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this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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I'm wondering what they are. The Newton was kind of cool, but before it's time. mp3 players had been out for years before Apple jumped on the bandwagon. Same with phones. I hope this doesn't come across as snarky "fuck apple", I'm genuinely curious.
They don't create new product categories. What they do is enter an existing category, do it the Apple Way, which is generally high-quality and integrated well into their ecosystem, and thus they become the default in people's minds.
They've almost never done anything new, but they integrate existing technologies better than almost every other company.
Oh, man! Quite a bit of traffic on my original comment. I won't spend time engaging on these since they're pile-ons, but this is objectively trivial to refute.
"They've almost never done anything new"? Seriously? How about the user interface when everyone was using DOS? Or the Mac Plus/SE/any of half a dozen other macs in the 80s and early 90s that redefined what a computer could act like and look like? When every other PC was a beige box with identical specs?
Maybe the iPod, which redefined that category and made every other MP3 player obsolete overnight? The iPhone, perhaps? This was the absolute gimme, like I can't imagine how you made that comment with the iPhone hanging around. What were phones before the iPhone? Blackberries and flip phones. Yeah, it couldn't copy/paste for two years, but Steve wanted it released, lol.
The iPad would be another. There were smart watches before Apple's, sort of, but they were pretty crappy and didn't do the same stuff.
While we're at it, find me some PC laptops that ever debuted with the stuff Apple put in theirs. High-res screens? Touch ID? Face ID? Even OSX, which is old as hell, is built on UNIX and rock-stable -- and was definitely innovative when it first came out, as were some of its predecessors. When OSX came out, your alternative was Windows 95.
Then there are the airpods, I don't think there were any wireless bluetooth earbuds before those, although I might be wrong. And finally, despite it being way too expensive and five generations away from being useful, the ski goggles. Before you say there's other VR goggles, recall that only Apple is doing that as AR computing instead of dumb fucking avatars in virtual conference rooms that probably run telemetry on how big your living room is and sell it.
By all means, say Apple is greedy as hell, but don't make stuff up.
You're making up a lot of stuff, Xerox had a gui UI for a whole decade before apple and they certainly weren't the only ones.
The MP3 player they made was literally just a feature limited version of already popular devices. I got my arcos a year before the first apple device was released and it had every single feature that apple would slowly add in every new expensive version over the next decade
Apple does hype and marketing, that's their innovation - taking a feature restricted version of a technology and getting celebrities and media idiots to pretend it's the best thing in the world and actively ignore or discount the many better options.
Yes, Xerox PARC existed, and was totally non-commercial / didn't offer any product. Saying the iPod was the same thing as all those crappy MP3 players we all lugged around in the aughts is objectively LOL. The rest of your comment is pretty much ad-hominem and editorial -- and of course, you don't refute the rest of my points because you can't.
Bottom line, discussions like this on Lemmy are no different than Reddit ever was. They're circlejerks. I figured I'd drop in this one time to note that, but ultimately it's pretty boring.
Oh, man. I’m definitely not going to point by point. On a sub-argument that’s not even the topic of the thread? These are minutes in my life I don’t get back. But, seriously? My argument is invalid because I said Windows 95 instead of XP? And I must not have used any good MP3 players? By the way, they all sounded the same since they were playing 128 kbps MP3s… by the definition of how those work, they had to 😂
And just to consider this from another angle, if apple did get the goggles from hololens, where did Microsoft get their UI from in the 80s? How about Android?
Wow, I am so, so done seeking out a non-groupthink argument in this format ever. On any site. The memes are still better than Reddit though!
Hey man, pick one. Are we supposed to debunk your comment point by point, like you demanded of me. Or is it wasting minutes to destroy your corporate dribble. Make up your mind.
Here's a new fallacy for you baby, this one doesn't have big words so it is easier to remember: “moving the goalpost”.
So for you, you're objectively not smart enough to have the debate with. You're all set, you don't need to do anything 👍
And you complained about reddit. Dude, you are the worst of reddit. What a disgrace you moved here.
Dude! Bro! Son!
Ok ok, I'll give you what you seem to need. Let's step back a moment and recall the context of this thread: Apple's being shady as hell about complying with the DMA and everyone's piling on. I've noted that Apple is pretty greedy, but probably not as objectively evil as some other big tech companies, so this is a circlejerk. But, it's verboten to say that Apple's not terrible. I've also said that at least they innovate, but that's also verboten. You can't say Apple innovates. So, that's why we're here.
Now, going from memory, I've listed some Apple products that I think were innovative for their time. You've made a few counterpoints. Btw, it did take some time for that reply. I hope you weren't... researching? If not, congratulations: you're fellow GenX and either you have an eidetic memory or you work in UI/UX. Either way, you did teach me a couple of things, so thanks for that.
Let's go point by point:
As for this:
That sounds great. If I were 20, I'd be very intimidated and I'd feel cast out. I'd be sad. But actually, that's ... another straw man argument! Love those. I'm "desperately" looking for a group that thinks Apple is all-mighty, I won't find it here, good luck with that, etc. Well yes, but actually no. Congrats on proving that a thing I never said is unavailable to me 😂
That took 20 minutes and I could have done literally anything else with that time. I should bill you.
I did some research on this, because I was a big fan of MP3 players in the late 90s early 2000s and never heard of them. Turns out that the only Cowon Mp3 player I could find from around the iPod launch was the iAudio CW200, which had a capacity of 256MB.
This explains why I had never heard of it, as I was shopping for HDD-based players that could hold my entire library(I was looking at PJB, Nomad, Archos, etc).
Sorry but this illustrates OP's point. The iPod was the smallest HDD-based player on the market for years, all the other HDD players were chunky and could barely fit in a pocket. All the flash-based players had pitiful capacity. It wasn't that there were no MP3 players, it was that all the products had compromises that made them not ready for mass adoption.
While OP is overstating some things, your counter examples are rife with oversights like this.
As an example you are badmouthing Apple's "low resolution displays", while missing the fact that the MacBook Pro was the first ever mass market high dpi laptop. Ironically Samsung had produced a limited production laptop with a similar screen, but because Samsung lacks focus and had 1000 different laptop SKUs, they didn't make it a premiere feature of their brand, instead Apple simply bought out Samsung's entire manufacturing capacity for years and put them in their laptops.
This is the pattern. There are interesting technologies, but they are in products with mediocre design or appeal, and are not mass produced. Apple identifies these technologies, optimizes them, integrates them, ensures that there is a good user experience, makes a million of them, makes a billion on that, then changes the entire landscape of the market they entered by virtue of their success.
Everyone says I'm dumb when I simp for a shitty corporation that exists on hype alone
It must be because I'm so superior to every tech community on the web and they're circlejetking
Lol