Anyone missing the good ol' niche Apple?

KnightWRX said:

It's not like Apple never drew inspiration from the competition before. The whole "Macbook Air! It fits in a manila envelope!" comes right out of Sony's catalog. In fact, it seems Steve really had some kind hard-on for Sony, considering quite a few bits of Macs are actually stuff Sony came up with.

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I don't doubt that Jobs and Apple have drawn inspiration from Sony. But honestly I've never looked at a MacBook Air and thought 'wow that looks just like a Sony Vaio or whatever. Just like I'd never mistake an Asus Zen Prime for an Air.

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JoeG4 said:

I think the idea that Apple was once innovate and aren't anymore is silly, especially if it's because they imitated the competition and made smaller tablets and larger phones.

Being bull-headed is NOT innovative. Refusing to adapt is not innovative, and Steve Jobs was not a bull-headed person. There were a number of times that he made a statement and then completely contradicted it a few years later. After all, he was a really good salesperson and he wanted to show that what he was selling was THE BEST, and anything else was irrelevant.

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And if people say making a device thinner and lighter is not innovative than surely making a smartphone with a larger screen or a tablet with a smaller screen isn't either. Couldn't one argue that the larger screen phones were due to battery requirements to support LTE? And smaller screen tablets due to Amazon and others knowing their best chance of competing with iPad was on price? Of course that's morphed into people liking those form factors but it doesn't necessarily mean it was "innovative" any more than shoving all this amazing tech into thinner and lighter designs is.

Rogifan said:

I don't doubt that Jobs and Apple have drawn inspiration from Sony. But honestly I've never looked at a MacBook Air and thought 'wow that looks just like a Sony Vaio or whatever. Just like I'd never mistake an Asus Zen Prime for an Air.

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Drawing inspiration is rarely about reproducing verbatim what others have done. Though for somethings (chiclet keyboard on laptops ?) it's pretty obvious what the roots are.

Some people on this site often are too quick to scream "copying!" and making things black or white (and if it isn't totally pristine white and shiny, it's black).

KnightWRX said:

Drawing inspiration is rarely about reproducing verbatim what others have done. Though for somethings (chiclet keyboard on laptops ?) it's pretty obvious what the roots are.

Some people on this site often are too quick to scream "copying!" and making things black or white (and if it isn't totally pristine white and shiny, it's black).

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I won't disagree with that. But there are some recent laptops that seem to draw more than just inspiration.

RSL said:

iOS is awesome! I really think it's one of the great leaps in computing that Apple has accomplished. It's so awesome it's the industry standard and competitors just savagely ape it.

But not on my Mac please. I think that all of this focus on iOS has led to the sub-par OS X releases 10.7 and 10.8.

Another thing that bugs me is the move towards non-upgradeable/non-repairable Macs. Obviously, it helps Apple's bottom line. Tempted to go Hackintosh for my next desktop Mac...

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Don't get me wrong, it was super innovative at the time. But that time was 2007, and in the past 6 years not only has the competition caught up, but iOS has hardly changed. It's as if you're using a PC with Vista or OS X Tiger on it. They're not bad OS's, but they're... old! At the very least, iOS needs a spit shine, but instead they're spending their efforts to shoehorn iOS into OS X.