Comments on: Macintosh at 25: Still the innovation leader

On January 24, 1984, the Macintosh came into the world, starting a revolution in personal computing. Now, all attention is turned to what Apple will introduce next.

[ferretboy88]

If Apple had to get their OS to run on every single different type of hardware made it would not be so easy to have a smooth running system.

[Perry_Clease]

Exactly!

[nicmart]

Not necessarily. Apple could have tight licensing guidelines for hardware-OS compatibility. As I remember it, during the short time there were licensed Mac clones, there were no noteworthy compatibility problems.

[detopguy]

LOL, you Apple / Mac Haters are so full of jealousy, spite, and envy! What a bunch of d**chebags....

Apple isn't perfect, but they make products that are of a much higher quality and usability that the crap that comes out of Microsoft.

Example of typical MS crap: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/01/zune.player.failures/index.html

[compudoc318]

envy, thats why apple fans are hilarious, why would they envy an 8% market share???? oh i wish i could pay twice as much for a computer and not be able to remote in to my job to work....lol.

[kockgunner]

@compudoc318:

Because that's higher market share than most other computer manufacturers...

Are you comparing Apple against all other companies in the world that use windows? If you are, 8% marketshare is pretty darn good. Why wouldn't you not be able to remote into a Mac? That just proves your ignorance and invalidates your comment.

[D3vildog699]

Yeah im full of jealousy, spite and envy... thats what it is... did you ever consider that the OS someone uses is about choice, and that some people just might not like Apple computers or the GUI?

Since my computers are Built by me, i know what goes into them and it is not crap, or low quality stuff... cept my laptop cause its hard to build one of those.

[eadeguzman]

And since when did look-and-feel became the standard to measure innovation?

Yes, Mac, since 25 years ago is still the leader of "cool".

As for innovation? Microsoft and the PC platform has revolutionized computing. You wouldn't have that many computers today if it wasn't for the separation of OS and PC hardware. Many Linux innovators wouldn't have any PC to play with.

And what about innovation in productivity and software development? Microsoft enabled the software industry to prosper and let regular Joes and even kids to program applications on a PC. Doesn't that count as innovation?

Microsoft is the force that started a revolution. Can you say the same for Apple?

Dan, as Chief editor of News.com, how could you be so simplistic and narrow-minded? You're just a regular staff-writer and fanboy, it looks like.

[nicmart]

Microsoft and the PC platform didn't revolutionize anything. To Microsoft's credit, it marketed to a mass consumer base and made PCs affordable to almost anyone. If it were up to Apple a personal computer would still be priced out of reach for most people.

[D3vildog699]

"Why have mms when you can email from your phone complete with photos attatched." Its because PC's were made available to almost everyone that technology took off for the average user... if MS hadn't done this do you think we would be where we are today?

[ckurowic]

The fact friggin remains: the only systems that truly work well are those that have the software and hardware crafted together. I don't give a flying fudge if I can't edit the crap outta my OS. Maybe some uber geeks do, but thats not most of the consumers out there. Face it, windows is hemorrhaging. And for good reason.

[compudoc318]

the only fact i see is that with all the negative ad campaigns and all the "cool" people needing macs, they still sell like a yugo.....lol.

[D3vildog699]

My Vista, Xp and Ubuntu systems all work fine... wanna know why? Maintenance, i take care of my machines so that nothing will go wrong with them. In the past 3 years i have yet to have an issue with my computers.... that i didn't cause ;) or that wasn't hardware (HP laptop had a bad mobo).... Just cause you don't want to be able to edit your OS doesn't mean other people don't want to, so OSX works for you, congrats. For me it doesn't.

Just out of curiosity tho... isn't being able to edit the way your OS looks and feels for your personality part of "Thinking different"

[ckurowic]

I love Windows users, they make me look better. Its like driving a huge pickup truck obviously they have small "members". Gotta use Windows cause everyone else does, heaven forbid you think differently from the crowd of lemmings. Whatever losers.

