d argue that Sony held a cult like following prior to Apple’s resurgence. Walkmen, TVs, Home Stereo and VHS/CD/DVD players would often all ne Sony branded in a number of households.
The concept of removing features and making people pay for them back.
Marketing
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Marketing.
The facts are that large companies rarely innovate anything major. They tend to buy up smaller companies that have taken the risk and succeeded. Look at Google and Microsoft and tons of others. It’s a problem with growing big. The forces that make a company a successful scrappy little startup die out in the name of organizational efficiency. If you want to know what Apple innovated you have to look at what they did in the 70s or extend your criteria to companies they have bought.
Modern day planned obsolescence.
While I personally have not tried it, nor have many others, yet those who have tried and commented and as I have assessed via video of the device, the Vision Pro seems to be poised to once again define how we interface with the next computing platform. The spatial/immersive computing platform. It is apparently like magic and I cannot wait to try it.
For 3k. You and maybe 100 other folk. So real people might get it when ?
Hard to say, but I would guess that by the end of this decade more people will be wearing XR glasses than those still looking at smartphones. My guess too is the price will never be less than an iPhone today but the value will be higher as it will do more. A lot more.
I have xr glasses. They are useful for certain things. However they are really annoying. I pick up my phone a lot because glasses require a very specific situation.
Low light/ bright situation. Easy example of using them in bright sunlight. Unusable. Hat, unusable. Move them to take a drink.
I think they will be hard by a niche community. But I think cost and and usefulness
These are the limitations of the tech today, but a wave of innovation is inbound. 7 years from now XR glasses are going to much more slick and solved many of the issues you have raised. If not 2030, some point before 2040 unless we go extinct first.
Lmao. The vision pro defines nothing that wasn’t already defined by Valve / Oculus / Meta or every random AR / MR tech demo.
It brings nothing new to the table but an absurd price tag to pay for external 3DS googly eye displays.
The same was argued about the iPhone and while I will agree that really, nothing new was brought to the table from a hardware perspective, their integration is unsurpassed it would seem. We will have to wait and see, but being a heavy VR/AR user myself, the overall package Apple has provided it the gold standard right now for immersive computing interaction. Those who have used have said it was like magic and even a sharp developer made their version of the gaze interface on a Meta Quest Pro and said it was like magic. That is the innovation that others have missed. Like the Meta Quest Pro has eye tracking and could have easily had the magical user interface that uses eye gaze, but they did not. I bet they will in the next one as it does seem like this is the path forward. This is where Apple innovated and really does show that they tried a lot of input methods before they found one that just made it feels seamless.
