Apple's reputation as an innovator has always been built on the refinement of existing ideas—Palm sold touchscreen phones before the iPhone, and Sony made ultra-lightweight laptops years before Apple launched the MacBook Air. Apple's focus on high-end materials and build quality with its hardware and attention to detail with its software tend to produce popular products that have the effect of sweeping aside history. Apple cultivates this aura of "specialness" by adding its own branding to industry standard components (iSight and FaceTime cameras, Retina displays, Airport wireless) and launching its products at glitzy events with plenty of talk about how "revolutionary" it all is.
This article is based on a mistaken definition of innovation and makes assertions that are misleading at best and downright wrong at worst.
Let's examine those assertions:
- Palm touch screen phones were resistance screen, single touch requiring a stylus for any accurate input on any virtual keyboard, but actually relied on a physical querty keyboard. Only the LG-KE850 Feature Phone, released as the PRADA, had only a single-touch capacitance screen without a keyboard. . . and even it had a ten-key pad approach to messaging. They later added a virtual alpha-numeric keyboard. . . but it still was not multi-touch or a smartphone.
Apple's idea for a phone had NOT been thought of before. in fact, Apple holds the patents on the Multi-touch, capacitance screens for mobile devices. No one else. That set the pattern since 2007 for all mobile devices from that point on. Apple developed all the multi-touch user-interface gestures used on such screens. No other company did so. Apple REDEFINED SMARTPHONES and set the pattern of all smart phones after the iPhone in 2007.
- Sony ultraportable that predated the Apple MacBook Air? Apple released the MacBook Air, a 3lb computer that ran a full OS X in January of 2008. Prior to that the market was selling NetBooks running crippled operating systems. Sony did have a Netbook but it announced in April of 2008 running Windows Vista. Where is this Sony ultra-lightweight laptop made years before Apple made one that re-defined the field???
When Apple released the MacBook Air in 2008, they had a ladder made out of them, where the MacBook Airs were the treads of the ladder and a model was climbing up and down the ladder. Every so often they'd pull one of the "treads" open it and put it out for people to use as a demo, showing no damage from being repeatedly stepped on by a 110 pound girl. How many other laptops could stand up to that? Most of those Airs are still around today.
Next we have the claim that Applew default Photo mode is a me-too development, the same as HTC Zoe. Nope, it's not.
1. Live Photos
"The new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus will automatically take a few seconds of video with every still photograph. When you press on the photo, it comes to life."
Next we have the claim that Apple's new default Photo mode is a me-too development, the same as HTC Zoe. Nope, it's not.
- Here's HTC Zoe's claim to fame, which is an optional mode, purchased as an App, which they incorporated into their firmware:
HTC Zoe is a shooting mode within your camera. It records 3.6 seconds of HD video and 20 photos, the latter shot at 6 frames per second. The video starts recording and the photos start shooting 0.6 seconds before your finger presses the shutter so you never miss a beat.
Going to the Zoe.com site, which is now closed down as of August 31, 2015 for lack of interest (read failure to monetize their idea), you find that the six photos are screen grabs from the video. . . which must be downloaded from the Zoe.com website. OOPS, the function is gone.
On the Apple, every photo has it, and it can be accessed in every place the photo is displayed. The Live Photo can be used on the Apple Watch as an animated background for a Watch Face.
2. Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil
"Steve Jobs famously derided the stylus shortly after the introduction of the original iPad, saying, "If you need a stylus, you've already failed." Apple has obviously overcome its famous founder's discontent with pointy sticks with the new Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro. And our first impresions of the $99 Pencil and the click-on $170 Smart Keyboard were pretty positive, although the prices do seem pretty high."
- Smart Keyboards: The Apple iPad keyboard. No, it is not new. I bought one with my original iPad back in 2010. . . from Apple. So, no, they did not "borrow" the idea from Microsoft Surface. In fact, by the time the original iPad was on the market six months there were at least ten companies that I know of thate Jobs famously derided the stylus shortly after the introduction of the original iPad, saying, "If you need a stylus, you've already failed."
- Apple Pencil: To begin, let's just say "Apple Newton", where Apple basically invented the touch screen Personal Digital Assistant (look it up, Apple COINED the term!) which USED a stylus!
