In anticipation for tomorrow, here is a thread regarding the launch of the Apple tablet.

Pretty much every tech blog that is concerned with Apple (Engadget, macrumors, appleinsider, gizmodo) is buzzing with a billion last-minute "leaks" and rumors, so read them if you're bored. [s]Otherwise, this post will be updated tomorrow with details and maybe video of keynote.[/s]

It's called the iPad.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/the-apple-ipad/

Edit:

Here's the promo video: http://www.apple.com/ipad/ipad-video/#large

Apple is the king of hype.
God forbid they ever get into the video game market.

You say that like it's a bad thing

I hope there will be a new iPod touch with a camera announced.

I want to get a new ipod, but I can wait till September if they say they are gonna make one with a camera.

What if they make a camera with an iPhone touch in it

It will be a big touchscreen without a physical keyboard and no stylus. It'll be hell to type on but people will love it anyway.

I don't think the game industry would tolerate bull****.

Then again, a lot of people play Halo.

Steve Jobs would have to die first.

Apple inadvertently got into the video game market with the App store, and now its the iPod touch's main advertising point. They barely even advertise the thing for listening to music.



To some extent I agree. But I love the soft keyboard on the iPhone OS is quick to pick up and I can punch out a message faster on it than on the hardware keyboard of a Droid or Blackberry - I don't mind the lack of feeling the keys because I'm only typing out short messages, not taking notes in class, which leads me to my next problem with the tablet.

The main part of the tablet that has been really bugging me in terms of usefulness is how would I type on it? Putting it on my lap would be weird because it would be akin to looking at the keyboard when you type. The same applies when placing it on a desk and trying to make notes during class. In general its the main drawback of software keyboards, the lack of feeling with key placement and tactile feedback in general. Its been rumored this thing is supposed to revolutionize education, but I really see that if you have a bunch of students pounding a way and looking down at their desk rather than watching a lecture.

But who knows, maybe they've thought of something I haven't. Which is entirely possible.

hahahah

How's that funny? To say that Apple's success hasn't come out of some level of innovation - doing things different than their competitors - is equally laughable, or just denial.

A decent part of Apple's success has come from convincing people the products are better than they actually are. I'm not saying the products are ****, because they're not. They're good products, but they're not as omfgawesome as many people think.

Boiled down to a single word, all Apple does is simple: Branding.

With a few exceptions, they don't innovate in the sense of creation. The iPod for example, was not innovative at all. It was just another MP3 player that happened to have a good UI and better industrial design (stolen from Dieter Rams). OS X is NeXT with a new UI. The iPhone is just another smartphone that has a consistent UI.

It isn't innovation at all. Almost everything Apple has released has been done before, and done better. I will bet a large sum of money that when this tablet is released, it will not be some glorious hardware that no one has ever seen in a tablet before.

Apple was never about innovation. What they push is polish. They sell to a customer who wants a premium product. Premium products are not always the fastest, the smallest, the lightest.

But it's sleek and shiny!

Innovation is not the invention of something new or unseen before, it's the bringing of a new and different technology (whether or not invented by the firm or by somebody else) to an audience (i.e. usually mass market) that has not seen it before (regardless of whether or not it has been commercially sold before). If a firm creates amazing technology but has failed to turn it into a viable product, or has turned it into a product but is unable to successfully market it (due to lack of resources, poor management, poor timing, poor strategy/positioning, or the absence of complements, infrastructure, enabling techs etc. etc. that need to be there) then it has failed at innovating, despite how revolutionary the technology might be.

Creativity (ideas) --> Invention (technology) --> Engineering (product) --> SUCCESSFUL, impactful commercialization --> Innovation

One well-proven strategy for innovation is to wait for emerging technologies to reach the early mature stage by waiting for other companies to attempt to commercialize the product first, observe how they do and whether necessary complements, enabling technologies, and/or infrastructure (e.g. suppliers and distribution channels), and see what they got right and what they got wrong with regards to customer preferences; then, basically seize what you perceive to be the optimal moment to deliver the a product that is adjusted for what you think are the most important customer preferences. In short, let other, first-mover and early follower companies be your guinea pigs -- see what they do wrong, and do it right (notice how in almost every product launch keynote Jobs compares the launching product to existing competitors and points out why the old product(s) are lacking and how Apple's product addresses those shortcomings.)

