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The Economist on Apple, the iPhone, and Innovation
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jun 08, 2007 02:42 PM
from the talking-bout-idea-germination dept.
from the talking-bout-idea-germination dept.
portscan writes "This week's Economist has a special report on Apple, Inc. and innovation. 'The fourth lesson from Apple is to "fail wisely". The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple's original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both times, Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again. Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple. The wider lesson is not to stigmatize failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.' There is also an article on the business of the iPhone and the future of the company. "
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The Economist on Apple, the iPhone, and Innovation
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Apples the king at failing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apples the king at failing (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference between the two is that with Apple the exchange of money for product represents a transaction that benefits both parties. A happy company and a satisfied customer. With Microsoft all you get is a happy Microsoft and an angry/sad customer.
So Microsoft customers get the raw end of the deal. They pays their money and get nothing in return.
Since I've got some karma to burn: (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday December 27 2003, @01:15AM)
Just longer than FreeBSD's been dying if I recall correctly
Netcraft confirms it!
(In Soviet Russia Netcraft confirms YOU!)
*ducks*
Another pre-emptive iPhone Hype Artcile (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to stigmatize failure but to tolerate it (Score:5, Funny)
Not mentioned in the article: Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Obligatory link to The Onion (Score:4, Funny)
Fail wisely, OK (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://jjjiii.livejournal.com/)
Re:Fail wisely, OK (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, the Newton was a pretty innovative failure, from which lessons were doubtless learned.
Same with Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Same with Microsoft, except it usually takes them three tries.
Re:Same with Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Same with Microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.hyperlogos.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 18, @08:19PM)
Close. They have to buy three companies before they get a product worth putting their name on.
Of course, that doesn't stop them from marketing the two other products as well. Sometimes concurrently.
Bias (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bias (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly that was stolen from Apache.
Look at it this way, when my sister walks into the women's locker room, she's greeted and smiles and can go about her business. When I walk into the women's locker room, it's screams and thrown soap and a visit from the police. Talk about unfair!
Is there anything to suggest.. (Score:2)
As for me personally, the iPhone is off my shortlist because I'm looking either for a nice phone that only does voice, or (ideally) for an all-in-one; and 'all' very much includes GPS in my mind. It's kind of a killer app for PDAs.
If fellow slashdotters have any suggestions.. the ipaq 6515w is a bit too wide for my taste, and it has a small square screen.. The E-ten M700 looks very good, but I'm not sure about the robustness of the handset and keyboard, the call quality(!), and the software support - I hated dicking about with 'unofficial' windows mobile upgrades on my Qtek 2020 (which incidentally had crappy voice quality).
Like we say in software development... (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.21st-century-citizen.com/)
But really, there's wisdom there. You never really know what will be successful until you've gotten something out and developed. If only business people understood that, they could likely leverage it to do exactly what this article recommends -- "fail wisely".
Re:Like we say in software development... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not something Apple are just chucking out into the market place, large amounts of reseach, market analysis and product developement will have been done before the iPhone got green lighted. There is still an element of risk the iPhone will tank but Apple will have done as much as they can to reduce it.
Tough bankruptcy laws? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the author should look towards Central Europe ca. 1991-2001 to see what economic wonders occur when you have
iPhone *drool* (Score:2)
I'm on the verge of getting one, but it's kinda of expensive so I'm indecisive. But if they do release a SDK, that will be the deciding factor. Phone wise I don't care, but the PDA/computing options for it are just sweet.
Mac wasn't born from the Lisa blunder (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite, they were developed at the same time. The Lisa project began in 1978 and released in 1983. The Macintosh, 1979, released 1984.
Makes sense! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://ingenioustries.com/ | Last Journal: Monday February 16 2004, @07:40PM)
Not sure why they brought the ROKR into this (Score:5, Informative)
(http://robert.aitchison.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 19 2004, @09:20AM)
The Motorla ROKR was designed to fail with the arbitrary 100 song capacity limit.
The last thing apple wanted was a successful ROKR that might have cannibalized sales from the iPOD and the Apple branded music phone that everybody knew would come out eventually.
If the ROKR were an Apple product, you could make a case that Apple "failed", in this case Apple succeeded, they held off the market until they could debut their own device that makes them money.
Motorola Phone Failure Was Intentional (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparing the Motorola phones to the Lisa probably has every Lisa in the world rolling over in their mass-grave.
Buy Palm? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://blog.bfccomputing.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday August 07, @06:50PM)
Did anybody notice ex-Apple VP of iPod Jon Rubenstein is now Chief XYZ at Palm? Does the investment firm that took the Palm stake have any other Apple ties?
I mean, if Apple acquired Palm, and Palm already has deals in place with Verizon, Sprint, NexTel, et. al., well, Apple couldn't very well not honor those commitments. And Palm just happens to be re-tooling their XScale phone to run on a small Unix OS (Linux). So, it wouldn't very well make sense to develop two completely different yet entirely similar products, would it?
