Jobs Biographer Walter Isaacson: 'Execution is What Really Matters,' Apple is the Best

[Above The Gods]

Really?

From the Oxford dictionary:



There is in no way a question of cost or acceptance on a market. The most common example I can think of is academic research, it's by definition innovative i.e "featuring new methods; advanced and original".

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/innovative?q=innovative

And I can easily show you quotes from wikipedia: "innovation can be defined as something original and, as consequence, new that 'breaks into' the market or society... a process that brings together various novel ideas in a way that they have an impact on society." Perhaps this article helps you here: "Innovation is a term of economics rather than technology.... Innovations must not only be valuable, they must be put to use by others in society"
http://bit.ly/1bhOe7J
http://bit.ly/1i8QhPO

By simply creating something new, that is not innovation, it's invention. I can sit in my basement, and create products all I want. Those products are inventions, but are not innovative. Microsoft can have all sorts of nice products in a lab, but that doesn't make them innovative if it has no effect or acceptance in the marketplace/society.

 

[subsonix]

And I can easily show you quotes from wikipedia:

Oxford dictionary trumps Wikipedia. There are many examples of product who are or was innovative but costed too much to become a success on the market, or remained obscure for other reasons.

 

[Renzatic]

A translated version by a german narrator, who made it sometimes sound like a fairy tale.
I had a good laugh at Steve Jobs in Munich, as a fruitarian forced to eat sausages.

Those filthy krauts.

...and that's the story of how we got the hockey puck mouse.

 

[Above The Gods]

Oxford dictionary trumps Wikipedia. There are many examples of product who are or was innovative but costed too much to become a success on the market, or remained obscure for other reasons.

Give one example of this.

Also, all you have to do is type into Google "what is innovation" or "innovation vs invention" to realize you're wrong. Simply creating a new product is an invention, not an innovation.

"For this invention to become an innovation, a public needs to be introduced to the invention and have said invention improve their lives in some way."
http://bit.ly/1i8QhPO

The iPod and itunes were innovations. XYZ product, that we've never heard of, is not an innovation. There's no way to know whether XYZ product is even good if it hasn't been accepted in society.

 

[subsonix]

Give one example of this.

Also, all you have to do is type into Google "what is innovation" or "innovation vs invention" to realize you're wrong. Created a new product is an invention, not an innovation.

Betamax. I looked up the meaning of the word in the dictionary.

 

[Above The Gods]

Betamax. I looked up the meaning of the word in the dictionary.

Betamax was bought and sold on the open market. At it's peak, it held a 30% market share. It eventually lost out to something even more innovative.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Betamax was bought and sold on the open market. It eventually lost out to something even more innovative.

Not exactly, no. JVC licensed VHS more widely. It was actually less innovative, technically speaking.

 

[subsonix]

Betamax was bought and sold on the open market. At it's peak, it held a 30% market share. It eventually lost out to something even more innovative.

Well, new discoveries in research, not yet feasible for cost or manufacturing reasons to become products.

 

[Above The Gods]

Not exactly, no. JVC licensed VHS more widely. It was actually less innovative, technically speaking.

VHS was more for economically viable than Betamax. That's why it won out. It became cheaper. You can license something as much as you want, that in itself isn't sufficient to get customers to buy it more.

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Well, new discoveries in research, not yet feasible for cost or manufacturing reasons to become products.

The discoveries themselves are not innovations. They are great ideas.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Give one example of this.

Also, all you have to do is type into Google "what is innovation" or "innovation vs invention" to realize you're wrong. Simply creating a new product is an invention, not an innovation.

"For this invention to become an innovation, a public needs to be introduced to the invention and have said invention improve their lives in some way."
http://bit.ly/1i8QhPO

The iPod and itunes were innovations. XYZ product, that we've never heard of, is not an innovation. There's no way to know whether XYZ product is even good if it hasn't been accepted in society.

You are arguing yourself into a logical and semantical corner. You are fundamentally confusing innovation and commercial success.

A product can be a huge commercial success without being measurably innovative. And an innovation is still an innovation, even if you've never heard of it, and it doesn't have any impact on your life that you know about.

 

[Tech198]

i'll give Apple credit for one thing here..

They ARE first at most things..... because they need to teach other manufactures like Google products and features are done done right...

 

[subsonix]

The discoveries themselves are not innovations. They are great ideas.

