Mobile Has Apple ever really invented anything?

Kevin

Code Monkey
Staff member
The current day Apple company has a cult-like following of fans who love the company for its sleek designs that have becomes its hallmark. Even if a person does not like their products they generally tend to agree that they are, for the most part, well designed.

If you take away the design aspects though, what is left? Is Apple just a innovative design house? Video bloggers Tek Syndicate decided to look into that question in their own style.

What are your thoughts on it?

 
I used to think of Apple as a tech firm, then as a design firm, but I realised a few years ago that what they are is masters of marketing.

In a time when people still had their VCRs and Cassette players because they refused to let go of the old technology because of it's 'value' Apple managed to turn technology into a disposable accessory. Almost none of Apple's products are particularly revolutionary, hell, voice recognition software has been around as long as I have, but they still managed to brand it and sell it, but it's not revolutionary tech or software that's doing it for them. It's the fact that when someone breaks their iPod, they don't bother to get it fixed. They just buy a new one. I have no idea how that happened.

I'm working from an Australian perspective here so the following won't be relevant to the rest of the world, but when iPods happened, Australia was in a recession due to being in the middle of a decade long drought. That's important because typically, during economic downturns, people hold onto their technology. This was still true at the time. People were buying new flat screen TVs but still keeping their old CRT televisions. They'd buy DVD players, replace their VHS collections, but still keep the VCR. Because the technology had value.

Suddenly the iPod came along. That's when the revolution started. Technology went from being something with value to being something that had value only until the next 'version' came out. And these are things people were spending hundreds of dollars on, and yet the attitude became "Oh, it's broken, well, time to get a new one." Certainly, a large part of that was Apple's warranty repair and customer service which, in Australia, were horrifying. It seemed like 1 in every 3 iPods broke within 6 months due to factory error. And suddenly, Apple stopped repairing them.
Stores stopped taking them, saying "You have to contact Apple yourself."

It became too much effort to get an iPod repaired. It was easier to just purchase a new one. And people did.
I have no idea if it was intentional on Apple's part, but it worked.

That marketing, the idea of disposable technology, comes down to Apple and all other industries looked on with envy.
 
I was reminded of this thread because of the upcoming Apple watch product. Everything so far is indicating that battery life will be absolutely horrible at just a few hours of power but at the same time financial analysts are predicting that it will be a huge profit maker, at least initially, for Apple. :thinking:
 
Apple is about to introduce "Force Touch" on the new iPhone to detect pressure on the display screen. Another amazing Apple innovation... that I was using on my Blackberry Storm back in 2008. :coffee:
 
I used to think of Apple as a tech firm, then as a design firm, but I realised a few years ago that what they are is masters of marketing.

In a time when people still had their VCRs and Cassette players because they refused to let go of the old technology because of it's 'value' Apple managed to turn technology into a disposable accessory. Almost none of Apple's products are particularly revolutionary, hell, voice recognition software has been around as long as I have, but they still managed to brand it and sell it, but it's not revolutionary tech or software that's doing it for them. It's the fact that when someone breaks their iPod, they don't bother to get it fixed. They just buy a new one. I have no idea how that happened.

I'm working from an Australian perspective here so the following won't be relevant to the rest of the world, but when iPods happened, Australia was in a recession due to being in the middle of a decade long drought. That's important because typically, during economic downturns, people hold onto their technology. This was still true at the time. People were buying new flat screen TVs but still keeping their old CRT televisions. They'd buy DVD players, replace their VHS collections, but still keep the VCR. Because the technology had value.

Suddenly the iPod came along. That's when the revolution started. Technology went from being something with value to being something that had value only until the next 'version' came out. And these are things people were spending hundreds of dollars on, and yet the attitude became "Oh, it's broken, well, time to get a new one." Certainly, a large part of that was Apple's warranty repair and customer service which, in Australia, were horrifying. It seemed like 1 in every 3 iPods broke within 6 months due to factory error. And suddenly, Apple stopped repairing them.
Stores stopped taking them, saying "You have to contact Apple yourself."

It became too much effort to get an iPod repaired. It was easier to just purchase a new one. And people did.
I have no idea if it was intentional on Apple's part, but it worked.

That marketing, the idea of disposable technology, comes down to Apple and all other industries looked on with envy.


The thing Microsoft and Apple have in common is that neither of them invented very much. Microsoft's breakthrough was to buy QDOS, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System" written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products, for their prototype Intel 8086 based computer, and rename it MS-DOS 1.0. Since then MS has had the balls sued off them several times for stealing other peoples code, including the time in 1993 when the wholesale ripped off the Lempel–Ziv–Stac lossless compression algorithm out the Stac Electronics Stacker disk compression utility

Im a retired IT guy, In the early 1980's I thought Apple Macs were nice, but they were grossly overpriced for what they were, and nothing has changed in 35 years, its still grossly overpriced. And to make it worse, they deliberately change the kit regularly because they know the idiots will always shell out another wodge of cash for a couple of extra gizmos and knobs . Apple are a thoroughly disreputable company IMHO, 100 years ago they would have been engaged in selling worthless shares in closed down Californian gold mines to gullible New Yorkers.
 
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