Apple Shouldn't Allow Itself To Be A Victim Of Robin Hood
Linked by umad on Thu 25th Aug 2011 22:51 UTC
Apple I thought OSNews would be a good forum to talk about a matter that has been weighing on my mind lately primarily because the site has been so focused on Apple's patents and litigation as of late. The news that HP, the largest PC manufacturer in the world is spinning off or getting out of this business is what really prompted me to write this article.
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The RDF is strong in this one...
by molnarcs on Fri 26th Aug 2011 14:09 UTC in reply to ""many factors""
molnarcs
Member since:
2005-09-10

This is a nice article that tries to perpetuate the myth that Apple created desktop computing while Microsoft just stole their ideas. So let's reverse this Robin Hood metaphor a little.

The iPhone has been (and still is) the most popular smartphone in the world. There isn't a single brand coming close to its market share. And for a time, the masses using the iPhone lacked a good notification system. Proper notifications were exclusive to Android users. Then Apple, in a true Robin Hood fashion took the idea of the Android notifications, and made it available for the masses using the iPhone.

A lot of companies had their firsts. Without the first mass produces and relatively successful mp3 players we wouldn't have the iPod. Without the iPod and the cash it brought to Apple, who knows what would have happened! Point is, Apple wasn't first here. Oh, and when Win95 hit the shelves, it wiped the floor with Mac Os. Mac OS 7-9 sucked so badly, it was so primitive compared with MS offerings, that Apple kept loosing market share at a steady pace until Jobs came back, and build a system using some parts of Next, and some parts of FreeBSD (including employing the project's lead developer). MacOS X's success is partly due to the solid Unix foundation it was built upon.

Anyway, I guess our resident Apple fan will have a field day with this, but I don't mind. Just let them continue basking in the warm rays of the RDF ;)

Reply Parent Score: 3

atsureki Member since:
2006-03-12

Without the first mass produces and relatively successful mp3 players we wouldn't have the iPod.


You just said "without the iPod, we wouldn't have the iPod."

I just thought that was kind of funny.

Oh, and when Win95 hit the shelves, it wiped the floor with Mac Os. Mac OS 7-9 sucked so badly, it was so primitive compared with MS offerings, that Apple kept loosing market share at a steady pace until [...]


Are you suggesting that Windows 95 was actually more stable than... well, anything at all, really, or that preemptive multitasking and dynamic memory were actually killer features on single-user systems with 100MHz CPUs and 8 megs of RAM? Perhaps both?

Sure enough, Microsoft got onboard with the future ("the future" = 1970's Unix) years before Apple was able to, but Windows 95 ran away because it managed to commoditize all the user-facing features of the Mac and become the cheap computer that anyone could use (even if no one could get it to work all the time).

I guess your overall thesis was that Apple wasn't constantly years ahead, and sure enough, there was more than a decade where they weren't technically competitive. But setting aside the parts that are a copy of Unix, how is Windows 95 not a copy of Mac OS? That nifty Start button?

Reply Parent Score: 2

JAlexoid Member since:
2009-05-19

"Without the first mass produces and relatively successful mp3 players we wouldn't have the iPod.


You just said "without the iPod, we wouldn't have the iPod."

I just thought that was kind of funny. "

It's useless reading beyond that point. You do know that iPod wasn't the first MP3 player and it wasn't the first mass market MP3 player.

I bet the rosy tint of RDF will start fading with time... be prepared for a grey world.

Reply Parent Score: 2