For example crediting him with the singlehanded creation of several markets.
Apple created several markets during the time Jobs was CEO of Apple. That's why he is honored as CEO of the decade. Makes sense, don't you think?
Neither of those companys [google and nokia] had any clue whatsoever what apple was doing .
Nokia didn't, and it shows in their dated offerings. Google certainly did, given that Schmidt was on the board, and it shows in the rapid transformation of what Android was (BB-like) to what it became.
Lets set this straight the stylus stemmed forward out of small screens and a demand of fitting a lot on those small screens. Small screen were a result because it was too expensive and batterydraining to install large(+3.5") screens.
You have been adamant that there were plenty of PDAs and phones with screens as big or bigger than the iphone had, years before the iphone. And you are right. But they were all stylus-based. The Palm TX for example (which I owned) was 3.9" and released in 2005.
Also, Apple's latest ipod nano is finger-based multi-touch, and it is a 1.5" screen.
The implementation of capacitive touch for use without a stylus on handheld devices was Apple's inspiration.
An acer N310 worked just as fine(altough I even dislike typing on an ipad so fine is relative) with its 3.7" and on screen keyboard as first generation iphone .
If by "just fine" you mean crappily, then I agree. Using fingers on a stylus based device worked, but not well. There's a whole section on Wikipedia on the poor ergonomics. It recommends sharpened fingernails. Most of the software expected accurate taps, but I didn't even like using fingers on calculator programs on the Palm, even though the buttons were big. The response was just too marginal.
As for replaced buttons? Still plenty of smartphones with buttons, physical buttons are still easier then on screen ones. Not everyone has the same demands you know.
Sure, there may always be some button-based phones around, but in 2007, the biggest sellers were all button based. Now the biggest sellers are all multi-touch based. That's what I mean by "replaced".
A complety unfunded claim. Do you have any source to back it up? I can give plenty of other non visible button smartphones and PDA's from that time.
This does not merit finding a source. It is self-evident to anyone who was breathing in 2007, that the vast majority of smartphones in the wild used hardware keyboards and thumbwheels or buttons. Even Palm, who pioneered stylus-based touch screens, had followed RIM and Nokia in their Treo line.
The touch/multi-touch/gesture market was created by Apple in the view of most analysts.
That isnt an excisting market, its smartphones, from blackberry with a 100 buttons to the iphone with 1 its just 1 market.
Semantics. Call it a market segment if you prefer. Computers is a market. Laptops is a segment of that market. Smartphones is a market. Touch/multi-touch/gesture smartphones is a segment of the smartphone market. Apple created that segment.
Again most smartphones sold DONT follow the apple format.
All the best-selling ones do.
From non touchbased, visible keyboards to the tiles of windows mobile.
Non touchbased are fading fast, and Windows 7 has adopted the defining elements of the iphone, even if they have successfully managed a little innovation in their UI. They're still pretty scarce though.
The basic apple gui was a grid with icons, and I am sorry that had been done pre-2007 .
Quite right. That is not what distinguishes the iphone. See above.
Do tell me what others copied from the apple GUI . And before you say fingerfriendlyness check out something like SPB mobile shell, released before iphone for windows wich basicly does the same, or the HTC touch, again fingerfriendlyness.
Google, Windows, RIM, and Nokia have all copied finger-based touch/multi-touch/momentum scrolling/pinch-to-zoom/ etc. Sure, finger-friendliness is a descriptive term for it. And no, SPB mobile shell was for stylus based devices in 2007, and they don't mention finger friendliness in their own promo stuff until version 3 released in April 2009.
Stylus doesnt matter for the most that was tech limitations (and they sell stylusses for ipad/iphone as well) You talked about software well that has the basic software the iphone had.
Technology for finger-based touch was available long before the iphone. It was Apple's ability to implement it in a usable way that took the market by storm. The stylus-based software is not the same basic software as the iphone. It requires greater accuracy, and lacks multi-touch, and didn't use momentum scrolling and pinch-to-zoom, all of which is what made browsing tolerable on a phone, where it was previously unusable.
No. Most people insisted the iphone was inferior technically to existing phones, but web browsing exploded when it was introduced.
Try surfing on a 2.5" QVGA screen and then tell me it wasnt tech.
But that doesn't represent available technology at the time. As you say, there were plenty of >3.5" screens around, but few people used them for browsing. I tried browsing on my 3.7" Palm TX exactly once, and it was so painful, I never bothered again. It wasn't the hardware to blame. It was the software. Apple's finger-based zoom and scroll made browsing tolerable, and I use my iphone to browse almost daily.
