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What is innovation?

Webster's defines the word as this:

1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device : novelty

Unfortunatly people don't seem to understand this and think innovation is solely your first point and excludes the second.
 
What are you talking about? Apple had tonnes of innovations under John Sculley. Most of them flopped, but they certainly innovated a lot more than Apple has in the past couple years.

Not to mention Scully basically gave birth to this generation of mobile processors by massively funding ARM during their beginnings. Which (in turn) saved Apple's ass from going Bankrupt when Steve came back. People think Microsoft bailed out Apple when in reality it was apple selling off their stake in ARM to help fund their R&D for the onslaught of new products last decade.

He wasn't great at visualizing, simplifying and fine tuning products.. But Scully was not exactly ALL that bad either.
 
Lot's of people here sounds like they know Jobs and Sculley like the back of their hand.
 
If you are talking about the denotative meaning of the word, I was unable to find, in any definition, the requirement of "commercial success".

If you are saying that in your opinion, innovation per se is not enough without the commercial success of the innovation...that's a different story. It is your opinion, however, not the word's definition.

:D


Have you been reading macrumors' forums recently? People who trolls about lack of innovation usually only trolls in products thats beginning to have smaller marketshare(aka iPhone and iOS) "innovation" nowadays is just another way of saying "commercially successful and keeping up with trends".
 
No one cares about a watch. Half of people already just use their phone for this. People would rather have a TV set from Apple
 
glass a glimpse of the future? sorry, but i think youll be disappointed. normal human beings (not gadget nymphos) dont like the idea of either wearing head gear, or having others wearing them & recording us all of the time.

the gargoyles of Snow Crash are not the future.

Just like computers and electronics were for nerds and geeks 10 years ago? Now it's cool for everyone to have it.
 
Not to mention Scully basically gave birth to this generation of mobile processors by massively funding ARM during their beginnings. Which (in turn) saved Apple's ass from going Bankrupt when Steve came back. People think Microsoft bailed out Apple when in reality it was apple selling off their stake in ARM to help fund their R&D for the onslaught of new products last decade.

He wasn't great at visualizing, simplifying and fine tuning products.. But Scully was not exactly ALL that bad either.

That stake in ARM would be quite handy these days to have no?
 
As a consumer, I am enjoying a break from being pushed so hard to keep up. It's nice just to use this stuff and get a few things done for a change rather than the chase to upgrade and migrate all the time. I'll be ready to move when Apple is. I think we all needed a break.

This also means that since the copycats have to wait on Apple to release something new before they can copy it (badly), Apple is sandbagging them all going into the Christmas season.
 
New this year, the same thing we made last year, but look how thin it is... .6 mm thinner than last year... see that thin edge? it's so thin... look at the thinness...

There have been amazing technologies being developed every day for years, that just need a product implementation to call home. Compared to the great strides Apple could be making, a new kind of wristwatch and their anorexia fetish seems a lot more like a distraction. It's almost like they're afraid of innovating beyond where they've settled.

With all the resources Apple has at their disposal, they ought to be able do more than spec whatever faster chips mfg's are making this year in their existing products.

If anyone can recognize an Apple luffing its sails, it's Sculley
 
Jobs ousting by Sculley didn't turn out so bad

For all the Sculley bashing, let's not forget a few things.

Without Sculley ousting Jobs we would not have:
  • Pixar
  • OS X
  • A wizened Steve Jobs hungrier to make a dent in the Universe.

Apple very well might have languished in the 90's under the "old" Jobs. Disney might have continued to recycle old characters and produce crap movies. And, worst of all, people might still be buying BlackBerry's because there was no iPhone. We live in the universe where Steve Jobs got a second act (however tragically brief) and we have John Sculley to thank for that. ;)
 
You must have a different dictionary to everyone else.

Really? So, what you're saying is that the wright brothers airplane was not innovative? Because it was just an experiment that barely flew for a little while, rather than a commercially successful product?

Amazing!
 
In related news, Robert McNamara's ghost says nobody knows how to fight wars these days...
 
Apple was such an underdog a while ago, and then blasted out some amazing tech. Now they are on top of the heap with some pretty solid products, and people just want to be blown away every week with something new from them. That expectation on them is wreaking havoc with their stock prices.

"innovate more" everyone yells and criticizes. It's not as easy as everyone thinks!
 
The meaning of the word innovation requires commercial success[/B].

If you are talking about the denotative meaning of the word, I was unable to find, in any definition, the requirement of "commercial success".

If you are saying that in your opinion, innovation per se is not enough without the commercial success of the innovation...that's a different story. It is your opinion, however, not the word's definition.

:D

Have you been reading macrumors' forums recently? People who trolls about lack of innovation usually only trolls in products thats beginning to have smaller marketshare(aka iPhone and iOS) "innovation" nowadays is just another way of saying "commercially successful and keeping up with trends".

Try reading the first post, and my response again. The post to which I responded asserted that the definition of the word included commercial success. Then read my response, which commented upon the definition of the word.

