Apple Never Invented Anything

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“Monsieur Voiture, you hopeless [redacted French slur], you still can’t prepare a proper mayonnaise! I’ll show you one last time while standing on one foot…”

[Bear with me, the connection with today's title will become apparent in a moment.]

The year is 1965, I’m midway through a series of strange jobs that I take between dropping out of college and joining HP in 1968 — my “psychosocial moratorium”, in California-speak. This one approaches normal: I’m a waiter in a Paris restaurant on rue Galande, not far from Notre-Dame.

Every day, before service starts, it’s my job to make vinaigrette, remoulade, and mayonnaise, condiments for the hors d’oeuvres (French for appetizers) I’ll wheel around on a little cart — hence the Monsieur Voiture snicker from the chef. The vinaigrette and remoulade are no problem, but the mayonnaise is not my friend: Day after day, my concoction “splits” and the chef berates me.

So now, pushed beyond limit, he grabs a cul-de-poule (a steel bowl with a round bottom), throws in the mustard, vinegar, and a bit of oil, cracks an egg on the bowl’s edge, separates and drops the yolk into the mixture — all with one hand. I see an opportunity to ingratiate myself: Obligingly, I reach for a whisk. “No, all I need is a fork.” Up on one foot, as promised, he gives the mixture a single, masterful stroke — and the mayonnaise begins to emulsify, I see the first filaments. The chef sniffs and walks away. I had been trying too hard…the rest was obvious: a thin trickle of oil, whisk calmly.

Clearly, the episode left its mark, and it came back to mind when I first saw the iPad. For thirty years, the industry had tried to create a tablet, and it had tried too hard. The devices kept clotting, one after the other. Alan Kay’s Dynabook, Go, Eo, GridPad, various Microsoft-powered Tablet PCs, even Apple’s Newton in the early nineties….they didn’t congeal, nothing took. Then, in January 2010, Chef Jobs walks on stage with the iPad and it all becomes obvious, easy. Three decades of failures are forgotten.

This brings us to last week’s animated debate about Apple’s talent for invention in the Comments section of the “Apple Tax” Monday Note: “…moving from stylus to touch (finger) was a change in enabling technology, not some invention by Apple – even gesture existed way back before the iPhone. Have an IPAQ on my desk as a reminder – a product ahead of the implementing technology! Unfortunately Apple have run out of real innovation…” In other words: “Nothing new, no innovation, the ingredients were already lying around somewhere…”.

The comment drew this retort from another reader: “iPaq as a precursor to iPad? Are you on drugs? Right now?” Drugged or sober, the proud iPaq owner falls into the following point: The basic ingredients are the same. Software is all zeroes and ones, after all. The quantity and order may vary, but that’s about it. Hardware is just protons, neutrons, electrons and photons buzzing around, nothing original. Apple didn’t “invent” anything, the iPad is simply their variation, their interpretation of the well-known tablet recipe.

By this myopic logic, Einstein didn’t invent the theory of relativity, Henri Poincaré had similar ideas before him, as did Hendrik Lorentz earlier still. And, come to think of it, Maxwell’s equations contain all of the basic ingredients of relativity; Einstein “merely” found a way to combine them with another set of parts, Newtonian mechanics.

Back to the kitchen: Where does talent reside? Having access to commonly available ingredients or in the subtlety, the creativity — if not the magic — of their artful combination? Why are the great chefs so richly compensated and, yes, imitated? Alain Ducasse, Alain Senderens, and Joel Robuchon might be out of our price range, but Pierre Herme’s macarons are both affordable and out of this world — try the Ispahan, or the salted caramel, or… (We’ll note that he opened his first boutique in Tokyo, where customers pay attention to details.)

In cars, Brand X (I don’t want to offend) and BMW (I don’t drive one) get their steel, aluminum, plastics, rubber, and electronics from similar — and often the same — suppliers. But their respective chefs coax the ingredients differently, with markedly different aesthetic and financial outcomes.

Did IBM invent the PC?

Did HP invent the pocket calculators or desktop computers that once put them at the top of the high tech world?

Did Henry Ford invent the automobile.

So, yes, if we stick to the basic ingredients list, Apple didn’t invent anything…not the Apple ][, nor the Macintosh, not the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad…to say nothing of Apple Stores and App Stores. We’d seen them all before, in one fashion or another.

And yet, we can’t escape a key fact: The same chef was involved in all these creations. He didn’t write the code or design the hardware, but he was there in the kitchen — the “executive chef” in trade parlance — with a unique gift for picking ingredients and whipping up unique products.
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http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/09/02/apple-never-invented-anything/
 
Pretty lame article. So no one invented anything because the ingredients were there? Nonsense. So a wedding ring or the wheel wasn't invented either? Stupid. I dislike Apple, but this article is crap.
 
Inventions are often a way of reassembling existing concepts and resources to create a new idea or project. My father was an inventor and developed over 90 patents for devices in his time. Many were fresh approaches to existing systems but were nonetheless unique. I believe Apple is the same. Innovation is not solely a unique creation than, say Teflon but a better and more efficient way of utilising something. NASA have over 40 000 patents and one is the methodology of combining liquid hydrogen and oxygen for rocket motors. It is nothing new that hydrogen and oxygen are an explosive mixture but NASA's way of achieving this earned them a patent.

