Guest post by This wasn’t Grignon’s typical route to work. He was a senior engineer at Apple in Cupertino, the town just west of Campbell. His morning drive typically covered seven miles and took exactly 15 minutes. But today was different. He was going to watch his boss, Steve Jobs, make history at the Macworld trade show in San Francisco. Apple fans had for years begged Jobs to put a cellphone inside their iPods so they could stop carrying two devices in their pockets. Jobs was about to fulfill that wish. Grignon and some colleagues would spend the night at a nearby hotel, and around 10 a.m. the following day they – along with the rest of the world – would watch Jobs unveil the first iPhone.
Apple never really created new technologies but instead turned them into mainstream : Personal Computers, Smartphones, media players.
I wonder what could be the next thing an innovative Apple could re-invent : 3D printers, home robots… What else ?
Making a new TV set or a watch seems would be quite disappointing and it is too late for electric cars…
Those Wall St Analysts seem to know what Apple is doing or not doing. It was them who cause thew sharp share price spike last year.
If it was Apple doing that then they’d be in deep shite with the Finacial Regulators but Analysts can seemingly get away with anything (like the Credit Reference Agencies…)
So watch the rumour sites and you might get an idea.
IMHO, there are plenty of ‘things’ that could do with sorting out to make it usable for the masses.
Smart TV would be at the top of my list but hey, I’m not an Analysts so what do I know.
I wouldn’t put it past them to feed a few iWatch gossips. Look at the shite that has been rushed to market in the hope of beating Apple.
Boeing weren’t the first company to start selling a Jet powered Airliner (the 707) but they were the first to get it right. Apple are IMHO in that game.
I doubt Apple will build airliners.
For one, it is a bit harder to hide that phones.
They are nevertheless following the trend of using plastic [composites] in addition to aluminium.
It would still be something original. SmartTV and watches are so terribly boring!
Edited 2013-10-06 12:57 UTC
One of the strength of Apple is the ability to focus on a few technologies and do it well. Compare that to Google: they want to be everywhere and fiber network in US or cars or even Google glasses are completely outside their core business.
Whether it is better to be Google or Apple on that point, I don’t know (even if I have my idea), but don’t expect Apple to do anything completely outside their core business.
I don’t know how anybody including Apple could bring something really revolutionary with a smart watch today: the technology to do it right is several years ahead I think.
But it is obvious that the TV industry, whether it is hardware, but mostly software, ecosystem and content delivery is ripe for a revolution. Only content providers are preventing Apple form disrupting this market until now, but I think things are changing and it will be the next step for Apple.
And of course mobile payments and micro-location things with iBeacon and BLE, but this is not something new as everything is already here.
And obviously, some don’t think it is exciting either because they consider the current market is good enough or because this technology don’t imply using Sci-Fi tech. I guess they said the same in 2006, just before Apple announced the iPhone.
Edited 2013-10-06 13:51 UTC
Google are more focused than apple on the one business, though. Everything they do or make is for the sole purpose of having more people spend more time online, because it means more eyes on ads.
You think self-driving cars are for making the driver spend more time on the internet? Hardly. They went into location services and navigation, and realised what would be the next logical step. It would take loads of knowledge and information, which already gives Google a competitive advantage.
Self driving cars are also impractical outside of a controlled road system meant for them. Human reactions are too variable, and there’s no way a computer can make a snap decision based on irrational behaviors of people. Automated cars need a controlled road system designed specifically for them, where all cars are automated and have a set protocol for communicating with one another to avoid human error.
And yes, I’m sure Google is considering how to serve you ads in their cars, as well.
Not true. Google has logged over 500,000km with their self-driving car without a single accident.
Being visually impaired and not able to drive long distances (esp on freeways), if Google releases a commercially-viable self-driving car, I will take back all the bad things I ever said about them
Hell, I’d even be willing to let them serve me ads inside the car, and I *HATE* ads 
Hot dogs, Armour Hot Dogs.
What kinds of kids eat Armour Hot Dogs?
Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks.
Tough kids, sissy kids, even kids with chicken pox
love hot dogs, Armour Hot Dogs.
The dogs kids love to bite!
Edited 2013-10-07 12:15 UTC
That is a really interesting project. I wander how the driving system can detect the road sign for speed limit. Detecting the traffic lights is also not so easy.
Oh, those are easy compared to e.g. trying to drive during a heavy snowstorm during the winter here in Finland when you can’t even see the damn lanes as they’re covered in hard snow and ice, all the roadsigns are covered in snow and traffic lights are frozen. Once a self-driving car can manage to drive safely in such conditions I will happily relinquish control of my car to a computer, but until that I’ll keep my own, dirty paws to the steering wheel.