[compudoc318]

grow up, calling the majority a loser cause youre the minority....lol

[eadeguzman]

You just made my point. If Microsoft was not there how many people do you think would own a computer today?

And because of that, how many people would have a chance to write software application?

How many businesses today directly rely on Apple "innovation"? Compare that with the ecosystem that Microsoft has built.

Microsoft's success was built on the loyalty of its third-party software developers (individuals and companies who earn their living selling Windows and other Microsoft-based platforms).

The Mac is based on Unix -- I don't know if you can say that it's an Apple technology? Aside from the "cool" factor, what contribution does Apple have in Software Industry in general --- much less in the entire American or World economy?

If that's not revolution, I don't know what is. Apple itself owes its survival to Microsoft. No one. I mean no one was there to help Apple when it was on the brink of collapse -- except for the generous 150M contribution by Microsoft. So even Apple itself relied on Microsoft at least once.

[pithenumber]

I can build a gaming system for $600 that plays most games on high settings and glides through Vista

for $600 Apple gives me a MacMini that has a 1.8GHz Laptop 65nm C2D and integrated graphics

[johnqh]

OK, some people need a refresh of history.

Old innovations
1. Mouse (yes, GUI with windows was invented by PARC, but mouse was Apple invention)
1A. Trashcan
2. WYSIWYG

So, let's clarify about the PARC. PARC had GUI, in the sense of using windows (part of Smalltalk). That's not OS. They windows does not show file system (floppy/hard drive/trash), and it does not use mouse. It is a way of managing smalltalk components, and old style Smalltalk does not even have the concept of "application".

3. 3.5-inch floppy
4. 32-bit OS
5. First daisy-chain port (ADB), way before USB
6. SCSI
7. 32-bit expansion bus (NuBus)

Mid age
1. Invented Firewire
2. Made USB standard (without Apple, USB had no chance)

Essentially, Firewire became the replacement for SCSI, and USB became the replacement for ADB.

3. CD-ROM
4. Voice recognition (way before it became available on PC)
5. Consumer digital camera (remember QuickTake 100?)

Yes, look up QuickTake. That's the first general purpose digital camera which everyone could use. Without Apple, forget about your Nikon or Canon

6. Laser printer with WYSIWYG

7. Trackball
8. Trackpad
9. Wristpad

Common form of laptop today

10. Connect a mac as external HD (first with Powerbook 100), still no PC can do that today

So, I will boot up Mac A with Mac B connected as a HD, install OS onto that "external HD", shut down Mac A, reboot Mac B with clean OS.

11. Video Playback (QuickTime)

Without QuickTime (then MS followed with VfW, with stolen code - there was an lawsuit about it and Apple won), forget about anything with video today.

12. TV integrated with computer (Mac TV)
13. All-in-one computer with LCD (20th Annuversary Mac)
14. Handwriting recognition. (still, nothing beats Newton)

Lately
1. iPod spin wheel (still, no other music player does that)
2. iPod touch wheel

iPod is not innovation? Then we should all click 280 times to go from item 1 to item 281.

3. Multi-touch

If you haven't used it, you don't know what it means.

4. Use of accelerometer in laptop/music player/phone

Well, Wii didn't invent anything either. It simply added something new to an existing platform. If you don't call that innovation, then you can go back to DOS.

5. Visual voice mail
6. Time machine

7. OS/SDK level animation (ever wondered why Mac OSX/iPhone's UI looks so good?)

This is why iPhone will continue to win the smartphone war. After you try iPhone, everything else seem so old style.

[eadeguzman]

Great list... I don't have time to verify them all but, certainly the mouse was not an Apple invention and so as multi-touch, TV integrated with computer (come on). Yes, firewire was invented by Apple but where is it now? USB was created by Intel, Microsoft, Compaq... not sure how you can give Apple credit for that...

I suppose Apple invented the apple fruit too?

Again, how much of the economy rely on Apple "innovation"?

