Apple Never Invented Anything

I always thought Apple is not really a company inventing technology rather than piecing the best parts of other inventions togethr and make a product which the consumers can enjoy. Now I found a video which backs this up.

Steve Jobs a visionary?

Sadly Steve Jobs passed. And the media and people praise his as visionary and innovative man. Making digital technology more accessible and more user friendly. But isn't that just a hype? I say yes. But give him credits for being a brilliant marketing person. That's because of the following thoughts I have.

iPhone and iPad: The main thing here is the touch screen. But cell phones with touch screen exist since the early 90s, even though not wide spread. The IBM Simon for example. But touch screens were mentioned much earlier. Like in the famous TV series Star Trek - The Next Generation, where the crew members were typing on glass surfaces, mocking computers. As the technology was not available back in 1987. But it already showed the future.

iPod At that time flash memory was only available with low memory ("only" 1000 songs on the drive), and relatively expensive. Jobs did the smart thing to push it into the market none the less. After the first models still had a miniature hard drive they were soon replaced by flash memory. First iPods were very expensive, but due to a high demand prices soon decreased. So indeed, here he did something to make technology more user friendly and give people something they like. No need for portable CD walkmans anymore.

iTunes Store - music online Before the iTunes Store was launched, there were already store by Sony in business. iTunes Store skyrocket though because again the marketing genius Steve Jobs did the "right" thing to bundle it with the Mac operating system, and later offered it for Windows. It was the same smart move that Bill Gates did back in the late 90s to bundle the Internet Explorer browser with Windows: users had it ready to run, why should they look for alternatives? That worked in both cases.

Windowed user interface Although the Macintosh released in 1984 was the first commercially successful computer with a GUI (graphical user interface), the technology was invented by Xerox a few years earlier. Again, Apple made it available for the masses.

Now with Steve Jobs passed and the economy down I fear Apple with have a very hard time. They might have nothing really good in the pipeline besides updates for the iPad and iPhone. And might soon go the way RIM is going with the Blackberry phones.