You might ask, "if this strategy is 'well-proven,' then why doesn't everyone do it?' The answer is because the strategy is not a formula for success -- it depends on several major things (amongst many others)

• How good you are at determining what the "optimal" timing of entry is
• How good you are at determining the "correct" customer preferences and where they are headed
• How many resources you have (to design, produce, and distribute a product that can match those preferences soon enough to meet "optimal" timing, and to overtake the firms that put out a product earlier than you)

If you are awesome at all of these things, then the strategy will more likely than not work for you. The problem is that all of these things are very hard, inconsistent, and unpredictable -- the strategy is not a formula for success because almost every element in it is uncertain.

Joncy said in another thread something like "What apple does is anticipate where the market is headed and go in that direction" -- that's precisely what this 'strategy' is and why they are good innovators.


This is also why I find it kind of amusing that it is somehow wrong to "copy" something someone else has done (i.e. Microsoft copying stuff from Apple). The hard part is discovering how to do something right. If someone else has figured that out already, then you can either try to reinvent the wheel and find ANOTHER way of doing it right, thereby putting yourself at a huge risk, or you can build upon what that other person/company has discovered and try to incrementally improve upon it to make it better (which is what happens and which is how a technology matures until it's displaced by a new disruptive technology)

A nice long post that unfortunately will be killed rather quickly.

You assume that Apple does things "right". But as I previously said, things have been made before, and not just before, but also better. Only a moron would argue with you that Macbooks are the fastest laptops. Nor are they the strongest, the lightest, or the cheapest.

In fact, in everything that Apple has done, every market they have entered, they only truly won one: the music player. The iPod was rampantly successful, and contrary to what you said, it succeeded by doing a lot of things first, before anyone else.

Most every other product Apple has is successful for Apple, but in terms of overall market? Not even close. iPhone, the best example of recent Apple success, is still far from the most popular phone in the world.

It is not wrong that Apple "copies" something. It's just sad that they succeed by copying. They'll throw some aluminum on it, call it an iDevice, and magically it's the best. Apple is king at marketing. OS X, in my opinion, is the only truly worthwhile thing about anything they sell.

Also they may not invent hardware, but inventing an intuitive UI is just as relevant to being an innovator. I'm not saying the iPhone UI is perfect, far from it, but there's no denying that most touch screen phones borrow heavily from it now that it's out.

OS X very quickly falls off that 'worthwhile thing' list the more you know about it. It's insecure and glacial.

The iPod didn't succeed by doing a lot of things first, and definitely not by doing the right thing first. Apple gave people what they wanted (high capacity) by sacrificing weight and battery life. Using tiny hard drives gave them a numeric edge over the competition, even though it was an awful decision in terms of usability, durability and long-term costs. Most of their competitors had them beat in every area... other than the fact that their boxes said 'MB' while Apple's said 'GB.'

But are they borrowing from it because it's good, or because it's popular?

I'm sorry, but this is so wrong. The iPhone UI - in particular the home screen - is almost an exact copy of the UIs Palm was using 15 years ago. Touch screen phones aren't borrowing from Apple.... Apple's borrowing from them.

PalmPilot Pro, released in 1997. Touchscreen user interface.

But does it have kinetic bounce??

I think the point that you're missing is, like I said, what Apple does "right" that makes them successful innovators is the fact that they are able to bring a new technology to their customer segment(s) (see below) SUCCESSFULLY, regardless of whether or not another company has produced a technically better product before them. Innovation has two components -- what distinguishes it from invention is that the product has to be successfully and impactfully commercialized. What Apple is doing "right" is precisely that they are able to take technologies/products that other companies have not made a big hit (regardless of whether or not they are better) and make it a big hit.

One assumption a lot of people make that is misconceived is that a better product = a more successful product. A better product will have zero success if nobody uses it. Success comes from the combination of a good product (not necessarily the best!) and good marketing (not meaning advertising! see below) and congruence with everything else in the business.

I disagree -- basically what they did was look at how MP3 players and the technology behind them were amalgamated to make a product, then re-do it in such a way that it could become a success (and they didn't get it right at first -- they had to adjust a bit; they learned from their own experimentation as well as other firms. Food for thought: Why are so many Rev. A Apple products "missing" something? Why do they get changed in Rev. B?)

Another thing that is often touted is that more market share / popularity = more success. This is also not true. Note that the conditions for being a successful innovator is that the products you bring to market make an IMPACT -- not necessarily that they reach the most hands possible. The iPhone made an impact by prompting other companies to imitate it -- this makes it a successful innovation not because it was the first to show the technologies it implements, but again, the first to make them MATTER in the market.