Microsoft and the PC is the bread and butter of millions of Americans whose own innovations rely on Microsoft innovation. Microsoft invented the Software Industry. Top that.

[kockgunner]

@eadeguzman:

Wow. Just because you don't use Firewire doesn't mean other people don't use it. Peope who require speeds way faster than USB use Firewire on hard drives, camcorders, the Customer Convenience Port in cars and in aircraft and NASA. USB was created by many companies, but Apple popularised it when they put it on the first iMac back in 1998.

No one said Apple invented the fruit.

Apple sells, millions of iPods, iPhones, and computers every year and inject millions more into the economy. Apple is the third largest computer manufacturer in the US and sold over 12 million iPhones and contracts that come along with them. The iPod must've been a threat since Microsoft made the Zune. The iPhone has sparked other manufacturers to make touch screen smart phones and the Macbook Air has inspired others to make competing products. Shareholders benefit from the huge ups and downs or Apple's stocks for better or for worse. It's naive to think Apple plays a minor role in the economy.

What are some innovations where other people relied on Microsoft? What product did Microsoft make that wasn't a response to other companies' products? Zune-->iPod. XBox-->Playstation. Windows-->Mac OS+PARC

[wolivere]

When the MAC came out, I was in computer sales. And, it was a huge failure it was one of the reasons Apple verged on bankruptcy.

The interface was cool, but it lacked re world bussiness use at the time. Although it did workd processing really well, it came out at the end of the typewriter era.

Dedicated Word Processors, from companys like Olivetti, Wang, and IBM still blew it away.

And the price put it that much further away.

"AppleTalk made networking relatively simple" I like the twist on it at the end, simple? Maybe useful? Not really.

When I went though school we started with the commodore pet, and then we saw the huge competition between Apple and Commodore for the class room.

Apple was winning at the time with a wonderful open architecture that allowed for a wonderful third party market for hardware. And there where a ton of Apple Clones.

The the MAC came out, high price, and closed system that almost forced you to buy everything from Apple.

Boy I remeber the 2nd gen when the PC was coming out with use able hard drives and the MAC came out with its own HD. That crashed "Alot", and was horrifcly flacky, the return rates on MAC's was huge.

[Perry_Clease]

Maybe you didn't sell so many Mac is because they are called Macs not MACs.

[Dalkorian]

I'm straining to figure out how MAC (Media Access Control) and Apple Computer Inc. are directly related like you're implying in your post, but then I realize your sentences don't make much sense anyway. Finish school first sonny, then come back to the grown up table for some intellectual conversation.

[palewook]

where's the actual article that supports the author's headline?

[RompStar_420]

You guys are all stupid, go get drunk, hit your head on the wall a few times and then go forth in your life.

[aristotle_dude]

What is with the stupid mouse comments? Just go out and buy any USB mouse you want and plug it into your mac or buy a bluetooth one and pair it with a mac. They "just work" straight out of the box and you can usually configure all of the buttons through the control panel without installing "drivers".

[Dalkorian]

Shhh - don't tell winblows fans that! They're envious enough of Mac users as it is, we don't need to pour salt on their wounds.

[cggkevin]

My Personal computer history started with an IBM PC running DOS. Got a MAC 512SE, loved it. A couple of years later switched to Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP. Did a year in between with a G5 tower and OSX. Now back to XP waiting on Windows 7.

Apple Pro's
Well built sexy hardware with a nice stable OS and applications that if not great are at least productive and intuitive and an "out of the Box" experience that beats most PC companies, just what your average home user wants and expects.

Apple Con's
They just really don't get the corporate market. A couple of years ago our company decided to use Apple xServe's in our High performance cluster. We're talking several thousands xServe boxes. Apple had no clue how to provide support for an installtion of that magnitude. We literally had to teach them to how to give the kind of support we were getting from Dell.

Apple Innovation
The Original Mac, laserwriter,iPod and iPhone. BUT is the current iMac an innovation or just an evolutiuon? is the iPod Nano innovation or evolution or is shake to change tracks just a gimmick?
The new manufacturing process for the macbooks is definetly an innovation but I wish everyone would get over the glossy glass screens. Some of us do more that watch movies.

