“A history of computer interfaces follows a nice, tidy timeline. In the 1970s researchers at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center invented the basics of the point-and-click interface familiar today: mouse, windows, menus. Apple peeked at the research and brought it to the masses with the Macintosh in 1984. Ten years later, Microsoft copied Apple with Windows 95.” Read the article at Wired.
Steal Your Interface: A History
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Marc Moini created a program for System 8 called Smart Scroll, which allowed scroll bars to show how much of a document is displayed in a window — a feature that’s ubiquitous across graphical operating systems.
AmigaOS/Workbench 2.x had proportional scroll bars around 1990-92, if memory serves me. When did System 8 come out for Macs.
Now why is it people say MS didn’t have a GUI till win95, I relize windows 1-3.1 wern’t turn computer on and it’s there GUI. But were DOS programs, but still it very much was a GUI, it seam dumb to say MS had no such thing till 95. What win1-3.1 did seams no differant than what Xfree86 (is that the right name?) does for linux,FBSD….. and the other mentions them. Is there any good reason for this, or is it just so Apple fans can try to make apple sound like GOD? The author could have mentioned amiga and beos, they both had impacts on current GUI’s.
“GUI OS” sure win 1-3.11 were guis, however, they were not OSs, they were programs that ran in the OS…and even 95 was not a real GUI OS…it was not until win 98 that the GUI became part of the kernel.
oh yeah…PARC did not invent the theory of the mouse and GUI, they investigated its comercial posabilities, the inventor was a Computer scientist in the mid 60s.
they didn’t say windows didn’t have a gui before win95, they just stated that win95 made it more mac like? or something like that…
but i do agree the article was rather pointless and i think a lot of the facts where a little screwed up?
oh, and all windows from 1-ME where DOS based (just a shell on top of DOS)…though i think in ME they tried to move more off of does in an attempt to eventully move to NT.
but again this article was stupid an pointlesss.
The real inventor of the WIMP (Windows-Icon-Mouse-Pointer) interface is a genius named Douglas Engelbart:
http://www.bootstrap.org/engelbart/index.jsp
It did NOT start with Xerox PARC. It started with him. Seems pretty remiss of Wired to screw up this one.
They have forget about Amiga – witch is sad.
These short little articles always skim the surface of things like this and there are a lot of omissions and mistakes. One thing they were right about was the shareware industry that came out of Mac System 7. If you never used a Mac then, it was really awesome. Some of the most beloved applications and utilities at least started out as sharware. Some of the greats are still with us – Fetch and Graphic Converter – and some are gone, like Disinfectent, anti-virus freeware.
“it was not until win 98 that the GUI became part of the kernel.”
Actually, all windows versions 1.01 through ME were reliant on DOS for operations. The true GUI OS from Microsoft is the Windows NT line. From the very beginning, NT (or “New Technology”) was not reliant on a DOS subsystem. It is a 32 bit OS from the ground up. Before this IBM had OS/2. OS/2 is also a 32bit OS not dependant on the DOS OS.
What you see in Windows 9x is just a GUI and it can easily be seperated from DOS. To do it, copy the contents of c:windowscommand to a new directory such as c:dos. Next, insert your windows 9x CDROM and go to the directory %CDROM% oolsoldmsdos and copy the contents to the directory that the contents of c:windowscommand have been copied too. Next, copy the file WINA20.386 in c:windows to the directory that the other files have been copied too. Now your file transfer is complete. Next, add the line PATH=C:DOS to your autoexec.bat and in MSDOS.SYS, set the lines BootGUI and BootLogo to read BOOTGUI=0 BOOTLOGO=0. Now, remove all path statements in your autoexec.bat and config.sys refering to the windows directory. Now delete the windows directory. You will now have a working system of MSDOS 7.10 To install Win 3.1x, apply the patch 3XSTART.EXE. You now have just a DOS system with FAT32 support.
Now here is the problem with this article. When it comes to Microsoft, it is Microsoft coped the GUI from Mac. When it comes to Mac, it peeked at the research.
When I look back, I see that Microsoft contributed nice features to GUI stuff. For example that taskbar stuff is copied by Apple in Mac OS X. Also MDI is a very nice GUI feature. Also the fact that every window has its own menu is also good.
I am a computer user for more than a decade, and I use computers frequently and the Mac interface is quite confusing to me. The fact that there is one menubar which changes from application to application is confusing to me. Some people praise it, but given the fact that very same people are hard core mac fans make their comments extremely unreliable in my mind. What I am experiencing is that some times windows gets mixed. I have to pay extra attention where the focus is. Also the lack of taskbar makes me less productive in Mac OS. If I am working with multiple documents and multiple applications finding the right window takes some time. In windows this is not a problem at all. I think the X Window virtual desktop concept gives me the best productivity, since I can dedicate individual desktops to specific tasks and then can easily switch between them. That makes everything far more clearer. I wish Windows had this by default. For Windows XP I think you can add it by using power tools.
Comparing the GUIs of Mac OS X with Windows XP in terms of look only, I think overall Mac OS X is slightly better, but again I don’t think it is really noticable at all, because Windows XP is also as fancy as Mac OS X. The main problem with Mac OS X is the response of the GUI. I mean it is dead slow, even with this Jaguar. The idea of Mac OS X is nice and practical if only the machine has really great power for all those fancy stuff. It seems to me that it wasn’t the case yet, and I don’t see when it will be the case. The idea of photographic icons is really nice, because it makes it easier to create easily recognizable icons. You have more options with those sort of icons. But the size is huge and it takes too much space. 48×48 icons is a better choice over those huge 128×128 icons.
Scrolling, or resizing windows in Mac OS X is a big issue, it is quite slow compared to other Oses. I mean I never felt for an operating system like that before. Any OS I have used didn’t have such latency in scrolling or resizing windows. It seems like the machine is thinking about something, and as soon as it realizes that I am trying to scroll or resize the window it does what it was supposed to do. I see my mouse is ahead of the os when resizing the window. That is a very very big negative in user experience.