One of my father's most successful patents was a system whereby static electricity could be removed from a bobbin of yarn (nylon, cotton) delivering thread at high speed into a knitting machine. This had eluded engineers for years but his simple contraption enabled factories producing knitted fabrics to speed up production 25 fold. All the "ingredients" had been there for years, but needed sorting into logical system.
 
cerebus said:
I think everyone missed the point of the article.
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You're too quick with that trigger. I understand exactly what he's trying to say and I have no problem with that (as an Android user accused of being an Apple hater).
 
BeVonk! said:
You're too quick with that trigger. I understand exactly what he's trying to say and I have no problem with that (as an Android user accused of being an Apple hater).
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Ok, you are excepted then :p.
 
cerebus said:
I think everyone missed the point of the article.
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What is the point then? Am I supposed to read between the lines, because all I read is that no one invented anything, ever?
 
teraside said:
What is the point then? Am I supposed to read between the lines, because all I read is that no one invented anything, ever?
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The point of the article is ironic:
So, yes, if we stick to the basic ingredients list, Apple didn’t invent anything…not the Apple ][, nor the Macintosh, not the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad…to say nothing of Apple Stores and App Stores. We’d seen them all before, in one fashion or another.

And yet, we can’t escape a key fact: The same chef was involved in all these creations. He didn’t write the code or design the hardware, but he was there in the kitchen — the “executive chef” in trade parlance — with a unique gift for picking ingredients and whipping up unique products.
Click to expand...
 
I think everyone missed the point of the article.
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Yeah. It's pro-Apple because the guy writing this is arguing that even if Apple didn't invent anything, it was their implementation of existing ideas that made them great (working from existing ideas, but then improving them). Fair enough.

But then Apple can take their patents and stick it where the sun don't shine. If, like the article suggests, they are just taking ideas and improving upon them (taking the same ingredients that everyone else has and then the "chef" makes it awesome), they really can't point any fingers at Samsung or anyone else (Samsung looks at Apple's ingredients/ideas, figures out what makes it good, and then makes it better).

(I will openly admit that early Samsung smartphones did mimic iOS a bit too closely and Samsung should take a bit of a knock for it, but they can take their claims as to form factor (rectangle with rounded edges) and go screw themselves. Have they looked at PCs, TV, washing machines, or just about any other electronic appliance these days? Without the manufacturer logo, no one could tell the difference between the majority of manufacturers. LG vs Samsung TV anyone?)
 
So I can't curse Apple when my Mac beach balls, rather the developer of a previous similar multicoloured spinning disc. Some how this won't make me feel any less frustrated ;)
 
There is a difference between the invention of something and the design and actual implementation of that thing. It was obvious after the iPhone came out and turned out to be a hugely successful product, that phones were going to move in the direction of fullscreens, gesture control, capacitive touch. And the same for the iPod, and the iPad, and the Macbook Air, etc. What shouldn't have been obvious was how closely they would end up mimicking the design language that Apple had pioneered. It isn't only Samsung to blame here obviously, but they just happened to be the target that Apple chose to focus on.
 
zolly said:
Yeah. It's pro-Apple because the guy writing this is arguing that even if Apple didn't invent anything, it was their implementation of existing ideas that made them great (working from existing ideas, but then improving them). Fair enough.

But then Apple can take their patents and stick it where the sun don't shine. If, like the article suggests, they are just taking ideas and improving upon them (taking the same ingredients that everyone else has and then the "chef" makes it awesome), they really can't point any fingers at Samsung or anyone else (Samsung looks at Apple's ingredients/ideas, figures out what makes it good, and then makes it better).

(I will openly admit that early Samsung smartphones did mimic iOS a bit too closely and Samsung should take a bit of a knock for it, but they can take their claims as to form factor (rectangle with rounded edges) and go screw themselves. Have they looked at PCs, TV, washing machines, or just about any other electronic appliance these days? Without the manufacturer logo, no one could tell the difference between the majority of manufacturers. LG vs Samsung TV anyone?)
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Agree 100%
 
Okay, so we all agree the patent system is flawed / broken
So some of us hate Apple (although how you can hate something so far removed from your plane of reality I fail to comprehend)
and Steve Jobs was a (insert deragotary expletive of choice year)

However, we cannot deny the point that the writer of the article makes, he was a "masterchef" - he did indeed put existing components, technologies and designs together in a way that no one else was able to.

I too had a Compaq iPaq
 
Henry Ford never invented the car, he just perfected making it. Also I don't think Apple ever claimed to actually have invented their products from scratch. They looked at GUI and said we can do it better, looked at mp3 players and said they were crap we can make a good one, looked at how music was bought and said it is flawed this way will be better etc etc. As one of the other posters said, they might not have invented it but they repackaged it in such a way that the user experience was infinitely better and effectively "new."

The scroll wheel however- shear genius.
 
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