Edited 2013-10-07 15:53 UTC
With precise enough GPS (we should have it once there are 3 satellite constellations up and running), an autonomous car might be possibly better at following ~invisible lanes…
Yeah, umh, you really think humans are better at reacting faster to rapidly changing conditions than computers? I guess it probably depends on the human and the computer( no confidence in a comodore 64 in this case), but really modern computers process information at an incredibly faster rate than we do. The challenge with driver less cars is bringing down the cost of the sensor array that feeds them the information they need.
Even a C64 processes data millions of times faster than a human.
Human reactions take at least 150 milliseconds.
The eye records data at the rate of bits per second. Our field of view is actually a tiny inverted image of about 1cm2. The other 99.99+% of what we “see” is extrapolated by our brains.
So far, no one has a good understanding about internals of human brains. Also the meaning of “computing” has been narrowed to a small number of computational models. So people get the false impression that computer are “faster” than human brains.
Yes and No. Its complicated. I guess I should have specified I was specifically talking about being able to analyze data and react to it. Most modern computers would blow us away, if they had the right inputs and the right programming. The challenge that I see is getting the inputs and the programming down. The raw computing horsepower is there.
What will you do in your commute time if you do not have to pay attention to the road? Surf the net, of course.
Personally, I wouldn’t. And even if that was what most people would do (and they wouldn’t), it wouldn’t be worth Google’s investment.
Google being an advertising company has become a hugely popular meme now that they compete with Apple, to the degree that people wilfully try to forget that Google’s success in advertising comes from their success in information technology.
Maybe. I do not believe it though. There are already many providers of online movies and TV shows.
“only content providers” is a bit misleading. The industry which owns content is certainly afraid of Apple or Google becoming too powerful. The solution is not in technology, it is in financial ties or outright buying of large content producers and owners.
There are also many per-countries regulations, far more difficult to deal with than for music or books.
The biggest strength of Apple is the ability to repackage technology as fashion and do this in a believable way
fixed dat fo ya….
Apple is a fashion company, not a technology company. That is why only portable products from Apple has become a success…
Other than being the most successful PC OEM, biggest Unix software business, biggest online seller of music, largest digital content business and most successful retailer on the planet, other than all that it’s just mobile stuff based on fashion.
Citation?
As of September 2011, OS X is the second-most-active general-purpose client operating system in use on the World Wide Web, (after Microsoft Windows), with an 8.45% usage share according to statistics compiled by W3Counter.] It is the most successful Unix-like desktop operating system on the web, estimated at over 5 times the usage of Linux (which has 1.5%).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X
The most common version of Unix (bearing certification) is Apple’s OS X, while Linux is the most popular non-certified workalike.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix
Apple ship between 3 and 4 million versions of a certified Unix OS each quarter. I am not aware of any other vendor that ships certified Unix in greater numbers.
This page explains what Unix certification is:
http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/the_brand.html
Apple Mac OS X was certified to UNIX 03 in 2007.
Isn’t the size of a business usually measured in terms of revenue, not market share?
Smart TVs are boring, smart watches are absolutely useless. At least a smart TV would have practical uses; I still can’t figure out the purpose of a smart watch and I’ve been trying.
You’re missing the big picture. Until we can talk into our smart watch and have our smart car drive itself from the parking garage to where we are, we have failed as a society to live up to Knight Rider’s promise of the future.
I’d rather get hoverboard first.
The LG Prada was first announced on December 12, 2006.
Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9, 2007.
So I guess you are suggesting that Apple managed to come up with the iPhone ‘copy’ of the LG Prada in just under a month.
What colour is the sky in your world?
Note: Development of what was to become the iPhone began in 2004, when Apple started to gather a team of 1000 employees to work on the highly confidential “Project Purple”.
with the prada winning an if award in december they had to enter it a few month before that
plenty of time for apple to make a bodged up demonstration of their phone in january (jobs even sayed it would run OSX and that they invented multi-touch…)
Was that before or after Apple helped stage the fake Space Shuttle missions?
I repeat, because I am really curious, what colour is the sky in your world?
From all accounts, Steve Jobs was a talented, capricious, visionary monomaniac, who could be a complete bastard to work with. He was not the Second Coming.
I honestly wonder (and this is from someone who passionately hated Microsoft’s behaviour during the late nineties, early noughties) whether Bill Gates will be seen as far more historically important by the time we hit the end of the century.
Bill Gates will probably be revered. Steve Jobs will probably be remembered as some guy who briefly worked with Steve Wozniak.