For that reason I don’t think Apple will attract any switchers at all. I have considered to buy a mac, but then I realized that although the OS looks great, it is extremely slow and the GUI is a little bit confusing for me.
What of Douglas Engelbart? And MS didn’t really “steal” from Apple…they BOTH stole from Xerox. But Xerox didn’t want any part of it. Screwy facts…short glibbed article and missed a good deal of history, for what of Atari TOS/GEM and the AmigaOS?
MacOS 8 came out in either 1997 +/- 1 year. So they obviously weren’t the first with that feature. I know GEOS had it in 1990, dunno if there’s anything earlier than that.
Hierarchical menus were also in GEOS pretty early on, also in the original 1990 release.
There seams to be a agreement from all sides that this was a poor article, chirish the moment.
k_semler >
This dosent prove anything .. if i boot linux straght from a floppy after going back to the cmd prompt from finishing win 95 … does that make linux a windows application?
The proof u can run dos without windows dosnt say anything really..Its even more pointless to argue if or not the gui is in the kernal.. its not in linux .. it makes no difference. Linux still has a GUI.
DOS acts as a boot loader for windows 3.1, i think this might have confused a few mac ppl who couldnt understand the idea of compatability between dos and windows. (Compatability is something mac ppl dont know much about). (How many of u can run mac programs written in the DOS era now? .. i can run them all (ok 99.9%).. i guess than means windows XP is just run ontop of DOS???) PPL falesly claimed windows was nothing but dos with a shell… ACTUALLY that was called DOSHELL and was cool .. (it had a print spooler background task etc)
Perhaps MS DOSHELL started all this GUI madness.. its all a copy of DOS i tell ya!
I just checked on my Mac SE/30 running System 6.0.4 and MS Word 4.0. There were hierarchical menus there already. And that software is from 1989.
It always looked to me like Windows 95 copied (poorly, though useful enough in its own way) the OS/2 Workplace Shell (yellow folder on green background color scheme and all).
Apple’s “great framework for innovation” was an OS primitive enough that people could/had to patch in code to extend the system instead of using a defined API.
I’m not sure what it says about the Mac interface that people found the need to tweak it so much. Kinda like now with Mac OS X.
PS: http://www.iespell.com/
The Acorn Archimedes had the Taskbar befor MS had it 😉
Thoems
Apple gave stock options to Xerox (which they sold off later on, instead of keeping it on and earning a fortune). Xerox was stupid in business, but innovative nontheless.
Plus, Windows did copy Apple copyrighted metaphors, and were in court and almost had its second biggest cash cow pulled from the market.
You preferences on menu bar placement is personal perferences (probably you worked with menubar in a window for so long, and that’s why you can’t accept something very different). In my opinion, they both suck. Yeah, I have been using Linux (follows Windows’ philosophy in this case) and Windows pretty extensively. But I think NeXt’s ideas is the best: have it in the context menu. I find it much more productive this way. In fact, this is the *only* feature I like about GIMP – its menu options (except two) is in the context menus).
Apple didn’t copy the Dock from Microsoft, but rather used NeXT’s Dock idea (which came out years before Windows 95, BTW). Today’s Dock may include some taskbar functionalities, but it as different as text editor to word processor.
The Mac GUI was NOT just copied from work at Xerox Parc.
Here is the full story from one who was there
http://humane.sourceforge.net/jefweb-compiled/published/holes.html
“This dosent prove anything .. if i boot linux straght from a floppy after going back to the cmd prompt from finishing win 95 … does that make linux a windows application?” No, although Linux can be loaded from DOS by using linload, it is a self-contained OS. It is biult up around a kernal that deals with the I/O to your hardware and interfacing of your software. Windows XP, being based on 2000 which was based on NT, is not reliant on DOS. It does not require any DOS files to load. Try stripping DOS from windows, and running it. It will not run. Try and run Xwindows without Linux or Unix, it will not run.
You are correct. Windows is more than DOS with a shell. it has its own 32bit API. But if you delete io.sys, command.com, or msdos.sys from any DOS based windows, it will not load. And DOS 6.22 and lower were infact designed to be used by themselves. I still have my old WFW 3.11 install disks. and even though it is a “full” version installation, it still says “Windows 3.11 For Workgroups Add-On” This is a statement by microsoft stating that Windows is just an add-on do DOS. Granted, this add on does make things easier for people to use, but I still prefer the DOS command line. I regulary drop out to DOS in Windows 98SE and run Archane to get online. (when in widnows, I use Mozilla).
And yes, I too enjoy the reverse compatiblilty. I recently installed MS OFfice 4.3 on 2000 just to see if it could be done. Guess what? It worked flawlessly!
About proportional scroll bars and hierarchical menus : Amiga had all this when start selling in 1985.
As was the gauge bar in drive windows.
At a time when Amigas were the world’s best selling computers, x86 PC orientated magazines and media mainly ignored Amigas. (As Amigas were FAR superior and cheaper!)
Sadly as Commodore bankrupted and the x86 PC became a truly dominant computer platform this trend continued. Nowadays when you take a look at most so called “computing history” websites and articles, you will notice that they mostly do not even mention the existance of Amigas of AmigaOS!
Maybe mentioning the Amiga would distort their “history” timelines too much. As how can they explain to their readers that Microsoft released a 16-bit monotasking OS like Windows 3.11 a decade *after* the release of AmigaOS, an advanced and featureful 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking OS?
This is an interesting statement…
“Apple peeked at the research and brought it to the masses with the Macintosh in 1984. Ten years later, Microsoft copied Apple with Windows 95.”
It’s probably more accurate to say, Apple brought it to the elite, and ten years later, Microsoft brought it to the masses.
all in all, the article seems designed to sell kaleidescope.
Amigas once were the world’s best selling computer systems, this while offering a far more advanced GUI and icon system. The A1000 was released in 1985, thus only shortly after the first GUI Macintosh, tough the Amiga offered so many additional features.
