Worth remembering that Steve Jobs championed "iAds"... https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2011/12/13/steve-jobs...
The problem with Apple is they make statements that they walk back gleefully at a moments notice.
- Nobody wants a bigger phone - iPhone Pro Maxes
- Nobody wants foldables - iPhone Duo
- We've simplified the product portfolio .. ahem.
- AI is bad - Ours is called Apple Intelligence. Totally different thing.
Think Different indeed.
When something is successful its all Apple. When something fails, its just that others dont get it.
Do you afford the same benefit to other people/companies? Why is Apple so special?
For example roaming the city at 4am on a Saturday and trying to find some place with hot food. Google failed miserably at this. Eventually I found something but just because I knew it was often open at night. It was also marked open on Google Maps but never came up in searches there. Probably other places paid Google more for a listing despite being closed at that time.
Not sure how Apple does with this as I don't have any Apple anymore except a work iPad. It's too limited for me in terms of what I can install. But there's certainly some room for improvement in mapping.
> Think Different indeed
- Make the phone thinner
- Make the laptop thinner
- Make the iPad thinner
From shipping a fully certified UNIX with a modern UI, to getting all the music player market and influencing how any music player would be from then on, to seamlessly moving between Motorola and Intel and Apple Silicon with the ability to run the older software from a different architecture with Rosetta, to the first modern touch smartphone, 1 full year before Android came out (and which made Android change its beta design to copy the way iOS worked), to getting wireless earpods (and pairing) right, to designing their own fucking integrated CPU, and even their own broadband chip. Even simple things, like making the best touchpad in the market.
Modern "services+ads" Apple sucks to the point that I'm moving away, but to say they didn't innovate is laughable.
> From shipping a fully certified UNIX with a modern UI
Ignored because nobody cares or wanted it.
> to getting all the music player market and influencing how any music player would be from then on
Anybody born after millennials have only ever known Spotify, they don't know about iTunes and 99c songs. That's like saying Napster has been conveniently forgotten.
> to seamlessly moving between Motorola and Intel and Apple Silicon with the ability to run the older software from a different architecture with Rosetta
That's a remarkable engineering achievement but that's an implementation detail. Backwards compatibility on the desktop was and still is tablesakes.
> to the first modern touch smartphone
Nobody forgot, there's always one of you to remind the class that Apple was first (by your own definition of modern touch smartphone)
> to getting wireless earpods (and pairing) right
They were clearly the first to demonstrate that people did indeed want fully wireless despite HN's objections at the time.
> to designing their own fucking integrated CPU, and even their own broadband chip
That would be impressive if they were a startup. Every trillion dollar tech companies design their own CPUs.
> Even simple things, like making the best touchpad in the market.
I don't know anyone who claims otherwise, and for the longest time they didn't make their own touchpads. So much for being conveniently forgotten.
That explains why someone younger might not see the innovation. But that's on them, the innovation doesn't get erased as an innovation because people take it for granted. If the question is "did Apple innovate", then it includes all those cases, whether some moody Gen A cares for them or not.
Besides, that's not an argument. Apple still has many recent innovations. And we're talking as techies, devs, and products people here, and of various ages. Not just as "people who only ever known Spotify" and never bothered to learn the history of their field. Those wont know what Rosetta or a 5G chip is either anyway.
>That would be impressive if they were a startup. Every trillion dollar tech companies design their own CPUs.
A, yes, all those classic Google, Facebook, and MS designed CPUs, that put a fire under Intel/AMD and set the benchmark for future laptop CPUs. You're being disingenuous.
To highlight Apple's innovation maybe mention things like the iPhone or iPod. They weren't the first devices of their kind but Apple's magic was always the mixture of the two Steves. Technical but stylish. But modern Apple isn't the same. The magic is gone
When it comes to mobile advertising, Google & Facebook won, & Apple was never even really a player. If it’s unclear to you, I wasn’t complimenting Apple for this endeavor either. Mobile ads suck, & nothing they did with iAd did anything to meaningfully improve them.