Apple however often is the first to do a new thing successfully however. Earlier products often did not achieve enough success to be viable or just in a niche. A lot of labor lies in the path from idea to a viable product.
Defining success is hard then.
If they go with a certain design trend and then change it, was that success? Just because of widespread adoption?
“Enough success “ is also hard to pin down.
What’s a thing Apple has done successfully first?
With a product it's pretty simple: sale numbers, market share, adoption rate. The iPhone is just the best example. Sure there were already mobile internet devices out there like the Nokia N800 I owned myself, and android was already in development, but Apple put out a mass-market compatible modern smartphone first.
Like what? No they aren't they wait for stuff to be proven in the market then do it the majority of the time. Face id is just them buying the company who made xbox kinekt etc.
Like smartphones with an entire interface focused on multitouch. There wasn’t another one of those “proven in the market” before the iPhone.
Or, you know, the first mass-marketed personal computer with a GUI, and the first successful one with a mouse (Lisa, Mac).
The Kinect example is nonsensical, it wasn’t as an authentication device. Even if they used the same team and technology, so much more went into it (like the Secure Enclave) than simply repackaging what already existed.
Comparing a screen to a whole smartphone and a concept demo to full mass marketed successful products is quite disingenuous. You can do better. Either we argue in good faith or the conversation isn’t worth having.
The original point, and what Apple is known for, is precisely that they often don’t invent all the parts but put them together in a way that makes sense for and the general public wants to buy. Which also allows competitors to rise. Nitpicking every single component will always lead to “none of them invented transistors, or electricity”.
Denying Apple’s influence to certain classes of products is like denying Google’s influence to the internet, or Microsoft’s influence to offices. It’s nonsensical. I am not interested in flame wars or arguing with others about their biases for or against specific trillion dollar corporations.
I do, but don’t really feel like nitpicking what counts or not with arbitrary rules we make up as the conversation goes along. I chose those examples deliberately because the conversation was about the company’s history and they are pretty unambiguous in their importance. Going in circles with “oh, that doesn’t count because it was not as recent as this undefined period of time I have my head” or any other restrictions is not interesting, and I don’t really care about defending Apple, I was simply providing a factual rebuttal.