A1000: http://www.haage-partner.de/amiga/CommodoreBillboard/Amiga1000Comme…
Regarding customization, this is also a very strange claim. People could customize many aspects of Classic AmigaOS long before people could do the same with Classic MacOS. Very strange claims indeed, I believe Kaleidoscope 1.0 was released in 1996 or something.
AmigaOS has _always_ had proportional scrollers. It’s not that big feature to wow at, you know… Rather, the lack of that feature should be something to blame.
k_semler: And yes, I too enjoy the reverse compatiblilty. I recently installed MS OFfice 4.3 on 2000 just to see if it could be done. Guess what? It worked flawlessly!
It’s called backwards compatiblity, not reverse compatiblity 🙂
Mike Bouma: As how can they explain to their readers that Microsoft released a 16-bit monotasking OS like Windows 3.11 a decade *after* the release of AmigaOS, an advanced and featureful 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking OS?
Now YOU are distorting history. Windows 3.11 featured co-operative multitasking. If this would to make it monotasking, the same would go for Amiga. Amiga was also NOT a 32-bit OS, although it had many features a 32-bit OS would have. It was written in 16-bit 68k assembler. IF it was 32-bit, I guess Morph OS’s and OS 4’s claim of being truly 32-bit is pure hype.
I’m not denying that Amigas were so ahead of Windows 3.1 ten years before Windows 3.1 came out, but to prove it, you can’t make false statments. Amiga was very good, it has features even current PCs is struggling to implement, but it doesn’t give you the right to distort history yourself.
Besides, speaking of Amiga OS, I would rate it the third best UI ever, after NeXT and Mac OS pre-Aqua (personal opinion 🙂
Mike Bouma: Amigas once were the world’s best selling computer systems, this while offering a far more advanced GUI and icon system.
Accroading to Guiness, the best selling computer was the Commodore (close enough). But actually, Amiga brought computing to the businesses (it was more cheaper than PCs, but still way out of people’s budgets). Windows brought computing to the masses.
“Apple didn’t copy the Dock from Microsoft, but rather used NeXT’s Dock idea (which came out years before Windows 95, BTW). Today’s Dock may include some taskbar functionalities, but it as different as text editor to word processor.”
Thank you. Someone that has a f*cking clue about this.
Sergio says: “Now here is the problem with this article. When it comes to Microsoft, it is Microsoft coped the GUI from Mac. When it comes to Mac, it peeked at the research. When I look back, I see that Microsoft contributed nice features to GUI stuff. For example that taskbar stuff is copied by Apple in Mac OS X.”
With respect to copying the GUI, MS in fact copied a LOT more from Apple than (1) Apple copied from Xerox based on one visit by Steve Jobs to a research lab and (2) Apple copied from MS (eg, dock based on the taskbar).
The world owes Apple a big debt on the GUI. There’s a big difference between doing some proof of concept thing (Xerox) and actually putting it on a computer people could buy (and developers could write to – a lot of the Apple innovation was in the APIs for the GUI.
Sergio gets upset by this. He doesn’t like that Wired said Apple “peeked” at the Xerox GUI because that (accurately) suggests Apple did a whole lot of innovation here. The fact that sergio can’t give Apple credit where credit is due strongly suggests he is biased against Apple.
[/i]What I am experiencing is that some times windows gets mixed. I have to pay extra attention where the focus is. Also the lack of taskbar makes me less productive in Mac OS. If I am working with multiple documents and multiple applications finding the right window takes some time[/i]
Have you considered that fact that you are not better than any of Pavlov’s dogs? Are you, perhaps, so accustomed to your motions in a Win environment that your mouse/keyboard motions on a Mac are slower because your conditioned to using Windows? IMHO, The windows way of enclosing a ‘document’ within the parent window of the ‘application’ is extremely frustrating. I can see the logic behind it as you’d never wonder who that doc belongs to but if you’d like to simply maximize the doc, you have to first maximize the Application, then maximize the doc. You’ve obviously never used a OS X before because you can always see which programs are active form the Dock. “Cmd-tab” (which is equivalent to Window’s “alt-tab”) will shuttle you thru the open apps. Simply selecting the App will bring the app forward as well as its foremost document. It only takes excessive time for you because you are (1) looking in the wrong place and (2) not utilizing the tools available (the Dock indicators and the ‘cmd-tab’ option).
The fact that there is one menubar which changes from application to application is confusing to me.
This is personal preference of yours, I think it is more confusing to see several menus available to me only to discover that the menu I clicked wasn’t from the main focus or from the app that I thought it was. This, indeed, requires you pay more attention to which menu belongs to which app and who is main focus.
Some people praise it, but given the fact that very same people are hard core mac fans make their comments extremely unreliable in my mind
Very nice attitude to take. Let’s try to have an intelligent dialog instead of prejudging your peers. Why should anyone on the face of this earth give a rat’s ass about what you say when you, through you own admission, will simply dismiss whatever a ‘mac fan’ says simply because he is a ‘mac fan’. Do us all a favor, if you are going to participate in a discussion, try to keep an open mind instead to jumping to conclusions. Its really pretty old to hear a ‘windows fan’ say “Oh you’re just a mac fan, what could you know?”. Lighten up. Grow up. Stop being prejudice.
-spider
Engelbart = idea; Xerox PARC = fully realized idea; Apple = successfully commercialized idea; Microsoft = successfully monopolized idea; Amiga = not relevant to this discussion, but still has plenty of nostalgic fans
A similar capsule for hypertext:
V. Bush, T. Berners-Lee = idea; CERN, NCSA = fully realized idea; Netscape = successfully commercialized idea; Microsoft = successfully monoopolized idea; Amiga, etc.
I’ll preface my comments with the fact that I am a Mac user by preference. However, at work I do also use Mac OS 8.6-9.x and Windows 95-XP frequently. Althought I prefer Macs, I do not agree with everything related to the UI. That said, I’d like to commen of some of your comments.
