

Apple stopped innovating with the iPhone. You’re welcome. - fedxc
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/06/07/apple-stopped-innovating-with-the-iphone-youre-welcome/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29

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Bud
Yeah, that iPad thing was no big deal. Never mind the 25M units sold. Never
mind that everyone is furiously trying to imitate it.

Syncing everything to the cloud and back to all your devices and actually
making that work, and signing deals with all the record companies so you can
do this with your music collection without it being a prohibitive pain, also
no big deal.

Some people are awfully demanding. :)

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chromablue1978
"Yeah, that iPad thing was no big deal."

Since when was the iPad a cellphone? He said right up front "Apple's
innovation in the mobile sphere"...

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sp332
Are you from the UK? In context, mobile computing includes laptops, tablets,
and smartphones (and maybe even games on dumbphones).

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andos
People seem to forget that not all innovation is disruptive. There's room for
incremental innovation, too. A lot of room.

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ugh
Taking great features from others should be nothing to be ashamed of. It’s
what made Android great (among other things, obviously).

I always hate it when companies are unwilling to copy great ideas because of,
well, I don’t know, maybe pride? It’s bad for the user. Mobile OS A has great
feature X, mobile OS B has great feature Y, but no OS has features X and Y –
and that just plain sucks for the user.

It goes without saying that sometimes it’s good to copy a little less and do
things your own way a bit more. That was the situation in 2007. Recently,
Microsoft also went that route (and they should be admired for that). But
sometimes it’s not. Polishing iOS seems like the right thing to do right now –
and that includes looking elsewhere for inspiration.

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jinushaun
Not invented here (NIH) syndrome is poisonous to innovation. It's always
embarrassing to watch companies like MS implement a particular "mainstream"
feature in their own way just to make it different. This usually ends up
awkward.

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fedxc
It's not the first time JB apps are implemented on new iOS releases.

I.e.: MobileNotifier, CameraButtons.

I think Apple actually needs jailbreakers.

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cstross
One suspects that Apple wink at jailbreakers.

They can't encourage them overtly without damaging their relationship with the
music and film cartels -- without which they lose the most successful
commercial music market on the internet. And the MPAA, RIAA and their members
_hate_ the idea of uncontrolled access to machines that host their media.
(EDIT: Also, the cellcos presumably don't like the idea of uncontrolled smart
devices talking to their base stations ... as witness the periodic crackdowns
on un-authorized tethering.)

But on the other hand, jailbreaking isn't impossible. And it ought to be -- if
Apple seriously wanted to design a machine that couldn't be jailbroken, then
some combination of a trusted platform module with remote activation (which
Apple indeed enforce) should be sufficient. (Kernel isn't signed by Apple
corporate? Boot loader say bye-bye!)

So my conclusion is that Apple are doing "due diligence" -- enough to
propitiate the copyright absolutists, but dragging their heels enough to
permit a deniable halo of JB developers to generate new ideas, which can then
be bought in-house if they work or disowned if they don't.

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rbranson
I'd argue that the only true innovation Apple made with the iPhone was with
the App Store, which didn't even happen until a bit after the launch. Apple
gathered what they thought were best technologies, honed them, and made them
work together.

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rje
Are there phones that predate the iphone that are entirely controlled through
a large, multi-touch touchscreen?

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rbranson
Not multi-touch, but HTC had been making large, touch screen devices based on
Windows Mobile for a while before the iPhone was announced.

<http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_p3600-1694.php>

Clearly not taken to the degree Apple did, but what Apple did was evolve it to
the point where it was consumer-friendly, not invent the concept itself.

~~~
rje
Thanks for the link, I hadn't known about those phones. It's a resistive
touchscreen instead of a capacitative multitouch screen, but it's certainly
fair to count it as a predecessor.

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junklight
ah bless. Apple product announcement and all the websites and bloggers and
journalists are scratching their heads.

"How can I turn this into page views. Gee the overview of what he said - been
done a million times. What about slagging it all off - well it is pretty
interesting stuff though. I know. I'll come up with a trolling headline and
use some tricksy language making myself look cool so it's not really slagging
them off at all. hmm. got it. Redefine innovate to mean first one ever to
think of an idea. Bingo. "

"Damm. Better start thinking about the next release......"