That quote cited above is completely made up. The actual quote from 2010 is "If you see a stylus or a Finder, they blew it." The important sense of what Steve Jobs actually said came from 2008. We should concentrate on the context of usage of the devices that preceded the iPhone and understand the technology of what Apple had developed to replace the use of styluses on the previous devices:
"Who wants a stylus? You have to get 'em, put 'em away, you lose 'em, yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let's not use a stylus. We're going to use the best pointing device in the world. We're going to use a pointing device that we're all born with - born with ten of them. We're going to use our fingers. We're going to touch [the iPhone] with our fingers."
The fact is that the iPad Pro does not need the Apple Pencil to operate. Far from it. It works just fine with your fingers, just as does any other iPad or iPhone, just as Steve Jobs intended.
The Apple Pencil is an accessory that facilitates specific purposes that many people have no need for. For those who want to do those purposes, it is a great tool, at a great price point. . . far lower than any of the competing smart pens that have similar abilities. I know of at least two which are selling for more than $700 with their enabling software.
It does FAR more than the simple styluses being shipped with the tablets and stored in niches because they are needed for some of the basic functions of those tablets.
3. 4K Video "The new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have upgraded iSight cameras with 12 megapixel sensors that we can't wait to test in our labs. These cameras also shoot video in 4K (3840 x 2160) at 30 frames per second (sic—Apple actually said 60 frames per second—Swordmaker)—a first for Apple smartphones."
So what. Apple did not say they were first. Those competing models have come out in the last few months, so it was a first for their phones also.
4. Siri on Apple TV
The comments on the article speak for themselves, being filled with "if" and "pretty spare" damn faint praise qualifiers for the competition. I'll just highlight the parts I think are funny. LOL!
The upgraded Apple TV has an all-new remote control with a touchpad, Bluetooth connectivity, and a built-in microphone. That microphone is to allow search and voice control of the Apple TV through Apple's Siri digital assistant.Where we've seen it before: The Amazon Fire TV and Roku 3 both offer voice control already (although Roku's voice control is pretty spare). Amazon also has a pretty sophisticated digital assistant, named Alexa, that shows up on that company's Echo speaker. For the moment, it looks like the functionality that Siri brings to Apple TV could outpace what Amazon and Roku's devices can do in response to voice commands, but if Amazon brings Alexa to the Fire TV, that would definitely give Siri a run for her money.
5. Apple TV as a Gaming Device
"Roku devices and Amazon Fire TV already have robust app networks for their streaming media boxes."
Not one comment that Apple TV users have been playing games on the Apple TV with their iPads and iPhones for years. . . all hundreds of thousands of the games available on those platforms can be played through screen sharing. . . and that those devices make excellent game controllers. Claim of "robust" app network for Roku is ridiculous. It just isn't there. Lame reference to Nintendo suffering from competition.
6. 3D Touch
"Both the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have sensors built in to the display that can detect how much force a finger is exerting."
REALLY LAME criticism. . . because all this FUD article can come up with is that Apple showed a simpler version of this called Force Touch on the Apple Watch in April! SHEESH! Can they stretch any farther to find something more?
So, looking at the rest. . . Matt Kranz at USA Today has never in his life written a positive article about Apple. He writes Hit Whore pieces to get clicks. Four MORE Yahoo Finance negative articles. . . it should be noted that it was Yahoo Finance who LIED about the Apple Financial Statement, changing the street whisper numbers between 8:30 AM and 2:00PM so they could CLAIM that Apple had missed the Revenue Expectations when they actually had EXCEEDED the whisper number, yet Yahoo Finance head line claimed Apple misses Revenue right at the tick of 2:00 PM just as the Financial Report was released. . . yet the number in their 8:30AM report was $1.5BILLION LOWER than the number they had in their article at 2:00PM. . . when the Whisper NUMBER cannot change in the 24 hours before the report! The author of those two stories? Jayson Derrick, the author of your number 3 link where he writes: "Shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) were higher by 2 percent Thursday morning. Apple's Wednesday presentation fell "flatter than the new iPad," . . . and proceeds to cherry pick negative analcysts comments.
The CNBC video is right on. . .