The Dock in Mac OS X is not analogous to the Windows task bar. It provides additional functionality not supplied by the task bar. It has it’s roots in a lot of places
(for example, NeXT) and cannot be considered as purely a descendant of the Windows taskbar. Also, in the Mac OS prior to OS X there was an application menu in the upper-right side of the screen that was more analogous to the task bar. This feature can be added to OS X by a shareware or freeware app with a name that escapes me right now.
Additionally, each Window having it’s own menu is horrible. Why? Because by having a single menu bar at the top of the screen you have an infinitely large vertical target to hit with your mouse cursor. When each window has it’s own menu bar, you have to position your mouse accurately both horizontally and vertically. It’s just like aiming a gun. Would you rather try to shoot a target 1 foot wide and infinitely high or 1 foot wide and 1 foot tall? A number of GUI books cover this. For example, “User Interface Design for Programmers” by Joel Spolsky.
MDI is another interface disaster not well suited for a document centric environment. The main window serves no purpose and merely gets in the way, especially for drag and drop between documents opened in different applications. Plenty of books discuss this.
Your point about icon size is just plain silly. To see why, try this. Go to the “divider” line in your dock then drag up followed by down. Notice that the icons change size? Now go to the View menu of the Finder and choose Show View Options. Notice the slider to change the icon size? It allows users to have their own preference with regards to icon size, making it easier for certain groups of the population to use the OS (example: children, elderly, those with certain physical impairments).
But you make a really dumb/ill-informed statement in “For that reason I don’t think Apple will attract any switchers at all.” I suggest that next time you make a sweeping comment like this, you do some research first. Try starting here: http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/02/09/26/0058238.shtml?tid=107
Finally, I do agree with you that OS X can be a bit slow on older Macs. And even on my new Dual 1 GHz G4s window resizing is a tad bit slow. Though I don’t spend my day resizing windows, so it’s not a huge issue for me. Scroll speed, however, is fine for me — even on my iBook 600. In fact, it’s incredibly smooth when I use my Griffin Powermate for scrolling.
“This feature can be added to OS X by a shareware or freeware app with a name that escapes me right now. ”
It’s a freeware: ASM
> Windows 3.11 featured co-operative multitasking. If this
> would to make it monotasking, the same would go for
> Amiga.
No, Windows 3.11 only performs one task at a time. “Co-operative multitasking” means that the OS allocates resources to a program in the hope that the program would execute some instructions and then hand control back to the operating system, however this may never happen, as for example is the case with a endless loop.
AmigaOS is since day one a fully pre-emptive multitasking OS, which means the OS will devote resources to multiple running tasks.
> Amiga was also NOT a 32-bit OS, although it had many
> features a 32-bit OS would have.
Yes AmigaOS is a fully 32-bit OS, this is also due to the internal 32-bit architecture of 68k processors (including the initial 68000 CPU). So any AmigaOS can take full advantage of 32-bit 68k processors out of the box.
> It was written in 16-bit 68k assembler.
Wrong and wrong. Most of the classic OS was written in C.
> IF it was 32-bit, I guess Morph OS’s and OS 4’s claim of
> being truly 32-bit is pure hype.
LOL, believe what you want to believe.
As usual, the fanstastically efficient, responsive and consistent Amiga interface has been overlooked completely.
Mike is right the 68000 up to but not including the 68020 was 16-bit on the outside and 32-bit on the inside
68020 and on are fully 32-bit CPUs
Amiga OS 4 is really 3.9 ported to the PPC (with some improvments)
> Amiga = not relevant to this discussion, but still has
> plenty of nostalgic fans
Well some people were just pointing to some inaccuracies, so not really irrelevant IMO, but there are so many examples misinformation. I wouldn’t be suprized if many (even more insightful) people would consider these statements as facts. There was a time when people “knew” the world was flat as well.
Apple was just one of several pioneers with regard to GUI design and innovation. The idea that Windows features were copied from solely/mainly MacOS is IMO very shortsighted.
You’ll find that Amiga was never the world’s best selling computer at any one time if you dig into the numbers. Not even close and not even second. However, it’s little (very little) brother was at one time — the Commodore 64. It sold 25 million units worldwide over a short period of time.
@Mike Bouma (whom I ordinarily worship)
No, Windows 3.11 only performs one task at a time.
Strictly speaking, any multitasking system performs only one task at a time.
Most of the classic OS was written in C.
Actually, I believe it was BCPL, hence the BPTR programmers had to deal with at times. I believe some version of AmigaOS 3.x was finally converted to (mostly) C.
@me
…my previous comment was not meant to derogate from the rest of what Mike wrote on multitasking.
It would be useful to mention interrupts. Also the fact that the Amiga’s coprocessors had a DMA and could function independently of the main processor by programming the Copper. Of course, that has nothing to do with UI, aside from making the Amiga UI pretty darn smooth. 🙂
rajan_r wrote:
> Amiga was also NOT a 32-bit OS, although it had many
> features a 32-bit OS would have. It was written in 16-
> bit 68k assembler.
First of all, Amiga was not a 32-bit OS because it couldn’t be an OS at all, it was and is a piece of HW. AmigaOS, however, IS a 32 bit OS, and has always been.
There does not exist such thing as “16 bit 68k asm” and AmigaOS wasn’t entirely written in asm either.
Mac OS X also gives you the nice option of having different sized icons in each window.
Also..
Don’t discount the value of column view, and…
In MacOS 8.5 an later at east(can’t really remember how earlier versions worked with regard to this) you could “tear off” the application switcher menu from the top right corner and create a “taskbar” of sorts.
I’m surprised that in a discusion about UI BeOS hasn’t been mentioned.
Mike Bouma wrote:
> No, Windows 3.11 only performs one task at a time.
Any OS ever built which runs on one processor does one task at time, simply because that’s what physic’s laws enforce.
> “Cooperative multitasking” means that the OS allocates
> resources to a program in the hope that the program
> would execute some instructions and then hand control
> back to the operating system,
And that’s exactly what Windows <= 3.x does.