Dont use? Because MS discontinued the product they still sell windows mobile phones.
That's the point. MS discontinued the product because it couldn't compete. So HTC had the hardware (although I don't know it the touch supported multi-touch) but not the software. That's why Apple gets the credit for the market segment, and HTC doesn't.
Asfor 5 to 6 some examples:
HP (2006), LG viewty, E-ten, lenovo
The viewty was announced and released after the iphone was released. The other 3 are stylus-based Windows Mobile phones. Windows Mobile according to their own promotions did not offer finger-friendly features until version 6.5 released in 2008. So, that's zero for four on your examples.
I dont think besides blackberry, there was 1 mayor manufacturer of smartphones that wasnt introducing a smartphone with a simular design as the iphone in 2007 .
Stylus-based is not similar. So there were 2 phones: the prada and the HTC touch. And their supporting software was so poor it was soon abandoned.
Why is that any different? You didnt HAVE to use the stylus you could use your fingers just as well.
It was not just as well. That's why the subsequent WM6.5 advertised finger-friendly features. Before that the targets were too small, the resistive coupling too insensitive, and the supporting software too crappy.
There's a reason stylus-based phones and PDAs have gone the way of the dinosaur. They were crappy. Apple fixed it for them.
Then why are they selling stylusses for iphones and ipads?
You should be asking why the phone manufacturers themselves are NOT selling styluses. And why very few owners buy them. Because finger-based touch is so much more natural, easy, and useful, especially with multi-touch.
Now, there will always be those who like a stylus for very specific purposes (like sketching), and will seek out 3rd party styluses for these purposes. As it happens, I am one of those, but that doesn't change the fact that the system itself is by far more naturally controlled with fingers. Thanks to Apple.
It's not hard at all. Multi-touch and gestures are not Apple inventions. Apple put them together with a UI that took the phone world by storm. They used existing technologies to transform the market.
Ah, finaly you are basicly getting to my point. Yes as I said they took excisting tech and made it better. Lets not forget I reacted on the "apple created the whole market" not that they improved it.
You haven't been paying attention. No one has claimed Apple invented the core technologies. Apple's genius is assimilating available technologies and making consumer products that people desire, thereby creating markets. In the case of the ipad, "apple created the whole market". There's no other way to put it. Where there was previously no market, now there is a market. And it's all due to one product: the ipad.
Both MS and Apple saw multi-touch. MS created the MS Surface, which was cool, but no one really wanted. Apple created the iphone and ipad and redefined one market while creating another. That's Apple's genius. As CEO, Jobs wins the prize.
Now you're losing it. Obviously, Jobs had help. But he was clearly the prime mover. The company was built by Jobs, and had $60M profit within 5 years. That's pretty successful. And subsequent success came from the Mac, which was largely due to Jobs' initiatives.
The apple II was for the most NOT jobs' work, that was Steve Wozniak , VisiCalc that made its fame wasnt even from apple.
[...]
The software GUI was influenced by xerox
[...]
But yet (and that was my point) all this is ignored, and just jobs and jobs alone gets all the credit, as if nobody else at apple or in computing word has ever had an idea that contributed to it.
That's just tripe. Everyone knows Woz was the hardware whiz behind the Apple II, and that Xerox introduced the GUI and that Jony Ive has the eye for aesthetics, etc etc. But the vision, the ability to combine the ideas, to motivate people and get their best out of them, to develop products that people line up for: that's all Jobs.
Woz may not be a dime-a-dozen, but he's not as rare as Jobs. What has Woz done without Jobs? Nothing on the scale of what he did with Jobs. What has Jobs done without Woz. Well, we've been over that list a few times already.
You can do the same analysis with anyone else at Apple.
The GUI, silly. He didn't invent it, but he brought it to PCs. That's huge. It transformed the entire PC industry. It was the first time Jobs transformed an industry.
BS;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto; 1973
You can credit him for releasing the first commercial PC, but again it was basic copy and improve, as I have repeated often.
English doesn't seem to be your native language, because I don't think you're using "BS" correctly here. Because after you say it, you basically repeat what I said.
Jobs saw raw research at Xerox PARC and put it into a form the masses could use. He copied it, sure, but the re-packaging for transportable personal computers that mere mortals could use is still huge. Like I said, it transformed the PC industry.