We are not discussing the word "innovation", but the word "innovative". It's an adjective and describes how something are.

But this is a useless discussion, because you ask me for examples, and when I give them you will just claim that they are not examples of something innovative. And you ignore the dictionary definition of the word, so any hope of convincing you is pretty much hopeless I would say.

 

[IJ Reilly]

VHS was more for economically viable than Betamax. That's why it won out. It became cheaper. You can license something as much as you want, that in itself isn't sufficient to get customers to buy it more.

Not correct. Sony was deliberately more proprietary with their technology. They didn't want to license it because they saw themselves has having a lock on the video cassette market. In fact in the '90s the Beta vs. VHS experience was frequently used to support the argument that Apple had to license the MacOS or "go the way of Beta."

 

[Above The Gods]

You are arguing yourself into a logical and semantical corner. You are fundamentally confusing innovation and commercial success.

A product can a be huge commercial success without being measurably innovative. And an innovation is still an innovation, even if you've never heard of it, and it doesn't have any impact on your life that you know about.

If only you can see how illogical your previous statement was, you wouldn't make it.

You: "an innovation is still an innovation, even if you've never heard of it, and it doesn't have any impact on your life that you know about."

You're trying to make the claim that innovation doesn't have to have an impact on society, yet using that very conclusion as the premise of your argument, which makes absolutely no sense. It's a circular reasoning.

All you have to do is a simply Google search or watch the TED conference on innovation to see what it is. It is not an invention. XYZ product I made in my basement is not innovative. It's a nice trinket I made.

 

[Renzatic]

i'll give Apple credit for one thing here..

They ARE first at most things..... because they need to teach other manufactures like Google products and features are done done right...

Not really. Apple's rarely ever first at introducing new technologies, and are occasionally even behind the curve with some things when compared to the rest of the industry. Their skills lie mostly in implementation and design, or as Walter Issacson puts it, execution.

 

[Above The Gods]

Not correct. Sony was deliberately more proprietary with their technology. They didn't want to license it because they saw themselves has having a lock on the video cassette market. In fact in the '90s the Beta vs. VHS experience was frequently used to support the argument that Apple had to license the MacOS or "go the way of Beta."

What do you mean not correct? VHS was far cheaper to produce, sell and ship than Betamax. That's why it won out. It had an economic advantage. Apple did eventually license MacOS and that still didn't help their cause. Innovation isn't necessarily the best product technologically speaking.

----------

We are not discussing the word "innovation", but the word "innovative". It's an adjective and describes how something are.

But this is a useless discussion, because you ask me for examples, and when I give them you will just claim that they are not examples of something innovative. And you ignore the dictionary definition of the word, so any hope of convincing you is pretty much hopeless I would say.

No. I asked for an example of something not being accepted in society, yet being an innovation. You told me Betamax. You were wrong. You can't argue something with a peak 30% market share as not being accepted in society.

Academic research, by themselves, are not innovations. That's actually the first time I've ever heard someone say that, which is odd.

 

[subsonix]

No. I asked for an example of something not being accepted in society, yet being an innovation. You told me Betamax. You were wrong. You can't argue something with a peak 30% market share as not being accepted in society.

All you need to do is to look back at the original quote: https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18721191/

This is what I had an issue with, you just changed the topic during the way. The topic is the word "innovative", and what it takes for something to be considered innovative.

 

[samcraig]

What do you mean not correct? VHS was far cheaper to produce, sell and ship than Betamax. That's why it won out.

Actually - It's believed that VHS won out because that's the format the Porn industry decided upon. After that - Beta has little chance of survival.

Also - Beta's max recording time at the time was 1hr. VHS had more flexibility in the home AND at a cheaper price.

 

[Tech198]

Not really. Apple's rarely ever first at introducing new technologies, and are occasionally even behind the curve with some things when compared to the rest of the industry. Their skills lie mostly in implementation and design, or as Walter Issacson puts it, execution.

Exactly, I'm not saying Apple's the only one with here, lots of companies come out with their own version, but none of them work perfectly, and always have some sort of issue.. aka flimsy track pad, gestures don't always work etc..

 

[IJ Reilly]

If only you can see how illogical your previous statement was, you wouldn't make it.

You: "an innovation is still an innovation, even if you've never heard of it, and it doesn't have any impact on your life that you know about."

You're trying to make the claim that innovation doesn't have to have an impact on society, yet using that very conclusion as the premise of your argument, which makes absolutely no sense. It's a circular reasoning.