> however this may never
> happen, as for example is the case with a endless loop.
That’s another story, and is exactly what distinguishes a preemptive multitasking OS from a cooperative one. Both approaches have their pro and cons, though.
Jack Perry wrote:
> Strictly speaking, any multitasking system performs only
> one task at a time.
Although I understand your point, this is not per se the case with every system, not for Multiprocessing (Multiple processor) environment. BTW classic Amigas offered a multiprocessing environment.
For interested people, here you can find some good basic knowledge about classic Amiga systems:
http://www.basden.u-net.com/amiga/amiga.diffnt.html
appleforever: There’s a big difference between doing some proof of concept thing (Xerox) and actually putting it on a computer people could buy
Xerox didn’t just do proof of concept. They sold workstations as well. While they didn’t sell many, the Ethernet network developed for those Xerox workstations did pretty well.
See:
http://www.digibarn.com/friends/alanfreier/wildflower/index.htm
for a bit about the old Xerox workstations. I’ve only seen one once, in an old University storage room.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
> You’ll find that Amiga was never the world’s best
> selling computer at any one time if you dig into the
> numbers.
I have heard that at one point it was, including around 60% of all computer sales in Europe and market shares up to 90% in some countries like Sweden. I haven’t sold them myself, so I don’t know the full story.
However seen as a whole, without a doubt no (identically specced) computer platform could beat the success of the good old c64!
Did some further research into the Amiga. Commodore only built 7 million (this number is considered to be fairly accurate according to multiple sites I found doing a Google seearch) of them in total, which is less than a 3rd of the Commodore 64s they built. Of that 7 million, the best estimate I could find is that between 4 and 5 million of them sold.
You do raise a good point though. I think they were far more successful in Europe than they were in the United States.
The Commodore 64 was popular because it was cheap</> but still powerful enough to do some fairly useful and fun stuff. Same thing for DOS and later Windows 3.1.
Whatever advantages Apple has had with its interface and such, price was not one of them. Being first with a particular idea is a distinction, but hardly the only worthwhile distinction.
Ultimately, though, what I care about as a user is getting the right hardware and software onto the desk in my home, where I can actually use it. The Amiga had some good stuff, no doubt, but I never knew where I could get one, assuming I could have afforded it.
Even now, my home pc is a slightly older, 200 Mhz system that doesn’t meet the minimum requirements of Windows XP, and it certainly won’t run OSX. So I don’t give a darn about them, except as they may alter software and internet standards that I have to deal with on my PC using “older” operating systems that work with my hardware.
Sorry about messing up the closing Bold tag, can that be fixed?
You’re right, the Commodore 64 is not GUI related. My initial comment was to clarify a point another poster made that suggested the Amiga was the world’s best selling computer at one time. It was not. The only Commodore product to achieve that status was the 64.
Well the C64 and C128 can run GEOS which is a GUI OS.
did those workstations Xerox sold have the GUI?
Exact Amiga sales figures are unknown.
Do note however that many classic Amiga motherboards were sold for embedded purposes as well, 3rd party AmigaOS compatibles existed and that some classic Amigas weren’t manufactured under Commodore. The best Amiga sales period was around 1989-1991.
> suggested the Amiga was the world’s best selling
> computer at one time. It was not. The only Commodore
> product to achieve that status was the 64.
Do note however that I meant “best selling computer at one time” instead of “most sold computer system at one time”, as there is a major difference.
I know what you meant. But by looking at the total number of Amiga motherboards built (not necessarily sold) by Commodore (which they report as 7 million) and the total period of time in which they were sold, it is apparent that there is no way for them to be the best selling computer over any one significant amount of time.
I say significant (which I would call a year) because it is easily possible that they sold the most on one particular day, week, or month.
> But by looking at the total number of Amiga motherboards
> built (not necessarily sold)
I believe it is unlikely that large quantities of Amigas were left unsold. There was a huge shortage and fear within the market when Commodore was about to bankrupt. Companies like Disney quickly snatched a hundreds of the remaining A4000 models. There was a huge shortage, which resulted in companies offering consumers more money for their machines then they originally paid for.
According to some important Amiga employees at the time, one of the major problems was that Commodore was unable to satisfy consumer demands and that the AGA Amiga models could have saved Commodore, if they had been able to build them in significant quantities.
> it is apparent that there is no way for them to be the
> best selling computer over any one significant amount of
> time.
IMO half-year or even quarterly sales figures would be significant as well.
…running Octamed 5.0 and using HEX to enter Status notes as MIDI. Still got more done with Octamed on my A1200 than with Cubase on my Mac…
I’ve framed and mounted my old A1200 mobo on my wall as a reminder of what a truly great computing experience can be…
Hi
>Most of the classic OS was written in C.
>Actually, I believe it was BCPL, hence the BPTR >programmers had to deal with at times. I believe some >version of AmigaOS 3.x was finally converted to (mostly) >C.
Actually only AmigaDOS was written in BCPL.
kml
Yeah amigas were cool, i remember they played the best games? Thats why they were cool.. They did some “Taoster” digital video editing 2.. but did many of u ppl actually use one? I remember them crashing SOOO MUCH.
Amiga had better graphics ,.. but my pc at the time didnt crash .. i still perfered it. PC was a better computer for buisness and it didnt crash (Youd think being a kid id prefer the amigas.. but i didnt .. 2 cludgy and with buggy features ahead of their time.)
PPL forget PC’s are for work.. hence no wasted cpu cycles on “genie” fx.. or a gui that looks and kinda works.. but also crashes all the time.
