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Steve Jobs Invented Your Dell PC and Your Android Phone
- Thread starter quest7
- Start date
Bob Maxey
Android Expert
Shame on me? Please explain.
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
If I have clients who have systems that are dependent on NT4 emulation I tell them flat out that they need to upgrade their system. It makes no sense at all to support something that old and ancient in today's world. About the only time I can think of that I've touched regedit at all recently would be to force a custom port on a Windows server that didn't work any of the standard ways for whatever reason. If the registry went away tomorrow I wouldn't cry over it. In my mind it's a legacy thing with very limited uses.
If Jobs had not taken those things, simplified them and sold them would we have them at all? Or would we all still be using dumb phones and listening to our music on portable CD players the way the record companies would've wanted? You can't even compare the tablet computers that were in use in enterprise to the iPad. They're world's different.
Drhyde
Android Enthusiast
I'm not following your logic here. You're acting as though Steve Jobs would have never came around, that the tech simply wouldn't exist or would have been made popular. MP3s exploded with Napster. It would have been an inevitability that other MP3 players would have increased capacity to meet growing demand. Smart phones? Already were there. However, all technology takes time to reduce itself in cost in order to meet a certain level of market demand. Consider that at the time of most smart phones, EDGE data wasn't even consistent, let alone 3G. The market itself would have grasped at it.
iPad, world's different? You mean because Apple crudely slapped iOS on it? Yes, then they are worlds different. The phrase "big ol' iPod touch" comes to mind.
I've said it before. Apple (and Steve) creates trends, not technology. Had it not been for all of the hard workers and true visionaries that came before them, the crazy independent developers (the App Store owes itself to the jailbreak community), or the hardware manufacturers pushing cutting edge tech, Apple wouldn't be what they are today. Apple is more like going to Sherman Williams and getting a paint blended in the color you like than an artist using the paint to create something.
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
MP3's exploded on the black market. There was no legal way to get them at the time or at least not a mainstream way to get them legally. The music industry fought digital music all the way. The iPod and iTunes made MP3 players and digital music main stream.
Smartphones were not mainstream consumer devices before the iPhone came along. They were nearly exclusively business devices and oriented toward enterprise. They did email and other enterprise stuff, but that was about it and they didn't do it well. I know. I had to support some of them. Jobs made it a mainstream consumer device.
Enterprise tablets ran various versions of XP or some other proprietary OS. They were clunky, not user friendly and didn't utilize the touchscreen well at all. They had no market share at all in the consumer market and only limited, specialized applications in enterprise.
By your logic, Gates wasn't influential at all. Neither was Linus Torvalds. Both of these guys took ideas from other people, improved on them, made them better and changed the world. But they're not visionaries or really impressive. They didn't come up with the idea. 90%+ of desktops run some flavor of Windows. Virtually the entire web runs on some sort of a Linux box somewhere. But Linux was built off Unix though so we can't give Linus any credit at all for building anything.
Drhyde
Android Enthusiast
Gates DID create DOS, Linus built his kernel from scratch (the OS itself is derived from Unix, but there was another guy who wrote most of that, can't find his name, though I remember him being a massive hater of anything that wasn't free software). Influential does not equate to impressive in my book. Like I said, Jobs capitalized on stupidity, took existing tech or software (much of which was already free under GNU), and churned it like so much paint. He's a shrewd businessman, but he's not an inventor or engineer (we owe Gates, Torvalds, and the Woz for those fields). He's a marketer and sales pitchman. Someone to make you feel good about paying far too much for inferior technology. We're giving this guy far too much credit and fanfare. We should be saluting those thousands that design the software, the hardware, that paved the way for Jobs to take advantage of them.
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
Gates bought DOS from another company. He didn't write it himself and Torvalds had input from an entire community. If there had been no Steve Jobs, the tech world would look vastly different.
alostpacket
Over Macho Grande?
alostpacket
Over Macho Grande?
I dont buy this one at all. Napster was already being dragged into court when the first ipod arrived. And there were already 3-4 Napster clones.
