and i think in general, their attempt to really focus on user experience first always seemed to define their business.. trying to make things that people would WANT to use was what made Jobs and Apple stand out.. other brands were better known for performance, for example..
Comment on What DID Apple innovate?
darth_helmet@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
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.
theodewere@kbin.social 6 months ago
AA5B@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Exactly. They innovated
- a GUI that people wanted to use and ushered in a new era of computer guys
- several times a personal computer it laptop that people wanted to use and set new standards for others to follow
- personal music devices that worked so well they set the standard.
- a phone that just works and set many standards for other phones to follow
- an App Store that set standards for usability and security, and set a high bar for others to follow
- a mobile payment system that’s secure and private, and set a standard for the industry to follow
- shared resources and config across devices and family members, setting new standards for usability and convenience
I could probably go on for a while. The thing is that everything in tech is an iteration: almost nothing is completely new. Apple has consistently applied design and usability to revolutionize many different areas of tech. It is true innovation with real change and huge impact
Brkdncr@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The iPod wasn’t very special. Lots of competitors in that space.
Their phone wasn’t very special. It lacked a lot of features like enterprise email for 1-2 years. It was also slow and locked to a slow carrier in the US for that time.
They managed to sell it though. Their ads and marketing is always been great even if the devices weren’t.
DJDarren@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
The iPod wasn’t very special. Lots of competitors in that space.
Sure, but none of them in such a small size with such a relatively big capacity, and certainly none that were as easy to use and easy to sync. Apple absolutely rewrote the book on how a portable music player should be, then did it all over again with the iPhone.
dpkonofa@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is a very ignorant take. MP3 players before the iPod sucked for most people. Obtaining music that was properly tagged or ripping CDs with command-line apps was out of reach for the majority of people.
Saying that the iPhone wasn’t special is also crazy. The best-selling smartphone of all time wasn’t special?
Unbelievable…
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 6 months ago
Jobs really wanted to make tech usable for the mainstream. Just look at time of the first iPod all the other MP3 players at the time were for the geeks and music nerds. They were clunky, had ugly geek esthetics and the software was hard to use for most people. And the non techies had no idea where to get mp3s. The iPod together with the iTunes Store really sold the MP3 player to the masses.
yesdogishere@kbin.social 6 months ago
Wrong wrong wrong. It was never about ease of use. It was always about taking control away from the user, and hiding authority for control. This kind of deceptive practice has led to what we gave today - cars selling subscription hearing seats. The truth is, the gui was always buggy and a product unfit for its purpose from day one. Apple sold it as a means to get consumers to accept a defective product from the start, perpetuating their ability to always sell updates, forcing consumers to pay for things THEY DO NOT NEED.
yesdogishere@kbin.social 6 months ago
Wrong wrong wrong. The graphical user interface is crap and will always be crap. The whole matter of popularity is marketing bunkum. Console command interface was al ways faster and better than any gui for general computing tasks. The gui is fine for office tasks, but shit for everything else. The popularity of the gui today has driven a massive upscale of cruddy bloated virus infected software. The fact that most people now only know gui has meant that control of viruses has slipped away. Had console commands been the mainstay for computing, viruses and security holes would never have been allowed to proliferate as they do today.
DuckOverload@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Bud, you sound like a technophile geek. The kind of person who custom built his own computer. You’re not the target customer. Apple builds products for people that don’t care about technology, they just care about what the technology does and want it to be easy and seamless. And that is a vast majority of the people.
QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Bingo. Apple builds appliances.
simple@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Let me guess, you use arch?
darth_helmet@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
If this guy isn’t rolling his own distro he’s basically a scrub like the rest of us.
skulblaka@kbin.social 6 months ago
While you may be correct I think you're still missing the point. CLI is for super nerds. While you and I may know how to use it, the average person doesn't, and is unlikely to put in the effort to learn. That is the innovation that Apple made in bringing computing to the mainstream. It was precisely because people didn't have to learn how to navigate the CLI environment and instead got an easy point-and-click interface that computers caught on with the public at large, and that gained Apple an absolute ton of cash money and noteriety.
olympicyes@lemmy.world 6 months ago
OS X has a decent terminal app and has zsh included as default shell. Mac OS 9 effectively had no CLI at all.
luthis@lemmy.nz 6 months ago
Awww… I’m a supernerd? Thank yoooooou ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
I always considered myself to be kind of an average run-of-the-mill nerd.
someguy3@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They don’t invent it (xerox PARC did), but Apple correctly identified that the user experience of existing computer systems was holding it back
Fucking everyone except Xerox BOD figured that out.
simple@lemm.ee 6 months ago
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.
MacOS Leopard screenshot
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.
Cort@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Just to piggy back on this comment, OSX was released before 9/11 and windows XP, so Microsoft was still selling Windows ME at the time! Aside from the desktop backgrounds looked very similar.
BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’ve got an '08 iMac with this version of MacOS, El Capitan I believe. Going from that to my 2019 M1 MBP running Sonoma is really no different. Sure there’s features missing but I can still sync my notes and the few other Apple things I actually use between the two.
Plus my iPods can still sync with both devices, they just moved iPod into Finder in the new versions.
DJDarren@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
It still blows my mind that Apple are so happy to drop OS support on iPhones and iPads that are considered too old, but I can still sync my 4th gen iPod with my M2 Air. There’s damn near 20 years between those two devices, but aside from needing a USB A>C dongle, they work together without any trouble.
jsh@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Well, I will say it’s a little different. Your iPod doesn’t get software updates or apps. From a functional standpoint it’s about as supported as any old iPhone or iPad is.
Hyperreality@kbin.social 6 months ago
I feel old.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
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.
yesdogishere@kbin.social 6 months ago
Wrong wrong wrong. Macontoshs gui was crap and buggy as hell. Every seasoned it expert knew it was a shit lousy interface designed to dupe people into believing it was secure when in fact it proliferated viruses and security holes, and drove the control of computing into an avarucicuous humanity destroying company culture known as apple. DO NIT EVER PROMOTE THE GUI AS GOOD. ITS CRAP.
simple@lemm.ee 6 months ago
No it wasn’t
That has nothing to do with GUI
520@kbin.social 6 months ago
OSX 10.0 in general actually was. Jobs offered 10.1 for free as an apology, and it fixed a lot of things.