"Microsoft and its critics agree that the future of innovation is at stake when the US software giant challenges a landmark 2004 antitrust ruling next week before the European Union's second highest court. But they will take opposite tacks on what that means before a special 13-judge panel of the Court of First Instance, which starts five days of public hearings on Monday."
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Member since:2005-07-06
im left wondering if not apple is the best innovator in the user interface department. but who is the best innovator in the underlying tech department?
right now i think most of that is in the open source world. this basicly because they can horse around with all kind of stuff, and then see if they can realy make it work. they dont have to make a product that will give company X a profit. they can basicly go wild in the very internals of a OS, the one part that users rarely directly interact with, and see what new stuff they can introduce there.
basicly, when apple innovates in pure tech terms, its often because of some user interaction need. take that service discovery over tcp/ip stuff, rederouz or something (sorry for the bad spelling, or even lack of even trying). the real inovation there is not the idea itself, but how users interact, or more correctly dont have to interact, with it.
as in, out if sight out of mind, or "it just works"...
Edited 2006-04-22 01:56
Member since:
2005-07-12
In the categories listed, an argument could be made that evolution -not innovation- has been the rule for the past 15+ years. In each competitive segment, companies involved have implemented/copied features from each other (some blatently), refined features (in many cases), and in rare instances innovated a new feature. Even the forthcoming MS Office interface, while strikingly different than anything of present is not so much innovation as it is evolution of GUI. Some might say, "I hate the new office" while others might say, "Wow, that new [innovative] interface is cool!" So, the term innovation is very subjective and can be used by some as a weapon to say "you cheat" (or I wish I thought of that) or by those who develop it to say "buy this" because "we innovate".
Personally, I think it is hard to say that MS has not innovated in many areas. That said, Apple has been and continues to be the innovator of the computing industry. Apple, with its miniscule market share, forges the path that all of us follow. I don't own a Mac, but I will soon.
Edited 2006-04-21 21:22