I was commenting on the denotative definition of the word as asserted by the first quote, not what may well be the common usage.
 
No one cares about a watch. Half of people already just use their phone for this. People would rather have a TV set from Apple

I just love how people are able to criticize a non-existent product. First, I hate that people are calling it an iWatch. If anything is actually released it will not be a watch, it will be a worn computer product. I haven't worn a watch for years and would not put one back on just because Apple made it. But, something that goes on my wrist that can:

Notify me discretely of incoming messages, texts, alerts, etc.
Monitor heart-rate, or maybe temperature, or other physical data.
Do any number of things that my phone does without having to pull my phone out of my pocket (yes watch, navigation, Siri, etc.)
NFC (not super excited about this because of security concerns)

That I could get excited about. When I think about the amount of time I use my "iPhone" for making phone calls versus anything else, it seems silly to call it an iPhone. Just like it seems ridiculous to call whatever Apple is working on an "iWatch." I am hopeful that whatever they come up with (if they do) will be just like everything else they made recently; something I didn't know I couldn't live without until they showed it to me.
 
i pray that the iwatch is just a red herring to throw off the copycats and waste their time. Unless of course it can "beam you up" ;)
 
"I think the next big area of product [innovation] is probably not around a television, as many are speculating -- actually, Apple TV is pretty good right now. I think it will be around wearable sensor-type products."

Agree on the concepts, but not on the timing, John.

If and when Apple does re-make the television industry in its own image (which probably won't happen for years) my wild guess is that the actual big-screen HDTV will be the last item on their to-do list. First: keep improving the Apple TV "hockey puck," keep building out iCloud server infrastructure, keep accumulating iTunes accounts and iCloud users. Next: sign all those hard-to-negotiate deals with deeply entrenched content providers. This might take years. Launch: roll out the actual live / on-demand playback service with monthly subscription and/or a la carte rental and/or content purchase. Kiss your old 50-button remote goodbye. Say "hello" to the Siri microphone in some future Apple TV box. Last: release a 55" AMOLED HDTV monitor with one input for Apple TV and an iSight camera for biometric user recognition and playback and game control gesture recognition. (The camera, by the way, would be the value add of the Apple monitor: only its camera would give you the full experience.)

And yes, I think wearable computing will be big. Eventually. As soon as someone Apple can figure out either 1) how to display enough data on a tiny screen to be useful, or 2) how to integrate Siri voice input and output into a wearable device, or 3) both of the above. Eventually Apple will do it. But not before the market is ready. In terms of end-user acceptance of tiny wearable devices, and in terms of Apple's ability to profit from that market segment.

Sure, eventually wearable computing will be cool. But right now it isn't. Who wants to be the "Glassh*le" wearing Google Glass, staring through people right in front of you? I don't. Maybe iWatch actually does make sense, from an end-user perspective.

But Apple's problem with wearable computing is that the devices probably can't be as expensive as an iPhone, or roughly $600 at the moment. (I'm talking the actual value of iPhone, not its subsidized take-home price.) Yes, there are any number of $600+ watches, but they're all uni-tasking status symbols. Could Apple really price an iWatch at $600? I'm not sure they could. I think it, and other small wearable computers, will have to be much cheaper than that.

And the problem with a lower-priced iDevice is that even with a 40% margin, the total revenue won't match that of more expensive iDevices unless you sell more of them. And the market for wearable iDevices, even less expensive ones, is unknown territory for Apple and everyone else. Apple may not want to get too far ahead of the market, in terms of consumer demand. They've already done that with Newton and Macintosh TV (an early-90s monstrosity) and I'm sure they haven't forgotten those lessons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_tv

So again, I wouldn't expect an iWatch for a few more years.
So what does that leave as Apple's "next big thing"?

How about the in-car experience? The Siri "Eyes Free" button on steering wheels is a good start. It would replace, for many tasks, built-in dashboard monitors. Safer because your eyes stay on the road. Easier because Siri would just tell you what to do when you need to do it. No need to reconcile a map on a screen with the real world you're moving through. Simple for auto manufacturers to build into their cars. Just a button on the steering wheel, and a lightning dock for your iDevice.

Eventually, Apple could evolve the system to project an image in the driver's line of sight out the windshield. Somewhat like the high-tech BMW in "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol." (That was a concept car built to preview some of the features of the BMW i8 hybrid, which should enter production later this year BTW.) Apple could license the technology to auto manufacturers for a decent revenue stream. I think that form of revenue will become more important to Apple over the years: baked-in technology that auto manufacturers and other industries can license from Apple.

And that whole in-car thing may be yet another reason why Scott Forstall was fired.
Because Maps is going to be a crucial part of that, and although it's getting
better rapidly, you only get once chance at a good first impression.
 
Google is innovating. They are working on Glass (which is an amazing glimpse at the future) as well as more projects at their X labs.

They better change the name before product launch because the Egyptians invented that millennia ago. A pharaoh is gonna come back from the dead and kick some legal butt. It will be like a The Mummy sequel, courtroom style ;)
 
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