The Economist on Apple, the iPhone, and Innovation

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. "

Mac wasn't born from the Lisa blunder

[Anonymous Coward]

The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped

Not quite, they were developed at the same time. The Lisa project began in 1978 and released in 1983. The Macintosh, 1979, released 1984.

Not sure why they brought the ROKR into this

[raitchison]

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.

Re:Bias

[GWLlosa]

*XP/Vista are significantly more stable than the 9x series ever was. *Visual Studio 2005 is much nicer than anything Eclipse puts out *There's the one I cited in the very document you're replying to (IIS). *Exchange Servers. *SQL 2005 Servers. etc. The fact that people get 'used to' a version like Win2k or Office97 does not mean that their successors suck; adding new functionality (which they do) while not breaking anything (which they don't do often) is, by most reasonable criteria, a better product. The fact that the upgrade may be slight (95->98, Office 97->2k, XP->Vista (when the drivers are available)) just means that you're not going to rush out and buy the upgrade; no reason for someone who may not have the product not to buy the newest one.

Re:Bias

[AKAImBatman]

*XP/Vista are significantly more stable than the 9x series ever was.

XP/Vista are part of the Windows 2000 (from NT) line. Or did you miss that part?

* Visual Studio 2005
* IIS
* Exchange Server
* SQL Server

None of the above have ever been all that good. Visual Studio always had stiff competition, but managed to play the "OS Maker" card to get in the lead. (Anyone remember when the only C/C++ compiler that supported the "new" Windows 95 was Microsoft's?) Exchange Server has always sucked. It just sucked less than Notes. SQL Server is okay, but has always had a long list of failings that have kept it from being the best solution on the market. It just happens to get heavily discounted when your shop goes all Microsoft.

Sooo... whatever point you were trying to make? You didn't.

Re:Apples the king at failing

[falconwolf]

I have to disagree with that statement, I would definately think Chrysler would get that honor. How many time have they filed bankruptcy? and they are still in business.

Ah, but there's a big difference between Apple and Chrysler, Apple had recovered on it's own whereas Chrysler had the government bail them out. I'm kind of hoping a private-equity firm or hedge fund buys out Chrysler and turns them around.

Falcon