Whatever. Every last one of you would be using technology far less sophisticated and well-designed now if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs and his ranting personality. He didn’t accept that certain things couldn’t be done. He didn’t accept that his company couldn’t complete this task. He wasn’t afraid to tell someone they can do better. Finally, he had enough business sense to fund all this stuff in the marketplace, not in a lab.
Where are the stories of Samsung or Nokia or Motorola holing up 1000 high-salary engineers for 2.5 years to design completely new products?
Apple isn’t a fashion company, but it’s the first computer company to acknowledge that fashion, when applied to tech, is called design, and without good design you have a nerdy box of nerd stuff that only nerds can use. Nerds are cool, I guess I am one, but there will always be more non-nerds than nerds based on the definition of a nerd.
For some reason Apple seems to be the only tech company that looks at well designed items from the past for inspiration. There is a lot of 20th century camera, watch, aviation, and even firearm technology in Apple’s mobiles.
Everyone else is about the new box with new specs – replaceable tech. Purchase Purchase Purchase new stuff! Once you’ve bought? Please buy a new one. Not much support on that old one. That old one is OLD haha!
Tomorrow I’m finally upgrading a 3G from 2008 to a 5C. That 3G has been to the Apple store for a (free) checkup once in 5 years.
So much Apple jealousy that manifests as hate, but the market is wide open to build better devices and treat customers better than Apple does. Look at Samsung – they can rip off the designs, they can build almost as good as Apple, yet their support and product lifecycles don’t get close. My friends will burn through 5 Samsungs in the time I use 1 iPhone – probably good for Samsung’s bottom line, but not good for much else.
—
Re: Bill Gates verse Steve Jobs. You can’t attack Jobs & Apple for ‘copying and improving’ while still giving credit to Bill Gates’ Microsoft. They built their entire empire on a completed QDOS that they bought for $50k and then licensed to IBM. Killer business move but not much in the way of engineering prowess. Windows itself was a direct reaction to not being able to get into Apple’s new Mac OS (Apple contracted them for apps only, no OS work, and MS immediately launched the Windows project). What are the amazing engineering feets by Microsoft? Where did they push the industry forward? When did something come out of their labs (not purchased) that changed the world?
Edited 2013-10-07 14:38 UTC
ever heared of windows?
or office?
maybe internet explorer?
Edited 2013-10-07 15:24 UTC
Huh? No I’ve never heard of them. What was so groundbreaking about them? What was fresh and new? Nothing. I don’t know if you were around in 1985 or not, but believe me there is nothing that impressive about Office or Windows except sales.
See Visicalc running on Apple II. Or better yet see the PFS group of products.
I had an atari xe in 1985 with an “office suite” and a printer. Big deal.
Design is more than just pretty case and how something looks from the outside. Personally I do not find Apple products attractive at all.
Steve Jobs did not change a thing and there are many companies besides Apple that have contributed lot more to get us to where we are now. For example I would rate Digital lot higher than Apple in every possible way when you put all the achievements in real perspective.
You ever talk to a hardware engineer? ever look inside of an apple product?
If you think apple is just putting existing tech in prettier cases, wouldn’t everyone be able to do it? would doing that lead to such stellar customer satisfaction or build quality?
I think the technology landscape would be VERY different without apple and their many spin-off companies and technologies.
Deciding you don’t like Apple or it’s style is acceptable to me, no biggie. Denying them their place in computing history (and the present) is burying your head in the sand.
Why not read the linked article again? Tell me who else was making the iphone in 2006-07? Who else brought a multitouch internet pocket device to market? Who else demoed it in front of real people then put it on sale 6 months later? Who else fulfilled those orders?
All these things Apple supposedly fails or cheats at, yet millions of people use, love, and rely on their products to run their businesses every day for 30+ years now.
I am not all against Apple, just that what the company is today.
Actually I prefer the design of vintage Apple gear lot more than this current boring design that has no edge or soul. Same thing is happening with cars as most look like they have been rolled out from the same production line with different badge put on front.
In my opinion Apple IIGS is the pinnacle of Apple design with looks that are instantly recognised as Apple product. Later Ive producs do not have that classic look anymore and the current design is not even original as there have been similarly styled products before.
Rumour has it that Ives has researchers frantically looking for long lost Braun catalogues.
Edited 2013-10-08 07:40 UTC
Joking or not, I believe this and am fine with it. Designers should look to the past for inspiration. Before I design something new I spend lots of time reviewing previous analog and digital versions of the concept, or try to find an object that embodies what I think the new product can be.
How would you feel if Ives was instead collecting secret internal design docs from other phone companies so the new iPhones can look exactly like the other companies smart phones?
Akio Morita was doing this at Sony long before Steve Jobs was born.