Get a real computer, get a pc
And about per application menus.. mac ppl like it their way and we like it our way.. .. and yes i have used macs quite a bit over the last 15 years. The per application menu demonstrates the linear progression some users take to computer use, i dont work in a linear fashion so it annoys the hell out of me. (Breaks link between the window and application, its a confusing mix of OS and application menus(oftern not clearly seperated),takes much longer to hit a menu from the non focused application (Defeating any other performance increase),the practice of holding a mouse button down to go through menus was completely stupid and against all UI practices (yet nobody seemed to complain hehe), no room for toolbar in the menus.. so if there is one its not visually connected with the menu, a lose of an ability to learn where menu items etc are (how come mac now tries to keep manu bars and applications in the dock in place? because all beta users told apple how stupid they are (wait i thught they were leading the world in UI) hahah), apple is about style not substance youd think ppl would realise now. After all why would a digital video editing os (osx has sucked for 3d development and mac was pathetic until now they finally support industry standard opengl ) make its whole os run in open gl. I mean it sounds good and it pushes the window refreah rates up to near windows (waho who cares .. i liked the mac users who complained windows flickers when it redraws… thats cause its fast hahaha) but its aweful for digital video performance.. (agp limitations) as well as breaking lots of apps that only just got fixed for OSX. Users dont care about lack of compatibility it seems.. or lack of functionality .. they are far more impressed they can have a transparent window over 3d (this is the only benifit).. now id like that sure.. id rather not kill 10 years (or is that 20) of compatability and supreme application performance (as differenciated from UI gui performance) for it. Mac users will in a tick.. just to be able to once say truthfully osx is ahead of windows xp. Pity theres no com+, DirectX (Direct music and kernal streaming beat coreaudio (sorry read up if u dont believe me), for a lot of DX there is no similar thing avalible(Whats amusing is ppl claim its preduce against macs.. no its cause apple dosent provider developers with much comapred to windows), .net , .. arg i cant even be bothered thinking.. but we all know windows has a billon things in use now that apple hasnt even considered adding to osx.. and they wont.. after all its not a general purpose buisness OS.. its a mp3 player
The only reason osx uses unix.. is cause apple cant write its own pre-emtive multi tasking protected memmory operating system.. they tried for 10 years and failed.
It all adds up and thats apple is abuot style not substance, do u see ms advertising windows because it comes with media player (no because there are way better things to do with a pc than listen to music), do u see ms advertising the color of pcs? omg a computer in red or black wow thats the best advancement of technology so far, so u see ms claiming PPC beating performance (no change there), every pc owner i know puts their box under the table.. yet every mac owner puts it on the table.. whilst they explain to me how its not the computer that matters to them.. its a tool and thats all that matters. Ahuh if so why are u going on about your g4 looks? over and over.. My pc a tool.. so i dont spend money on getting a translucent box and i use a real operating system.
I could not find any reliable sources for computer market shares for the top Amiga years.
However according to the Wall Street Journal feb/1993 European Market Shares=> Amiga: 47% (Probably due to proper A1200 availability) IBM 12% Mac 8%
> Amiga had better graphics ,.. but my pc at the time
> didnt crash
What were you doing to make the OS crash? You know, generally speaking badly written software can bring down any system. Most AmigaOS releases were very stable.
And by the time Windows became the standard my jaw dropped for the frequency of system lock-ups and Screens of Death. All the hype around this product gave me a surreal feeling.
And for lmited Command Line Interfaces being better for businesses, I generally don’t agree at all. I think GUI driven spreadsheets and word processors (like Wordworth) are much better than their severely limited MSDOS counterparts. Having advanced on-board sound and graphics wasn’t a downer IMO neither.
Maybe it was all the 30 in the computer labs (which were the ones i mostly used).. they all crashed.. yes it was the applications oftern.. i agree buisnesses like GUIS.. but at the time imho the ammount of application crashes (that also brought down the GUI and OS) was unbearable. At the time i still perfered DOS because it didnt crash.
Thinking back id say win 3.11 was a little more stable than amigaos.. but perhaps i had some bad luck, so well call it even
Glenn
(Yeah its a pity amiga lost its cpu design.. funny .. but sad 2. And yes amiga was ahead of its time( was trying to make the point that buisnesses dont like ahead of time features if they arent going to work reliably)
> At the time i still perfered DOS because it didnt crash.
Well I encountered many MSDOS system lock-ups. But as MSDOS can accomplish only one task at a time, if you had a stable well tested program, you could indeed have a stable and reliable platform. (less variables to deal with)
But do note that you could boot AmigaOS without a GUI and other tasks/applications running as well. If you want to give up all those features then nobody was stopping you!
> i agree buisnesses like GUIS..
You can do alot more in a GUI environment, WordWorth for example offered me the ability to add WordArt, preview graphics/lay-out and easy spelling checkers while the MSDOS counterparts severely lacked at this.
> ( was trying to make the point that buisnesses dont like
> ahead of time features if they arent going to work
> reliably)
Generally speaking Amigas were reliable, but they were marketed for different professional markets. The ancient Word Perfect v1.0 (GUI version) for example was stable for AmigaOS, but sadly the Amiga version was discontinued (not due to lack of interest however).
> Word Perfect v1.0 (GUI version)
Sorry, they called it 4.x (to me it looked like 1.0 though
Well personally I prefered Wordworth at the time anyway.
First of all I am not biased against anything. It is just that some other people are biased and I think they distort facts a lot.
First of all, does Apple deserve credit for its innovations, of course, as much as Microsoft deserves credit for its own innovations. So when it comes to bias, I can not compete with appleforever. I like Apple, its history is pretty interesting, but I think they are greedy, they want more and more money without giving any real value back. Their business is based on some myth, some cult stuff, which is not very good. They are not much serious about computer business, that is using computers for increasing productivity. They design excellent products, but in the end people are more interested with doing some real stuff with their computers. Otherwise people would buy lots of Apple machines.
The Xerox park issue is clarified on the web by the people who visited that park. There were more than one visits to Xerox park, and people at Xerox park worked with people at Apple together. That’s the reason why Xerox got a deal with Apple, in exchange of some stocks of Apple.
Putting Xerox’s work into a commercial product is a great challenge for sure, but so is getting the GUI idea and converting it to Windows. I mean which one is harder, creating Mac OS or Windows. For sure Windows is a bigger challenge because of the sheer number of supported hardware.
