What DID Apple innovate?

ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 156 points –

Genuine question.

I know they were the scrappy startup doing different cool things. But, what are the most major innovative things that they introduced, improved or just implemented that either revolutionized, improved or spurred change?

I am aware of the possibility of both fanboys and haters just duking it out below. But there's always that one guy who has a fkn well-formatted paragraph of gold. I await that guy.

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The iPhone. It was revolutionary when it came out.

It literally created the modern smartphone market. The Palm Pilots and Blackberries of the day couldn't compare: the iPhone had a FULL BROWSER. It was insane. The team developing Android saw the iPhone and had a real "holy shit" moment, they had to go back to the drawing board and completely start over in order to compete.

Full browser might be an overstatement. It was still a web full of Flash at that time. And it caused a pretty major limitation on the browser. If there wasn't an app available, you were often SOL. I do think it sped up the demise of Flash on the web considerably.

I do think it sped up the demise of Flash on the web considerably.

That's unironically an innovation right there

Why? It was a decent technology.

No, it absolutely wasn't, as can testify anyone who actually had to work with it: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/the-death-of-adobes-flash-is-lingering-not-sudden/

There are lots of good reasons to get rid of Flash. Browser makers say it's a top sore spot for security, performance and shorter battery life.

https://tedium.co/2021/01/01/adobe-flash-demise-history/

Usability means a few things in this context—simplicity, ease of use, convention, and accessibility. Flash was none of those things. It took the blank-canvas approach to creativity—which was great for the artists and illustrators that originally made up its target audience, but morphed into numerous other forms that it wasn’t necessarily designed for. It fell into overuse and quickly became abused by others.

here have been plenty of nails since. Microsoft, Mozilla and Google started cutting off browser plug-in technology, telegraphing that Flash's approach to extending browser abilities was doomed even if the browsers themselves carved out an exception for Flash.

Well, I'm in favor of that approach and I'm not in favor of Microsoft, Google and even sadly Mozilla. Even if used not for Flash but for something else.

a win in favor of a more technical, more methodical internet, one where systems are built to work efficiently, rather than experimental playthings that kind of sit in their own space.

That quote alone emotionally moves me personally in the direction opposite of what the author apparently intended.

Then there is, of course, a quote attributed to "famed usability expert", who meant something completely irrelevant to the point the author is making, judging by that quote being from year 2000.

I'm not sure he'd consider HTML5 better, and judging by his article on Java applets linked and statements made there, the closest thing to his perfect Web would be today's Geminispace, with which I can even agree in many contexts and which would be the opposite kind of Web from what the author of the article apparently wants to say.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I like the idea of the generally static (maybe just a bit scriptable) hypertext pages with embedded applets executed with plugins. It makes sense if you need an accessible standard. It doesn't if you need a monopoly which formally isn't one.

Not really. To have fresh dynamic content having to install a third party plugin is a bad take. Web development was stagnating due to IE's market dominance.

To have fresh dynamic content having to install a third party plugin is a bad take.

It was the public opinion in the 00s, yes. And I think I even thought the same back then (being a kid, so my opinion doesn't matter much ; but I did have that "afraid to catch a virus" feeling which was amplified by a page containing something in Flash).

But I disagree now, looking at all that transpired. It was a good thing that HTML (as in hypertext markup language) and JS weren't responsible for such things. And it's fine to serve applications for various interpreters over HTTP as part of webpages.

I also think that Java applets were a good idea, not just Flash, for the same reason.

Also the browser developer and the Flash developer were not the same party. Which means that Flash was more or less egalitarian between browsers.

Sure, a browser minus Flash, but it was still a real browser. Most of the web functioned without Flash. And none of the competition even had anything close. It was such a revolutionary product that the iPhone didn't even HAVE competition until Android got its shit together, which took a couple years.

This. Being able to actually open all those sites that used Flash was a big advantage of Android back then.

Yeah, Android had that advantage LATER, when they got their shit together. But when the iPhone initially released, it changed the game.

Nope, there was a lot of Windows Mobile smartphones before iPhones and Androud devices. WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, phone, thousands of apps, "full browser" (I don't know what a commenter meant by that, but I could use internet normally)
When iPhone appeared, it was sooo limited. A couple of my regular customers (I was selling qtek/htc smartphones) bought them, but then came back to me: "uhhh, this thing doesn't allow attachments in emails", "uhhh, do you have normal maps app for that? can't drive with that"

These comments are from people who wouldn't care about PDAs before iPhone.

I have big clumsy sweaty fingers and struggle even with today's big smartphones.

I was a kid back then, but those PDAs would have normal keyboards and a stylus and an OS with a UI not feeling as if it were made for asylum patients.

But that's not important, why would one even defend against really functional systems something the main features of which were "look how I can zoom pictures with two fingers on that thing", "look how cute it looks, shiny" and "look, nice icons, you'll wanna lick 'em".

Them building a smartphone around a capacitive touchscreen with a software keyboard was the primary innovation of the iPhone.

A full browser that rendered webpages is not an innovation, that's a result of increased processing power letting them port more browser code over. Pinch to zoom interfacing on a browser might be an innovation, but a web browser on a mobile phone was not innovative, just iterative.

All the browsers were complete shit though. That was iterative but it felt huge.

Imma let y’all finish but the Palm Pre was the GOAT

I miss webOS dearly. I still have my HP TouchPad. It could put apps in the background and pick up like nothing happened from a recents screen in 2009. IIRC iOS wouldn't follow suit until 4 years later.

There was also the fantastic cross-device sharing feature. If you had an HP phone as well as the touchpad, and paired them via Bluetooth, you could place phone calls from the tablet, as well as being able to pull up a web browser on the phone and tap the phone against the tablet and have it pull up the same page on the bigger screen exactly where you left off. I've never seen anything more recent even attempt something similar. The closest I've seen is KDE Connect which adds a button to the Android share menu that opens the URL on a connected tablet, desktop, or laptop. Still all but seamless, but not nearly as cool.

And Exhibition Mode. Downloadable, interactive screensavers for when the device is locked and on its charging pedestal. Apple didn't start trying to pretend they invented that until 2020.

Early versions of the TouchPad OS even played the Angry Birds slingshot sound when you swiped down to dismiss an app from your recents menu. I miss little touches like that.

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