Nokia and Samsung did have thousands of engineers developing new products – they just didn’t boast about it. Apple products use Samsung memory, screens and processors.
More BS. Many companies were combining tech and excellent design long before Apple even existed – Fender, Braun, Sony, Panasonic, Philips and Bose spring to mind.
More crap. Have a look at all he retro cameras and retro digital radios on the market.
How is Apple different?
If you want to pay a lot of money for a 12 month old phone go ahead.
Sensible people don’t fall for Apple hype.
Your’e iPhone has a SAMSUNG CPU. It is made in China by Foxconn. How is it vastly superior?
—
You’re obviously totally delusional so it’s not worth arguing with you.
Edited 2013-10-07 23:53 UTC
Wow that guy is still caught up in the Job’s reality distortion field. I mean I respect Apple’s accomplishments, but I can’t stand it when Apple users rant about how amazing Apple products are, especially when they never bring any actual technical facts about the products into the conversation.
I can’t decide if Apple fanboys are as rabid as Linux fanboys sometimes.
So what? Another person’s existence doesn’t discredit what Jobs did in his time.
Known fact, and parts from many other vendors. Do you think Samsung has 1000’s of engineers working on their iPhone knockoffs?
Again, you are proving my point, not disproving. Is there only room for 1? Or are you admitting that previous successful companies used “design” to sell more products?
Nope, I’m not talking about knockoff plastic retro stuff or low-run specialty items. I’m talking about actually constructing and assembling products that become a new staple design going forward. I know they couldn’t make an iphone in 1965 for various reasons. Plastic shaped like 1965 with modern guts is not what I’m talking about. Sony is one of the only ones I put on par with Apple hardware in the electronics space. Then there’s Braun and other german builders. Also a lot of swiss watchmaker influence in Apple’s recent hardware.
How many times do I have to say that iPhones last longer, and keep their owner happier for longer? This means less thrown away or returned. Basic stuff here.
As broke as I am $45 @ walmart is not expensive.
Sensible people just get their work done and don’t argue about this chit online.
The total design is what is vastly superior, not pieces parts. [REPEAT MYSELF A MILLION TIMES]. Why do you think a CPU, Screen, Case makes a smartphone? It ain’t specs man, it’s usability, reliability, and total cost of ownership.
—
[/q]
Yeah and I’ve been hearing about how apple is a flash in the pan, just a trend, just about fashion for about 30 years now, so who’s delusional?
Edited 2013-10-09 19:22 UTC
There are actually plenty of decent examples of Microsoft releasing solid innovative products and doing reasonable computer science. Products which appeal to my taste? Not usually. The first two Xboxen were pretty great, Windows 7. ClearType, F#, LINQ, the last few Office releases (excepting bloody Outlook) have been highly usable and pretty solid. And MS peripheral hardware is usually excellent.
But, my original comment was about the men themselves, and the way they are perceived now and in the future. The Good Wife had a nice vignette which captured this; (TGW is a terrific legal procedural which covers some pretty in-depth tech and IP law issues, remarkable for a US mainstream drama) A tinpot-dictatorial character is acting in an abrupt and boorish manner, and it’s revealed his behaviour is due to him “reading the Jobs biography”.
Essentially, Jobs was an inspirational and skilled Product Manager. Not unique, not unprecedented and not very nice. Let’s just try for some perspective, eh?
The end of the century is almost 90 years away. Personally, I doubt that either Gates or Jobs will be remembered that much at all by that time.
Who will be seen as more historically important?
Me, I think they will probably be though of the same way. They were both the names behind technologies whose time had come.
If not them, someone else. They didn’t invent, they brought it to the masses, riding on a wave they didn’t create themselves.
That being said, we still remember the name Henry Ford, even if everyone probably believes that we’d still have cars, more or less the same even without him.
Gates will probably be remembered as the greatest philanthropist in history. If he succeeds in eliminating malaria he will have saved the lives of over 100 million people by 2100.
Fords genius was making extremely cheap, very reliable mass-produced cars available for the first time. His cars weren’t particularly advanced but his manufacturing methods were totally revolutionary.
If. The question was about computing though.
Do people immediately think of the steel industry when they hear the name Andrew Carnegie? Of course not. They think of his philanthropy.
In 100 years Apple and Microsoft will be probably considered as obscure as Niagara Power Company or Pierce-Arrow automobiles.
Edited 2013-10-08 09:35 UTC
Not totally revolutionary, the seeds of production line were present in the centuries before.
Edited 2013-10-12 19:25 UTC
This is how I read it first time around. I was agog to hear what you were planning on doing in the next 90 years to garner such a reputation, but alas …