Resizing a window is a very fundemental issue in a GUI. If you do that slowly you are going to loose customers. Whether you, yourself resize a window few times in a day doesn’t make a difference. People will not buy it. I personally do not buy Mac OS X, and one of the reasons is responsiveness of the OS.
I didn’t know that Task bar was not an original idea of Microsoft. It may not be, but still there are certain innovations of Windows itself. I mean saying that there is absolutely no innovation in Windows is a little bit stupid. It means that people who worked on Windows are dumb people who just copied others. It can’t be true, and given the fact that in many cases, and actually in so many cases that people who bash Microsoft turns out to be clearly wrong, biased I think I will not believe them at all.
People who say something against Microsoft doesn’t necessarily mean that they are biased against Microsoft, such as rajan, or me. You may very well say something against them, but being reasonable is the issue here. Most of the time I find people making claims against Microsoft without any significant reason. I mean it is like “hey Microsoft may kill you tomorrow if you don’t buy Windows”. Some of those claims are as absurd as this one.
Not that I think Microsoft is not greedy, would like to dominate the computer world, and also not that I want to see Microsoft go down and Linux go up, but I don’t think that bashing Microsoft without real reasons will make any good other than cheating yourself and others. Furthermore bashing Microsoft became a way of amusing oneself. Also it leads people to make false decisions.
Let me what will happen after several years. Apple will make some money during these years, but eventually go bankrupt after people realize that Apple doesn’t give real value. If Apple’s business is based on selling more hardware, rather than software until customers realize that Apple is screwing them up by making slow Oses which demand more hardware power, Apple will survive. But at the moment customers start to realize that they can not give Apple money any more, the hardware sales will drop. If you have noticed, Apple is constantly pushed to create something attractive every year. People expect them to announce new products all the time, but after a while it will become boring. It is mainly the software which will eventually define the future of Apple.
sergio — I’m a Mac user, and I think Apple gives me plenty of value, and it’s software driven. The way OS X is integrated with the iApps, with just a few clicks I can do a lot of enjoyable stuff with my Mac — music, pix, video etc. It also looks great doing it, and that’s important to me. I’ve used WinXP and think it’s fine and functional, but — unlike OS X — it never makes me say, “Wow.” And IMO it’s ugly and I don’t want to use it. Period. And my Mac — an iBook — cost me $1,100, which is quite competitive compared to PC laptops in its class.
As for Apple’s contribution to GUI developement, I think their single most brilliant stroke was to replicate a real office environment on a computer — you’ve got your hard drive (file cabinet) that you put stuff in, you’ve got your desktop (desktop) that you put stuff on, and you can move stuff back and forth between the two. Have other GUIs done this? Maybe. But Apple put it on a consumer computer in 1984 — and that was brilliant.
Glenn:
> Yeah its a pity amiga lost its cpu design
The design of the OS has remained largely the same. Due to current established monopolies within the tech market, Amiga first needs to upgrade(/and degrade) to common PC specs. However multiprocessing is planned to be very important for the future of Amigas. Even heterogeneous multiprocessing solutions will be possible for future Amiga solutions!
Sergio: “If you have noticed, Apple is constantly pushed to create something attractive every year.”
Yep, that’s a big part of why I own Apple. Their survival depends on putting out new cool stuff. It’s just fun (unless you don’t care about computers much).
Sergio: “People expect them to announce new products all the time, but after a while it will become boring.”
I’ll take the “boredom” of new cool stuff coming out all the time.
Sergio: “It is mainly the software which will eventually define the future of Apple.”
The software practically IS the computer, so yes software will largely define the future of Apple. But as anyone reasonable and unbiased will acknowledge, there is an advantage held by a company like Apple that makes the hardware and the software, in terms of the ability to innovate and do top implementations of things not working well currently that require both hardware and software (e.g., wireless networking, perfectly integrated mp3 player and jukebox software, video editing with firewire hookup, etc).
Of course many PC people will never admit this because there can’t POSSIBLY be anything better about Apple. These people love to build boxes and choose hardware venders, so much so that it’s essentially impossible for them to acknowledge the upside to closed hardware. (It has a downside to, you can’t always have your cake and eat it to). Bias exists on boths sides of this debate, sergio.
“When each window has it’s own menu bar, you have to position your mouse accurately both horizontally and vertically.”
If your eye-hand coordination is that bad, then you shouldn’t be using a computer.
Besides, the windows menu model allows for the shortest distance from app to menu. And, I don’t have to click twice to access the menu of another app (assuming the windows are not full screen).
-G
Sergio: “It is mainly the software which will eventually define the future of Apple.”
Ever heard of the iPod? I wouldn’t be so 100 percent sure of your prediction that Apple’s future lies with software
mac user – Ever heard of the iPod?
pc user – yeah.. u ever heard of any other such devices?
mac user – no
pc user – so thats why you think its revolutionary
Here’s an article for you Glenn:
http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/02q4/021003/ipod-11.html
None of the others before the iPod were of any interest to me because USB is too slow for a hard drive mp3 player. And I have too much music to use anything but a hard drive based player.
From time to time, I hear there’s a new iPod alternative out. But every article/review says it’s inferior to the iPod. Tom’s Hardware says the same thing.
But, oh that’s right, NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY BE GOOD ABOUT APPLE, for lots of PC people like Glenn. Who is biased here?
So its revolutionary why?
Its got a smaller hard drive and uses firewire instead of usb (even though of course theres pc ones like that now 2).
Other ones have more funtionatliy .. some even record audio .. now thats a feature.
The ipod is nothing new at all .. it was the first to use a smaller drive and presumably first to use firewire.. so what?
The ppl who originally made portable mp3 players invented it.. apple just copied used the technologies it owns and can sell and sold something slightly smaller and faster, using its relationship with toshiba to make sure competators were at a disadvantage. Some new phones have cameras in them.. thats way more advanced than the difference between ipod and other devices which came out years before.. yet i dont hear them being touted as revolutionary .. even if they almost are.