All you have to do is a simply Google search or watch the TED conference on innovation to see what it is. It is not an invention. XYZ product I made in my basement is not innovative. It's a nice trinket I made.

It's completely logical, you just aren't understanding it. Innovations don't have to "have an impact on society," they just have to represent a new way of doing something that nobody thought of before. The thing could be highly obscure. It doesn't fail to be innovative just because you, personally, don't know it exists.

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What do you mean not correct? VHS was far cheaper to produce, sell and ship than Betamax. That's why it won out. It had an economic advantage. Apple did eventually license MacOS and that still didn't help their cause. Innovation isn't necessarily the best product technologically speaking.

Incorrect, as in, not correct. Why it is incorrect has already been explained. Once again, your refusal to except things does not change those things.

 

[Above The Gods]

It's completely logical, you just aren't understanding it. Innovations don't have to "have an impact on society," they just have to represent a new way of doing something that nobody thought of before. The thing could be highly obscure. It doesn't fail to be innovative just because you, personally, don't know it exists.

----------



Incorrect, as in, not correct. Why it is incorrect has already been explained. Once again, your refusal to except things does not change those things.

Your idea of what innovation is contradicts what is generally accepted as such, including that on wikipedia. A good idea is just a good idea. For it to be an innovation, like Chupa Chupa said, it has to be "disruptive" or change the way society does things in a way. If it does not, it's not an innovation. It's just a good idea. By your definition, I can create all sort of stupid things with absolutely no practical use in my basement that no one has ever heard of. But because it simply does things differently, you call it innovation, which is untrue. It is inventiveness, sure.

Innovation is not creativity:
http://blogs.hbr.org/2010/08/innovation-is-not-creativity/
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/...innovation-vs-invention-what-s-the-difference

 

[mccldwll]

I'm confused by your response to my post.

Fact: iPhone sales were below Apple's guidance because Apple produced too many 5c models & not enough 5S. Tim Cooks's own admission here, not my conjecture.

Huh? Please provide citation to Aapl giving iPhone sales guidance. You made the claim. Support it.

 

[Klae17]

Why is the 5c constantly referred to as a cheap phone at $550 off contract vs the "premium" 5s at $650 off contract. Anything over $400 unlocked is not considered cheap to anyone I have talked to. If the push from the carriers is to unsubsidized cell plans I don't get the pricing on the 5c.

An iPad mini retina 16gb cellular is $529 unsubsidized. Why does an iPhone 5c 16gb cost more than this retina iPad?

Sweetie, 550 is cheaper than 650, therefore the cheap iPhone. No one said it was affordable. It costs more because they can charge more. What's the problem with that? If you don't like it don't buy it.

 

[sixrom]

Voice recognition, wearable computing, self-driving cars, tons of back-end technologies/tools that allow them to scale and return results as fast they do, and efficiency (think of gmail offering 1GB storage when hotmail was offering 10MB) to name a few. There's a lot more if you want to get into smaller details of various products (Android, Chrome, etc).

It's not just about mining data, it's being able to turn that data into something people want. Google Search and Google Maps are great examples. Google does a great job at spidering the web and collecting map data, but they turned that data into products that that were *way* ahead of their competition when they were released. For search, they had the most data and the highest relevancy of results. For maps, well, do you remember what the other mapping sites looked like? The UI for Google Maps was on another level entirely.

Don't fool yourself into selling Google short. They've had/will have flops, but their successes have been huge.

Very well said.

It's the examples you've cited that cause competitors like Apple to fear Google's vast ability to innovate at warp speed. Once known for their agile response time and innovative expertise, Apples slowed to a very sluggish pace.

At some point, perhaps in the second half of this year, Apple may get back on track and show us instead of just telling us "big things lie ahead." I for one would welcome Apples return to it's old form. Hopefully they won't coast along like they did for most of 2013.

They can boast all they want while they stash their cash in offshore hideaways, but it's new models and new products the customers want.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

The A7 processor is an amazing piece of hardware

Absolutely.

and TouchId is the first mobile fingerprint solution that actually works and adds to the experience. No one else was able to compete in that space and we still haven't seen a competitor release a comparable fingerprint security mechanism.

Agreed.

Add in the improvements Apple has made to their camera sensor tech and the 5s is an impressive upgrade. I'm not sure what else you'd be expecting...

A better camera than everyone else.