Archos already had the first hard drive based mp3 player. Not to mention Creative had some crappy mp3 player too. This market was already exploding. Sony was making an mp3 player, everyone was getting in on it before the ipod.
If anything, the ipod captured the moment well, (very, very well), but consumer mp3 use was going to explode anyways. I'll grant that itunes music store played a large role of stemming the tide of people stealing music. But it's very hard to say how much of that is due to circumstance. Certainly the ipod's success gave Apple the clout to run itunes though.
Still, Napster et al. weren't some tiny niche of a back-alley black market -- they were as main stream as you get.
I'll give you this one somewhat. But even as the iPhone was becoming a popular consumer device, teens were getting Blackberries so they could text more/faster. But I do think iPhone popularized the idea of consumer touchscreen phones. And scored big with the coolness factor. And then of course Android came along.
It's a little known fact that RIM wasnt just about enterprise users -- but that they used that image to market themselves. They had (have?) huge numbers of teen and tweens as users.
I totally agree with this. The iPad scored big here. They truly changed the way people look at tablets and netbooks. From business to consumption devices. I was such a skeptic about tablets and the 1st ipad, but they are here to stay for sure, and I love my Galaxy Tab 10.1
As for what's innovative? what's inventive? I dunno. But I think it was you who said that people were already going to say that apple invented the smartphone -- which is hogwash, but people will say it.
People already say it about the ipod as "the first hard drive mp3 player" nope, that was archos and it was a nice device -- i still have mine somewhere. But it didnt have the sleek look of the ipod.
Bob Maxey
Android Expert
It was a joke on classifications - see the following sentence above.
OK then. In my defense, it was early in the day. Or late at noght. No coffee in the homestead did not help, either.
Bob Maxey
Android Expert
HEY, HEY, HEY . . . The Creative player was a good product, not a crappy product. Besides, the crappy ones were built on Cell 1, and they had issues.
Smiley.
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
I agree they were as main stream as you get, but they were also as illegal as you get as well. Jobs came in and made an mp3 player that was better than the crappy ones that were out there and gave people a legal alternative to get their music as well. I spent many hours that should've been productive on Napster, Grokster, Kazaa and the like back in the day. They were very mainstream. No arguments there. But they certainly were not legal and the courts held that up.
RIM is still popular in the enterprise market as much as I hate having to support it. And Android was in the pipes before the iPhone came out. Still, Apple brought the smart phone to the consumer and made the consumer interested in a device that, up until that point, had primarily enterprise applications.
Honestly, I was in the same boat. I thought the iPad was a stupid, stupid idea. Now I have a 7" Galaxy Tab that I love and adore and just bought at 32 GB Touchpad that I am also falling in love with. I don't think they're going anywhere just because there is no better consumption device on the planet than a tablet IMO.
What's innovative and inventive is the big argument really. I think we would all agree that Apple has had a ginormous impact on tech industry in general and on PCs and consumer devices in particular. There would be no Apple without Steve Jobs. Woz was and is a brilliant engineer. No question about that. He was also a guy who was perfectly content designing circuits in his parent's basement. He had no business sense or real business ambition and would say so himself. I heard an interview with him recently where he talked about how he would be designing circuits and Jobs would be on the phone buying switches from someone for 60 cents that he could turn around and sell for $6 a pop. Woz said he wasn't even sure that was ethical. But that shows the different philosophies of the two guys. Both are geniuses in different ways. Separately either one of them would've been wildly successful. Put them together and you have one of the most influential computer companies of all time. When you talk most innovative companies, you're going to put Apple in that discussion no questions asked.
SUroot
Extreme Android User
I had a creative nomad Zen and the quality was great
Drhyde
Android Enthusiast
I stand corrected on Gates, but for Torvalds, even with help, writing a kernel is no easy feat. It's not in the same league as writing a number generator program.
I'm still not giving Steve any dues. I really ascribe his success to luck and being in the right place at the right time. Had Napster not been blazing up the court scene, Steve might have never considered to go into MP3 players. The iPad is played more off the success of the iPhone and iPod Touch. It's really nothing more than an extension of the other products. Something that Apple could do just because they had the cash. They CREATED the trend for tablets. However, with Android in the pipeline and Google already working something for Chrome/Android in a tablet, Apple would have really had no choice but to do so or risk losing a potential market.