Apple's strategy is one of niche differentiation, which by design means that they are NOT trying to sell their products to as many people as possible -- because with that strategy, they can't. (See below)

[Edit: Also, this is semi-unrelated, but if you want to look at success from a quantitative standpoint: there are two types of market share -- volume and value. Most of the time people refer to volume (how many people buy your product = sales #s) when they say market share. Some firms, though, have very small volume market share but disproportionately large value market share. I forget which company it is, but in the piano industry there is a firm that has something like 5-10% market share by volume but over 50% (60%?) market share by value -- that is, they have 60% of the revenue in the market by selling to 5-10% of the buyers. That is a huge success. Apple does somewhat of the same thing -- I don't know what their market share by value is, but I'm pretty sure in the least their profits are far above average.]

I don't think that it's sad at all that they succeed by copying/tweaking -- it is what makes them successful, and there is a lot of risk and decisions made on thinking and experience that helps them pick the right things to copy and the right features to tweak (as mentioned before).

You are right -- Apple is a marketing-oriented company. MARKETING IS NOT ADVERTISING. Marketing is the process of bringing a product to market (hence, market-ing). Advertising is only a small part of the marketing mix -- one/fourth of the tactical portion and less than 1/9th of an entire mix. Apple's strength lies in having very good strategic marketing -- knowing what their brand image as a company, who their customers are (read: not everyone! They sell to people with specific preferences -- namely, those who enjoy premium, aesthetically pleasing products, who derive pleasure from knowing (or believing, rather) that those products are engineered with great attention to detail and using higher-quality inputs than average products, etc. etc.), who their competitors are (and what their competitors are doing wrong or right), how they are perceived in the market (being perceived as pricey COMPLEMENTS their premium image as higher price is often a heuristic for higher quality, even though that's not necessarily the case), and so on. Apple knows exactly how to put together their products and sell them to make an impact. And again, it's the impact that defines a successful innovation -- NOT (just) the product.

I was more talking about this and things along those lines. The home screen is pretty meh anyways.

Wait, really? Because kinetic bounce is awful. A lot of the flash put into the iPhone is awful and hurts usability.

kinetic scrolling's a good idea but I'm pretty sure some mit researchers beat them to it 5 or 6 years ago

I'd have to try it again on the iPhone, but the bounce on my Pre is awful. It bounces too much. Often times I flick a list, try to tap an item but it bounces out of the way. Would be better if it just stopped hard or had very little bounce.

I'd say it's useful. I know when I'm at the end of a slideshow for instance. My sister's Samsung touch screen phone just simply doesn't react in the same instance, so you question whether the device is receiving your input.

Another way to phrase this (per what I've been rambling about) is that Apple figured out a way to do touch screen phones such that people rave about it and prior to them, other companies hadn't -- so now that Apple's "figured it out" other companies are switching to that model and trying to improve upon it / create their own differentiated product, hence the number of 'imitators' since the iPhone's release.

err... who's doing the imitating?

WinMo and Android are about as different from iPhone as you can get. The closest to a major iPhone imitator is the Palm Pre... except Palm is the one who invented that look and feel, and Apple's the one doing the 'imitating' there.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, here. Touchscreen smartphones were booming a long time before Apple came along.

But (at least personally) I found touchscreen phones unusable until the iPhone. I've tried many of the touchscreens that came before the iPhone, as my Dad always got the latest newest phones/gadgets. All of his touchscreens (including his palm pilots) all sucked. That's why it took me so long to actually like the iPhone, because I thought its touchscreen would suck too.

I'm agreeing with you and expounding on what you said.

'Imitator' (in quotes) basically meaning seeing that Apple was successful in their product, seeing what made it successful vs. previous products (e.g. buck's perception (regardless of truth, again) that touchscreens were hard to use), and building off of that. Imitators need not be similar, since the whole point is to create a differentiated product based on a foundation that "works".

Completely wrong. Not the concept, but the reality.

You are attempting to make the success of marketing become equivalent to the success of innovation. Apple's major success here is their marketing, not their innovation. The basic definition of innovation is simply "the introduction of something new". I also find it highly amusing that the only real references I can find to your style of innovation is a completely uncited wikipedia article.



Rev. A? Most Apple products are "missing" a lot of things, even now. In fact, I believe the iPod stands out as the only one that isn't.