Powerbook introduced the format as we basicly now it . They captured close to 50% of the market in a year.
40%. Apple contributed the idea of putting the keyboard near the screen, and a pointing device (trackball, then trackpad) below it. That was important, I agree. I think that's the extent of lasting Apple innovation sans Jobs. They had some other firsts incorporating ethernet, and PCIMCIA slots, and CDs, but those were not market-defining things.
Newton basicly introduced the format and functionality of current day smartphones.
See, now here is where "BS" is the appropriate response.
First, the format is huge, while smartphones are pocket-size. And that was not a technological limitation by the end of its existence. The Palm Pilot came out during Newton's years and fit in a pocket, and as a result, was a huge success compared to the Newton.
Second, the essential innovation of the Newton, the use of stylus-based input, including handwriting recognition is nowhere to be seen on modern devices. The grid of icons you talk about was a simple adaptation of the GUIs on PCs of the time. It was hardly a defining feature.
Third, its function was PDA. That's only a little more than an afterthought on modern smartphones. The iphone touted internet device, music player, and telephone functionality. The Newton had none of those.
The first powerbook was waay lighter, had a trackball on the right place, better battery life , better screen, smaller then competitors.
Actually the NEC ultralite was lighter, and introduced 2 years earlier, and is considered the first "notebook", although it did not have a hard drive. I don't know about battery life and screens. The screens were all pretty bad at the time, as I remember.
But I will concede, Apple made bitchin' laptops in the 90s. I owned several of them. It's not as obviously revolutionary though as the Mac GUI, the ipod/itunes ecosystem, the iphone, or the ipad, in my opinion, and it would seem in the market's.
It's a predecessor in that it came before, but similarities are strained. Touch/multi-touch/gestures/iOS are the critical components of the iphone/ipad, as opposed to stylus-based hand-writing recognition. The Newton was clunky and it bombed. The iphone was sleek and it soared. The Newton developed without Jobs. The iphone with. Do you see the difference?
Yes a decade of technological advances.
Its funny again how you now use hardware and before it was all software.
Like I said, the palm pilot from '97 was not much bigger than today's phones, so the technology for the size was there. Touch (resistive and capacitive) is old enough that patents have expired, and multitouch was introduced in 1991. That designers all went with stylus-based instead of finger-friendly was not a technological decision. Multi-touch may have needed more computing power than was available to the Newton, but certainly could have been implemented years before the iphone by the likes of Palm. But it was Apple, under Jobs, that recognized the potential and implemented the *software* to bring it to masses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORq2C...eature=related
Looks familiar? Grid of icons? The icons at the bottom? Form factor?
Wow. That video basically shows how unlike the Newton and the modern smart phone really are.
The grid of icons is about the only similarity, and that was borrowed from PCs; even the icons at the bottom are like the dock in NeXT from years earlier.
Again what you summed up is advanced in tech unavaible at the time.
Not the size, not the finger-friendly touch. Maybe the multi-touch.
But even if it were all technology, it remains true that the defining elements of the Newton are not used in the iphone.
I would say you're stretching truth to the breaking point to suggest the iphone and ipad lines were started by Apple in the 90s. I don't think anyone would agree with that.
Yet you are claiming everything jobs did in early 80's still went on late 90's. How convienient.
The truth in this case is rather convenient to my argument, and decidedly inconvenient to yours.
The essential defining elements of the original Mac (drop-down menus; resizable, overlapping windows; icons; palettes; mouse pointer; and critically, bit-mapped display (instead of character based) and WYSIWYG printing), which were absent in predecessors, were not only still part of the Mac in the 90s, but are still part of it today, and were part of MS Windows just as fast as they could copy it (through various kludges of character-based GUIs).
And to be clear, these elements were brought to the Mac platform from the Lisa (which got them in some form from Xerox) by Jobs to the chagrin of Raskin, who resigned in protest. The Mac as it was released was Jobs' baby. It certainly benefitted from engineering refinements over the years, but the basic Mac is still very obviously there.
Now compare that to the Newton. The defining elements are the stylus-based input and handwriting recognition, neither of which are used in the iphone or ipad.
Finally, the Mac has continuity in its favor. It has been developed, improved, and refined for 25 years, while keeping its essential structure. The Newton was cast aside for a decade, and the only resemblance the iphone bears to it is that array of icons, and that you can hold them in one hand.
There is no doubt that Apple's success with the Mac can be traced back to Jobs, but Apple's success with the iphone owes little, if anything, to the Newton.