On and on we can go but I think the bottom line is that the average user does not buy an OS. they buy a computer to accomplish something with. That computer needs to be fairly priced, reliable and useable.

[fokkwp]

"Steve Jobs and team took some lessons from Xerox PARC". Ha ha! Good one! Steve's Apple development team took him by the ear over to PARC, and said this is hecka better than our Apple II. So Steve bought PARC's interface development team, and had them work at Apple instead of Xerox. "Take some lessons" alright. The invention of the entire WIMP - Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers - interface entirely predates Apple. They popularized it, but Windows finally made it the "interface for the rest of us," available at last on a real choice of inexpensive equipment. Long before Apple and Adobe "invented" desktop publishing with the Xerox interface and PostScript, entire typesetting bureaus were setting their type on inexpensive DOS computers with digital character setters on photosensitive paper.

[groink_hi]

I'm not even going to bother reading the 100-plus comments here. The following is roughly from memory.

Removing something IS innovative. the bondi blue iMac is probably THE single most innovative product of the 1990s. A part of the definition of innovation is basically changing the way people work for the better long-term. By removing the 3.5-inch disk, it forced people to think differently on how to back up data. The eventual solution was to either jump to CD-R, or store the data onto a network. Also, another sign of innovation is by eliminating the half-dozen different ports and then unifying to just two buses - USB and Firewire.

Stepping back even further, the Macintosh 128K and later all had built-in AppleTalk protocol for networking. Windows 3.x (late 1980s) was probably the first version released to support ANY kind of networking. AND, Windows' choice of protocol was NETBEUI. NETBEUI could not even go across routers - they had to wait until IPX - and it took Novell Netware to force IPX on everyone. While that was going on, Apple already had built-in LocalTalk WITH routing capabilities. Apple also had MacTCP built into Mac OS way before Windows ever did (remember NetManage Chameleon???? You had to PURCHASE TCP/IP stack for Windows.)

And let's not forget the GUI. I assume people earlier commented about Xerox and PARC. One thing they probably forgot is that, like Windows 1.x, both Xerox and Windows did NOT have overlapping windows - only cascading windows. Apple was the first to introduce overlapping windows - and this was purely by accident because apparently Apple "thought" they saw overlapping windows on the Xerox system. Also, the Apple Lisa, along with Macintosh System 1.x introduced people to proportional fonts. Steve Jobs once explained this in an interview back in 1996 that the inspiration to proportional fonts was books. It took until 1985 before Windows 1.x started using proportional fonts.

And last, people do not realize just how important it was for Apple to adopt Adobe Postscript. For the Macintosh System software to use the same 72-point equal 1-inch specification as Postscript made WYSIWYG possible. It wasn't until Windows 95 that Microsoft was able to finally tie the printer driver and video drivers together. And, they still went in the wrong direction when they tried adapting to non-Postscript printers like PCL, IBM dot matrix printers, and so on. I worked for a company that had to write printer drivers for Microsoft, so I'm very familiar with this process. And, the late Robert Goodman and Mac Simpson later used a Macintosh Plus, Aldus PageMaker and Postscript to publish a book - and IN COLOR! It took years before anyone published a book entirely on a Windows-based system.

I still have my Macintosh 128K. Although I no longer use it, I still use my Power Macintosh 8600 w/Mac OS 9 on a semi-regular basis. People even still write Javascript-based web browsers for Mac OS Classic.

[pithenumber]

removing something is NOT innovative

[groink_hi]

@pithenumber said "removing something is NOT innovative"

Let's think about this.... Removing horses off the street and replacing them with automobiles is not innovative? Removing trans fats is not innovative? Removing steam engines and replacing them with combustible engines is not innovative? Removing the vacuum tube and replacing them with transistors is not innovative?