I thought imitation wasn't a bad thing? The iPhone was an imitation. Its only significant introduction was the capacitive touchscreen, which I believe was a new technology that hadn't been well tested before on such a device.



AKA, marketing. Didn't I already establish this?



You said it yourself, about imitation. If your product is imitated, then it was innovative. That's a perfect argument against Apple. The only product of theirs that is imitated outside of chinese knockoffs is the iPod. In fact, as Jon`C has shown, Apple has done more of imitating that which came before than bringing their own ideas to fruition. There are quite a few Apple products that have had absolutely no new technology or features, and yet are still successful. Which of course, brings us back to the only thing Apple really does well:


When did I say advertising? I don't even understand the point of this, I already said Apple's success was marketing.

The only thing in contention is the last sentence, since your idea of innovation doesn't match any I've seen.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/01/30-years-in-apple-products-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ <-- Everyone should take a breather & read this history lesson from Engadget.

Hooray, another Apple product that I'll never touch. Except for a misguided attempt once to organize my music library by installing iTunes (turns out it sucks at mass retagging; who knew), I have a pretty much perfect record.

I'm not actually trying to be an anti-fanboy, but from all indications this thing is going to cost the same as a semester's tuition for me, so it would have to be pretty amazing.

Jon C .. I'm agreeing with you on pretty much everything you said.

But I have to disagree with the iPod being the only thing not missing something. It's missing a lot of things. Such as interegrated radio and recording. The nano has a video camera now, so that's new. But the Sansa has had radio and a recorder for a while. And I wish my iPod could do that.

The definition I'm using is the one that is assumed by most people who study this stuff (varied to some degree, of course). Marketing by itself != innovation. Creativity or invention by itself != innovation.

Being that I am not presumptuous enough to claim that I am an expert on this, here's a good book that is a better resource than me (this is where most of the basic concepts I've been talking about originates):

http://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Management-Technological-Innovation-SCHILLING/dp/007338156X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264609983&sr=8-1

If you'd like, I also have a number of articles discussing various components of what I talked about -- they would be fun to discuss. I'm not trying to prove you wrong or show you up or whatever -- I just like talking about this stuff.




The point is that many Rev B products "fix" what the Rev A products lacked, not that the products become perfect -- it's an example of "experiment and correct," nothing more.




It's not (per se) -- I don't get where you're getting that I think it is from what I posted. It's GOOD that other companies imitated the iPhone. I think you're reading a lot of what I'm saying as charged (i.e. anything apple does is good, anything others do is bad), which is not true. I'm not defending Apple or pro Apple, just analyzing (and in no absolute terms).

Also, the definition of innovation that I'm using does not PRECLUDE bringing out a new technology that has NOT been brought to market before -- of course not. My point was that bringing an existing but "emerging" technology (i.e. one that has not gained a large amount of traction in the market in the form o fa product) by observing other companies and learning from their experiences is also a very valid and effective strategy. Since products are amalgamations of technologies, a company could be doing both at the same time -- or even innovating in the WAY that they put together technologies that have been around forever.


Yes but their generic strategy is not the only factor in their innovative success (many many companies have niche differentiation strategies and are not innovators)



I'm not 100% on the truth of those statements, but given they are true: I think perhaps "imitation" is not the best word to use, then. What I mean by imitation is basically "see what someone else has done with a certain technology or technologies -- how they have put them together to make a product, how they have marketed it, and how the market has responded -- then, take what you think has worked and scrap what hasn't and make your own thing that is better." This is what Apple is good at, and what other companies do. Again, the technology the products use need not be new. (Also, in addition to product innovation, there is process innovation -- but that's something else we can discuss later.)




When you said You implied that Apple's success is due to its 'marketing,' which in this sentence can be read to mean "convince people that something not worthwhile is worthwhile," which is basically promotion (or advertising).

I am arguing that what Apple is good at is knowing what the customers they target think is worthwhile and how to make them happy and designing their products around that (strategic marketing), then putting the products out there -- no convincing necessary, because the product is made from the start to be worthwhile (to who they are selling). The promotional material and ads communicate the logic behind their design -- I would argue that they are mainly aimed that people that already agree with that logic (but who might not know about it yet), not at trying to change the minds of people who disagree.

The tablet will definitely be neat and look pretty cool. Apple has a good history of polishing what other people are doing, or at least making it look polished. They also are very good at making stuff look good, but then again some of their designs are just plain boring. Regardless, they'll just be able to market the crap out of this device and people won't notice the glaring mistakes.