Article 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.
I think the service Google has done to humanity by making information accessible to all and that easily is hard to match by any company today on earth. Apple makes pretty devices, and accelerated the smartphone revolution (which was already en marche with blackberry as the article say), but on the whole, Google reached and helped (and keep doing so today) much more people than Apple ever has. Not to mention the billions of dollars Google give to publishers from India to Peru helping them make a living, not to mention Android, youtube, blogger etc.
So yes, Google has changed the world much more than Apple in my opinion and experience here and everywhere I've been.
Sure, but if Google wasn't around they would probably be using Yahoo or AltaVista to get knowledge.
The Apple and Lisa groups were unquestionably influenced by PARC, but a lot of the innovations that are used in today's GUIs come from Apple: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...
Comparing Apple to Google is not very interesting to someone who has watched Apple's entire historical arc, not just the past 5 years.
A very large part of the world population is still unaffected by Apple Products. MS for that instance has a much larger impact on the world of personal computing.
Apple did produce some incredibly cool gadgets, but that was about it. iPods and iTunes was probably insanely popular in US (and Europe), just like iPhones and iPads are today - but Microsoft has definitely penetrated at much larger depth and positively (and in some ways, negatively) affected a lot of them. And yes, I know the article is about last 10 years - but even in these 10 years Windows XP was (and in a large population, it still is) THE operating system to have; Office (2003 and 2007) are still used in every damn office.
Aesthetics - yes, Apple products has a huge impact and also to the build quality expectations from hand held devices. But it failed miserably in providing a solution that could be used by masses (It actually focused on a niche clientele, like the ones here). Nokia on the other hand provided devices to the masses - affordable and with insanely awesome build quality. They were not popular in US, but in Asia - buying a non-Nokia phone was considered stupid at one time.
And I am not a MS Fanboi; I am a Google Fanboi. Google is a verb now - Gmail is analogous to mail for most of my friends; youtube is the place we go to listen to music. Maps to get directions, Picasa for uploading pictures and Docs for collaborating on content. I am typing this from using Chromium browser and I had downloaded some libraries from Google Code to use in my Course Project. So the Roman analogy goes for Google, not Apple.
I replied to nirvana about how the word inventing does not mean anything. And yet he and you kept on debating on minutiae. Many techie people from India look up to MS and Google as opposed to say Apple or Amazon, partly because their influence is more apparent, so I understand your affinity for them. But attributing invention or success to something which can be attributed to random events and network effects, is a bit off by standards here.
I did not down vote anyone, just making a general comment. Things are never so black and white, grab a good book, read some scientific (non-CS) papers, you will probably have a broader perspective. I would recommend starting with the massive bibliography at the back of The Black Swan (Taleb).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch#History [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#History [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_i...
That being said, your links are not authoritative, nor do they even address what I said.
That is very much like believing in Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's logically irrefutable, but sounds absurd.
[Edit: Spell]
It's very much like how Apple invented PC but MS revolutionized and captured the market. I am giving due credit to all parties; you are omitting/trivializing all the conceptualization that went into an earlier concept - the ones that Apple's products were based upon.
This is a lie that you really shouldn't be perpetuating. This isn't a question of opinion, but of historical fact, an you are telling a falsehood. There's no debating it.
I'm no Apple hater. I just want to keep an appropriate perspective. They've made some VERY good products, but over the last decade, their focus has been more on "putting together a complete product in a slick, well-made package" than on "making life-changing leaps". There's nothing wrong with that, but don't mistake it for something it's not.
The idea that an arby's touchscreen means Apple didn't invent anything with the touch UI is so dishonest that it boggles the mind that you could say it in public with a straight face, seriously. The only motivation for doing so is either that you're really uninformed about this stuff and are just repeating what you've heard from Apple haters, or you're an Apple hater.
Seriously. This is Hacker News. This is not uninformed barely-computer literate consumer news. If we can't be honest about the major contributors to computer science here, then the site is completely lost.
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The Altair 8800 was a kit computer, which could also be ordered preassembled. The Apple I had a fully assembled circuit board, but still required assembly of other components. The TRS-80 and Apple II were both fully preassembled, and contemporary with each other. It's fair to say that Apple was an important player in the move toward personal computers, but I don't think it's fair to say they invented them.
AFAIK, Xerox was the first company to use an actual GUI, on the Alto (none of what Stanford did before would qualify as a "GUI", IMO.) Apple's Lisa was a big step forward for the GUI, adding things like window controls and menus. Again, Apple was an important player in the move to GUIs, and pioneered several specific GUI elements, but it's not fair to say they invented the GUI.
And, of course, both of these inventions are well over a decade old; when speaking about companies that "changed everything" between 2000 and 2010, they're not relevant.
Your references to "the touch UI" are confusing. I'm not aware of any product with that name. My best guess is that you're referring to some specific detail of iOS -- multitouch, perhaps? Without clarification, I don't really know how to respond to this particular point, or even if it needs responded to. Apple certainly put together a nice UI, and probably invented several specific conventions in doing so; I'm just not sure what in particular you think is revolutionary or needs to be acknowledged.
And pardon me, for coming off as arrogant, but I hate to see trivial fights here when you are missing the bigger picture.
It seems the writer here is wearing blinders; it's fine if you're not a proponent of Apple Inc. that's 100% your prerogative, but if you're going to cherrypick which points stick and which don't so that the only thing that's left are the ones that directly support whatever point, well sorry.