Dude, the whole concept of innovation is to change the way things operate. Innovation is not inventing something brand-new. Cell phones is an innovation, not because it is a new invention but because it replaces land line-based telephones. Computers is an innovation because it allows people to perform calculations much faster than the slide-rule or the abacus. Television is an innovation because it allows images to be teleported over air waves instead of just voice.

Your entire concept of innovation is whacked. Removing the floppy disk drive and forcing people to use something else IS innovative! Removing the ADB port and moving onto USB is innovative. The reason is that it gets rid of REDUNDANCY! Cutting down on redundancy IS innovative. It cuts down on manufacturing costs because you're making less proprietary products - which is also innovative. Apple also was the first company to fully utilize zero inventory - they even beat Dell to this! Apple got rid of manufacturing dozens of different models like the Centris, Quadra, etc. and settled down to just two or so footprints. Cutting down overhead is innovative!

Again, introducing a new concept is NEVER something entirely brand new. Innovation is basically introducing new methods to make what we've been doing all along more efficiently. In order to improve our methods, we must REMOVE things in order for the innovation to gain momentum. If Apple were to keep the floppy disk drive, we would still be using it today! Jesus, even Windows-based servers continue to ship with floppy disk drives today? Why? Because manufacturers gave in to the users and kept the floppy disk drive! THAT IS NOT INNOVATION! Why is Vista still available on 700MB CDs? Because Windows people still haven't jumped forward to the DVD drive. THAT IS NOT INNOVATION! Apple introduced DVD drives way before PCs did. Removing the CD drive and replacing them with DVD - that is innovation....

I can go on and on about this... In short, Apple is innovative in MANY areas: using routable networking protocols like AppleTalk (vs NETBEUI), implementing QuickDraw to interface video with print technologies instead of treating the two separate like Windows did, using SCSI over MFM/RLL in the early 1980s, implementing ADB instead of AT/PS2 ports, using non-parity RAM instead of parity RAM like the PCs.....

[AppleSuxLeo]

Innovation is a digitizer pen that works with a tablet like HP has. Apple just doesn`t get it.

[groink_hi]

I assume based on your response is that you think Windows XP/Vista for TabletPC is a great thing. Some news for ya.... Mac OS X sucks as a pen-OS. And so does Windows Vista/XP. At least Apple has the brains not to include a peripheral that does not interface well with the OS.

In order to have a true tablet-based PC, one must totally re-design the UI. Attempting to use an existing keyboard/mouse based UI and make tweaks here and there for a pen does.... not.... work!

One thing I predict in the near future... and this is based on my experience working with Panasonic Toughbooks everyday... The digitizer will soon be non-existent!! Panasonic sells two types of screens: touchscreen and digitizer. The sole purpose of the digitizer is for drawing and pen recognition such as signatures and hand-recognition. Touchscreen is for everything else. Once multi-touch is more widely available, touchscreen and digitizers will become a single product. But still, one must wait for the UI on the OS to catch up. Even the iPhone has a loush UI for multi-touch, which is why I don't own the phone.

[Benigna-Marko]

The scarey thing is that I remember that. I guess history is awesome. Wow 25 years ago and so many improvements. Benigna Marko

[usa1178]

What a bunch of Geeks... You guys are so blinded by your evangelical like prejudices (both sides) that you can't see that different people have different needs for a computer. I bought a Macbook and a Dell laptop the same day, my wife wanted the dell and I thought I wanted a mac. All we do on a computer is email, internet, pictures, skype and I bring home a occasional spreadsheet from work. Both computers cost the same within a few bucks. We compared them side by side for a few weeks decided that the Mac just worked better. It booted a lot faster, never locked up and didn't have that annoying habit of asking 4 or 5 times if I really wanted to do what I just instructed the machine to do. Bottom line is that for an average user that is not interested in running that 90% of software a Mac works fine whether it is considered "innovative" or not. Bottom line, my wife took over my macbook and I ended up selling the dell and buying another Mac. If microsoft comes up with something better, I'll buy that next, but I'm not holding my breath