But, hey, I've been known to claim the 3GHz promise was just a strawman to excuse sacking IBM. Steve learned from his NeXTMachine failure that a software company is better off using cheap commodity hardware.
Speaking of failures... (Score:2, Interesting)
Long term put time is now (Score:1)
You just have to know to listen for it.
iPhone Gremlins (Score:1, Insightful)
(http://www.roughlydrafted.com/ | Last Journal: Friday August 11 2006, @11:13PM)
It's like he can't resist tying an albatross around Apple's neck to desperately make the company seem less magical or something. Is it wrong to give the company some credit for blowing out amazing crap over the recent years? If so, I don't want to be right.
- iPhone Gremlins: Crashing, Security, and Network Collapse! [roughlydrafted.com]
"In addition to showing off the iPhone's pretty interface as part of its first impression--including the Google Maps client Steve Jobs used to locate a Starbucks in order to place a crank call for a thousand coffees at Macworld--he also described the rationale behind the closed platform iPhone as a security and stability issue. Was he kidding?"
Batteries, Batteries, Batteries (Score:1)
Re:Bleh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bleh (Score:1)
(http://blogcyclingnews.com/)
Re:Bleh (Score:1)
(http://hoshie.mozfaq.org/blog/)
Re:Could the iPhone demos & Apple ads be simul (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.nine-times.org/)
Re:Nonsequiter (Score:1)
Re:elite (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.seebs.net/)
Not all status symbols are actually good. Most decent restaurants are actually better than fast food, but what exactly does a Rolex do that a regular watch doesn't?
A good segment of the population are, to put it bluntly, fucking morons who will believe anything they see on TV. That does not exactly bolster your case.
Re:elite (Score:5, Insightful)
I wear a $29 timex ironman. It keeps almost perfect time (loses 4 seconds a year), it has a countdown timer and 2 alarms and runs about 5 years on a battery. Nobody is going to hold me up for my watch either.
Re:Economist, inserting conservative views everywh (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:Appeared to have failed? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, there's Interface Builder. They got that from NeXT. But apart from Interface Builder and BSD, there are no NeXT technologies whatsoever in current Apple computers. Except of course for Cocoa, which is heavily based on NextStep/OpenStep, hence the fact that it has all those classes with names prefixed by "NS". But with the exception of BSD, Interface Builder, and Cocoa, there are no NeXT technologies in Apple computers at all. Unless of course you count Objective-C as a "technology", which NeXt licensed for programming in NeXTStep and OpenStep while Macs were being programmed in Pascal and C++. But I agree that apart from BSD, Interface Builder, Cocoa, and Objective-C, Apple computers are completely devoid of NeXT technologies. OK, I'll admit that Portable Distributed Objects also came from NeXT. I'll give way on that one. But if you discount BSD, Interface Builder, Cocoa, Objective-C, and PDO, current Apple computers are totally and completely free from NeXT technologies. Utterly without _anything_ from NeXT. Honestly. I mean, WebObjects, which is admittedly a NeXT technology, isn't even installed on most Macs, so _the majority_ of Macs are free from it. Well, they are. Really. So I can, without any pangs of conscience, categorically state that, with the exception of...
Re:Could the iPhone demos & Apple ads be simul (Score:2)
(http://www.owonder.com/)
Over hyped? No, genuine excitement. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://intrinsicsecurity.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday August 28 2005, @11:11AM)
- January 10, 2007: MacWorld 2007 keynote, introduces iPhone
- Apple.com iPhone web site
- A couple interviews showing the phone, letting reporters hold it for a couple minutes
- A very few magazine articles with access to Steve Jobs and the iPhone
- Super Bowl "Hello" iPhone commercial
- June 3, 2007: Apple starts running four new commercials that demonstrate features of the phone
Really, this is far, far less promotion than you see for typical new products. Heck, hamburgers at Burger King get more hype than this, by far, in a six month period. Even though they probably eat a whole bunch of them, bloggers don't get excited and blog about it.Apple's biggest contribution to the "hype" came from keeping the project secret until it was up to a point where it could be demonstrated, and then keeping their mouths shut after the MacWorld Keynote, and refusing to answer questions about anything that wasn't demonstrated by Steve Jobs on January 10.
What we're seeing in the media, blogs, and in meatspace is, I think, genuine excitement. People can look at the information that's available, which is I grant you incomplete, but they can also look at the phone in their hand. They can tell immediately that several things they don't like about their phone are fixed by the iPhone. Visual Voicemail is damned exciting. A phone that can access the internet simply and easily is exciting. The Google Maps commercial makes girls squeel and giggle with delight when they see the pins drop... (try it sometime.) I don't think it's hype. I think it's genuine interest.
The Economist, *conservative*? (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Saturday June 23, @05:33PM)
Re:Appeared to have failed? (Score:2)