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.

  • darth_helmet@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    The graphical user interface.

    They don’t invent it (xerox PARC did), but Apple correctly identified that the user experience of existing computer systems was holding it back from being a thing everyone owns, and made computers a bad fit for many types of work that seem extremely obvious now (digital media creation particularly)

    They did this more or less again with the smartphone: business folks and super nerds were the smartphone market before Apple. Now it’s the average person’s computer.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    They seem to have a knack for taking something and making it palatable for the masses when it comes to UI and such. I don’t agree with a lot of it, but then again I am not “the masses” in the computing demographics.

  • Decipher0771@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    Polish.

    It useless to be first if that product isn’t reliable, sustainable, practical. Apple adds polish to other concepts to make them usable by the vast majority of people.

    Laptops existed……with weird keyboard layouts and mice that were afterthoughts. PowerBook pioneered the keyboard forward design that every laptop now has.

    Smartphones existed……incredibly limited, weird UI, awkward input, targeted at businesses instead of regular people. iPhone changed everything so much that every other design died.

    Collecting different innovations and figuring how to combine them in a way that is practical and sellable is their continuous innovation.

    • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      I’m sorry but this is kind of horseshit. Apple has legitimately brought some new polish to areas that hadn’t seen them before, but LMFAO at Apple inventing laptops that don’t have weird keyboards.

      Apple had great trackpads with multi finger gesture support before anyone else, their keyboards have been nothing special compared to ThinkPads and business grade laptops that sold for the same price as them. Their difference was marketing and convincing consumers to pay business grade prices for consumer laptops.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    11·
    11 months ago

    The insane amounts of vertical integration that they’ve become known for. They can do really interesting and fascinating things with a bunch of very low-level/hardware-oriented optimization that simply isn’t possible unless you have full control of and visibility into ALL the hardware and software that goes into your devices.

  • maniel@lemmy.mlEnglish
    01·
    11 months ago

    INNOVATE not INVENT

    wireless charging? i mean magnets in qi2 are apple’s idea, also i wonder how current smartphone market would look like without iPhone, would we still have stylus operated resistive screens? i know they weren’t the first ones with capacitive touchscreens and finger oriented UI, but whey popularized it, definitely made it mainstream

    • QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      Nah, Samsung had wireless charging in 2015 with the Galaxy S6, Apple started wireless charging with the iPhone 8 in 2017.

      And wireless charging has been around long before that. Even those rechargeable toothbrushes have used it long before smartphones were a thing.

      And Microsoft released the Surface Pro with a stylus before any iPad had them and I’m sure you could go much further back for other devices that had them before that.

      • maniel@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        not wanting to be rude but either I’ve worded myself poorly or you may have reading comprehension problems, regarding the wireless charging I’ve meant the magnets they introduced in iPhone 13 (?) became a part of qi2 charging standard, it’s an innovation in my book, also the stylus thing, i didn’t mean modern ipad or samsung styluses but those pieces of plastic we used with resistive touch screens of PDAs back in the days before iPhone, while you could use your finger, it wasn’t precise enough because interface was cursor oriented instead of finger oriented like iOS was