To paraphrase Voltaire, if you didn't have Steve Jobs, you'd have to invent him. Or more closely, if he wasn't doing it, someone would have.
Stuntman
Android Expert
New technology comes out all the time that allow people to do things better and faster. However, it requires people to change the way they do things. In general people resist change. They like what they are comfortable with.
What Steve Jobs has been able to do is to make many people want to use new technology. He makes them cool to have an to use. The next thing you know, people change the way they do things not because the new way is faster or more efficient. They change because it has become cool to do so. New techonolgy is useless unless people actually use it. Some of this technology has been available before Apple released their products, but very few people actually used much of it before.
What Steve Jobs has been able to do is to make many people want to use new technology. He makes them cool to have an to use. The next thing you know, people change the way they do things not because the new way is faster or more efficient. They change because it has become cool to do so. New techonolgy is useless unless people actually use it. Some of this technology has been available before Apple released their products, but very few people actually used much of it before.
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
I completely disagree with you. As you mentioned before, both Archos and Creative had MP3 players on the market before Apple did. None of them were successful at all. Today the generic term for an MP3 player is an iPod. People buy generic "iPods" all the time and call them iPods even if they're just 2 GB models made by Sansa or someone. Jobs took something that was already on the market and made it better.
You say the iPad was just an extension of the iPhone and the iTouch and that's not an inaccurate statement. However, the fact is that MS had been trying to get into the consumer tablet markets for years and years and failed miserably time after time. They still have no market share in the consumer tablet market worth speaking of. Microsoft had the cash and the mindshare as well. They failed. Apple succeeded. What was the difference? Jobs brilliance in design maybe?
As I said before, if there had been no Jobs, there would've been no Apple. Woz would've happily sat around in his basement and made circuit boards. They'd have been brilliantly made, but no one would've known about them. Jobs was both the idea man and the marketing genius behind Apple's success.
You say the iPad was just an extension of the iPhone and the iTouch and that's not an inaccurate statement. However, the fact is that MS had been trying to get into the consumer tablet markets for years and years and failed miserably time after time. They still have no market share in the consumer tablet market worth speaking of. Microsoft had the cash and the mindshare as well. They failed. Apple succeeded. What was the difference? Jobs brilliance in design maybe?
As I said before, if there had been no Jobs, there would've been no Apple. Woz would've happily sat around in his basement and made circuit boards. They'd have been brilliantly made, but no one would've known about them. Jobs was both the idea man and the marketing genius behind Apple's success.
zuben el genub
Extreme Android User
Amazon.com: Sony Clie PEG-UX50 Handheld: Electronics
Had a camera, a rotating screen, keyboard, movie player, mp3 player, and wifi. You could browse the web with the wifi. Before Ipod.
Ran Palm.
Had a camera, a rotating screen, keyboard, movie player, mp3 player, and wifi. You could browse the web with the wifi. Before Ipod.
Ran Palm.
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
True. But brilliant nonetheless.
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
And no one bought it. Same thing with Windows tablets. Microsoft had a product (Windows on the desktop) that had a 90-95% market share. They could not translate that dominance into any tablet market share at all. They tried, but they just couldn't crack the consumer market nut. Apple succeeded wildly in a field where MS had failed epically.
SamuraiBigEd
Under paid Sasquatch!
Apple may have been extremely successful in exploding the tablet market but what if they weren't the first out? I do believe there were Android tablets pretty far along in the planning stages when the iPad was released, they weren't an afterthought following the iPad, and I think they would have been just as big a hit had they been first.
As far as WinMo, I think it was far more prevelant than many people realize, I didn't notice myself till I got one. It is not as big of a success as the iPhone or Android by far, but it was more mainstream than people give it credit for.
As far as WinMo, I think it was far more prevelant than many people realize, I didn't notice myself till I got one. It is not as big of a success as the iPhone or Android by far, but it was more mainstream than people give it credit for.