Posted on 07/23/2010 3:48:17 PM PDT by Swordmaker
I don’t see any reason whatsoever to be having flamewars on FR over computer products. Those who have a problem with Apple should just not buy the product and that takes care of that. Don’t come to FR to flame those who like the product. That’s just dumb. Who cares what computer products people use.Everyone on these threads need to lighten up! On all sides!!
Please please stop with the fighting and the insults.
It’s ruining all of these mac threads and is unnecessary ...
For one, cramming a workable, improved version of the Xerox Alto into a small, normally-priced desktop computer. If you mean actual patents, I believe he has design patents on those slim, magnetic, light-weight power adapters Apple uses, and on the iPad. He's also listed on iPhone patents, and has a patent on fasteners for the glass staircases at the Apple stores.
I think the hockey-puck iMac mouse was his idea too, but that's not something to brag about. Everybody has his duds.
The OS itself or Droid hardware out there?
I use Verizon because I always have signal so I am certainly not going to switch to AT&T as I actually use my phone as a phone more than a gadget.
So I have a choice of getting a Droid now or an iPhone in January if the article below can be believed.
The Apple II wasn't the game-changing innovation. That was the Apple I, which was relatively cheap, came with a completely assembled board, and allowed easy connection of a monitor and keyboard. That the Woz was a genius at simplifying circuitry helped a lot with that. Competitors of the time were the likes of the Altair, run with toggle switches and LEDs. In 1977 the Apple ][ packaged this innovation in a case with a keyboard and made it expandable. The Commodore PET and TRS-80 were released later that year.
As far as the first mass-market GUI OS, define mass market. The Macs were a small player in the market, the C64s and PCs greatly eclipsing what the Mac had.
Mass market: In this case I would say the general consumer and small business computer markets, plus educational. In other words, not the niche enterprise market of the other GUI of the time, the Xerox Star ($100,000+ for a system with a few terminals).
GEOS leveraged the existence and sales of millions of cheap C64 computers to get into market. With the exception of the retro-computing enthusiast crowd, it quickly died out. Costing several times as much as a C64, the Mac still sold over a quarter million in the year before GEOS was even released.
Apple’s been much more a “take an idea and polish it to a high degree” than to actually innovate or create new concepts.
I'd still call that innovation, taking a so-so niche and reinventing it so that it becomes very popular. Apple is usually the first to make one that "just works." For example, iPod, iPhone and iPad. None were the first of their market. Digital music players were still in the geek toy niche before the iPod, touch phones so far had not been very good and stylus phones still reigned in that category before the iPhone, and consumers soundly rejected tablets until the iPad. Back to the iPod, Apple also didn't just make a device, but developed an entire ecosystem of the device with iTunes and the iTunes Store, and did the same with the iPhone and iPad. And don't forget, Jobs personally was also the one who got the major record labels to cave in and allow songs to be sold online by somebody else without draconian restrictions. So you can say he also reinvented the online music store.
None of this counts Apple's constant innovation in manufacturing methods and materials.
On the basic question of innovation, you have to ask yourself why Apple's product rarely looks like what came before, and why afterwards other products tend to look more and more like Apple's.
Droid X looks pretty good, but IMHO it’s too big for a phone. After that, the Moto Droid and Incredible look good. The Droid gets you a hard keyboard and a 5 MP camera. IMHO, I’d prefer today’s 5 MP over the 8 MP phone cameras. You get fewer pixels, but a LOT higher quality, especially in low light.
Whatever you get, make sure you have written assurance that Verizon will release Android 2.2 for it. You will want the big speed increase and other extra abilities of 2.2, and Verizon isn’t likely to release it for some phones sold even this year.
Thanks, now this info is helpful.
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