Working Backwards to the Technology

Look at one of the cited examples:

> AT&T had Bell Labs, created Unix, and never made a successful product out of that work.

Which, sure, OK. But on the other hand, ask yourself where Apple (since we're talking about them here) would be today if Bell Labs had never existed. Bell Labs invented UNIX; no UNIX means no BSD, which means no NeXTSTEP, which means no OS X. Bell Labs invented C; no C means no Objective-C. Bell Labs invented the freaking transistor, without which the idea of a "personal computer" would have been utterly ridiculous. These are all fundamental inventions that made entire generations of tech businesses possible.

So one way to look at it is Gruber's way, that skipping out on R&D means that Apple is "focused." Another way to look at it would be that Apple is a freeloader. That they cheerfully take useful things that are only available to them due to the generosity of others to build products on, without seeing a need to ever be the generous ones themselves -- to replenish the commons that made their own fortune possible.

That's probably good business, at least in the near term. If there's a pile of gold sitting out in the town square, you'd be a fool not to grab as much of it as you could for yourself. But unless someone's throwing new gold onto that pile, eventually it's going to run out. And if you've used the gold to set yourself up as a goldsmith, that's going to be a pretty bleak day for you. You know?

Gruber spends an awful lot of time trying to justify and enshrine every action Apple takes. My guess is, if Apple got an Advanced Tech Group again, we'd have a blog article talking about how it's a masterful bit of Apple strategy.

The other thing is, is Apple reallty so different? We see on the Patently Apple website, that Apple is constantly patenting all kinds of crazy stuff that never becomes products.

The only difference between Apple and Google here is that Google will expose the prototype to the public and let people play with it, and Apple will just file patents on it.

Apple made just 5 acquisitions in 20 years to 1997. In the 17 years since, they've made 49.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

And that's not counting open source adoptions or developer hirings like LLVM, KHTML, CUPS, etc.

This makes sense when you think about it. Large companies are too expensive, too inefficient, too concerned about their existing market and too risk averse to lay the groundwork in interesting technology. But large companies do have lots of money and can afford to pay small, innovative researchers and developers handsomely when they need the technology.

If step 1 is identifying a customer problem. (I still have to cook myself eggs every morning.)

Step 2 is identifying a solution. I know - what if a robot can cook breakfast.

Step 3 is proof of physical concepts - is it possible for a roomful of expensive equipment to cook eggs? How do you even cook eggs - I've never really thought about it... I just kind of do it.

step 4 is prototyping - how could we get this down to something integrated that still works

step 5 is even more prototyping - can we make this any simpler?

step 6 is simplifying - how could we make this EVEN simpler and more foolproof. We need a breakthrough.

step 7 is wowww is that ever elegant.

steps 8-10 are simplifying even more and getting down to the smallest thing that could possibly work.

step 11 is sourcing market-available chips and components

steps 12-15 are programming them.

Then you announce step 15. It's just a magic fucking box that cooks you breakfast in the morning.

Then the tech reaction will be - "This is just a hot plate in a minifridge - the electronics are just a temperature sensor, and power relay, driven by a $0.50 8-bit chip. It's probably less than 200 lines of code. Cute, but worth maybe $1.5 over the cost of a hot plate and a minifridge, if we're generous. This thing maybe takes an hour to make†. Now what was done by Doc Brown in the intro to Back to the Future - 29 years ago; THAT is cool. That actually had motors."

† copy

Solution? Stop at step 3, back when it was a complicated solution with stepper motors and pumps. Or if step 3 wasn't complicated enough, abandon project - as it's obviously trivial.

On the other hand, if it involves a novel application of a completely impractical physical phenomenon - maybe directed 2.4 Ghz radiation while backscatter levels are monitored.

Well that, you can announce.

Every year at work we fill out a survey where we estimate what portion of our time was spent on R&D vs other things like maintenance. We're told it's important because there's a tax credit for R&D. My (probably faulty) memory says that our guidelines classify all development on new features and products, as well as any research necessary in executing my job, as R&D. Which is very different from something like Bell Labs or ATG.

There're clearly also companies with divisions purely focused on advanced technologies unrelated to products for this year or the next, and I'm curious where the majority of spending falls.

Edit: or, maybe it comes down to very different numbers of employees making products. A quick browse online suggests that Nokia has more employees, does some (all?) of their own manufacturing, and that many of Apple's employees work in the retail stores.

Apple would be no where without the technologies it DID NOT invent or work backwards for all of its products. Standing on the shoulders of other giants and making good products on top should be acknowledged and something to be grateful for, not minimized so arrogantly.

If only Steve Wozniak could comment on this, I feel he would violently disagree with Gruber.