The ipod is JUST a mp3 player (now a contact manager not that its very usful just like that).. its good but its expensive and lacks functionatliy (like record audio ).
IT brought no new features or technologies.. its good but so what, so are lots of things in this world. Hey i like helgas bread because its a nice new mix of what ive had before.. yet i dont write home about it.
Tom’s Hardware:
It is no coincidence that the Apple iPod has received so many kudos over the past year. When one starts from scratch and has lofty design goals, as Apple did with the iPod, it is very rare to actually be able to pull it off. Apple deserves the praise that it has been getting for the iPod for this reason alone.
What sets the iPod apart from the others is Apple’s continuing attention to detail. Every part that went into the iPod was obviously highly scrutinized for its ability to deliver an overall experience that reached far beyond that of any other product competing in the same product category.
What stand out are the reasons why iPod is better than its competition. It is easier to use, offers exceptional battery life, has a very readable, well-lit display, excellent shock protection with its 32MB of RAM, speedy transfers with its 1394 Firewire interface, good sound on both the high end and the low end, and, maybe best of all, it comes in a small and very sexy package. When you combine all of this, you come up with a product experience that is well beyond the norm. . .
When looking at the price versus performance, it is clear that the iPod does deliver, but it is expensive. Many might pass on the iPod due to the price alone, but if you are looking for the most easy to use product with the best sound in the most compact format, the Apple iPod is way ahead of the curve. We award the Apple iPod for Windows our Editors Choice Award as a solidly recommended best buy. . . .
Apple didn’t really surprise me with their effective design with the release of the iPod, but what was surprising was the way that Apple is able to execute. Even though they were, in my opinion, “late” to enter the Windows market, they were able to do it with a product that users will want to buy. Will Apple enlist any converts to the MAC platform with their release of the iPod? I don’t know about that. One thing is for certain, however. People need to pay more attention to what Apple is doing, because they got it absolutely right with the iPod.
This is the new apple my friend. They got burned on “revolutionary” things like the Newton, and opendoc that weren’t ready or well executed. Now they are sitting back and taking what sucks or is making it so kickass with their attention to detail. read and weep, apple haters.
This is the new apple my friend. They got burned on “revolutionary” things like the Newton, and opendoc that weren’t ready or well executed. Now they are sitting back and taking what sucks or is less than the best it could be in the PC world, and then making it so kickass with their attention to detail. read and weep, apple haters.
reading back i guess u could say ipod brought a new technology that being the smaller drives.. so what toshiba made them.. and apple payed them off so they could exclusivly get the first few. I like the way its made out that pc users would have never thought of adding firewire or usb2. Economies of scale ment most didnt chose that yet.. to pretend its some amazing idea apple had, devalues the word amazing.
Its a good product .. if its the best demonstration of apples ability to inovate.. its a bit of lame isnt it? i mean really ..
Glenn: “Its a good product .. if its the best demonstration of apples ability to inovate.. its a bit of lame isnt it? ”
I didn’t say it was the best demonstration. In response to sergio, I said I wouldn’t be so sure that the future of apple is limited to software. Regardless of how important an mp3 player is to you, I think an open-minded person could recognize that a company experiencing the success and accolades of the iPod would be encouraged to produce more hardware, most likely along similar lines (peripherals for the digital hub).
But as long as we’re on the topic, I think even one product says a lot about a company. I mean you just don’t overnight get fanatical about “attention to detal” and “ease of use,” and then pull it off so well in a product like the iPod. Companies, like people, have a character. They are good at things, and bad at things. So really the iPod says a lot about what Apple is about. It’s reflected in their other products too, but the iPod is unique in that all that’s good about apple is available too for non-Mac owners. That’s perhaps why it’s gotten so much attention.
Hardware is cheap, there is no technology Apple own in that hardware. Everything is done in asia. Any other company can produce similar products.
When IEEE 1394 becomes common in PCs there will be more products similar to iPod. I am pretty sure that are similar devices already and actually there were devices before Apple’s iPod.
The thing that makes Apple is not the technical capabilities, but the design itself. Apple is not a company like Intel which owns lots of technical innovations, it doesn’t have a big R&D. Apple tries to sell hardware by designing them more attractive, they have a special design team and in the ads I mostly see those guys, not much technical people. Now having a nice iMac like computer would be nice, but at the end I don’t watch my computer when I am working on it. It is the software that is important. That design thing will not work out all the time.
Sergio: “The thing that makes Apple is not the technical capabilities, but the design itself. . . Apple tries to sell hardware by designing them more attractive”
Tom’s Hardware: “What sets the iPod apart from the others is Apple’s continuing attention to detail. Every part that went into the iPod was obviously highly scrutinized for its ability to deliver an overall experience that reached far beyond that of any other product competing in the same product category.”
More Tom’s Hardware: “What stand out are the reasons why iPod is better than its competition. It is easier to use, offers exceptional battery life, has a very readable, well-lit display, excellent shock protection with its 32MB of RAM, speedy transfers with its 1394 Firewire interface, good sound on both the high end and the low end, and, maybe best of all, it comes in a small and very sexy package. When you combine all of this, you come up with a product experience that is well beyond the norm. . . ”
Sergio: “When IEEE 1394 becomes common in PCs there will be more products similar to iPod. I am pretty sure that are similar devices already and actually there were devices before Apple’s iPod.”
Actually, as noted above by Tom’s Hardware, what makes the iPod better is a lot more than the 1394 interface. In any event, people are putting in 1394 interfaces on their PC to use the iPod for Windows. Nothing is stopping them from putting in 1394 interfaces for iPod alternatives.
Sergio on the iPod: “Any other company can produce similar products.”
“Can” is an unsupported assertion. The fact is they haven’t.
Sergio. Either you are jerking my leg here, or you hate Apple so much you can’t acknowledge ONE THING they did that merits applause. THAT is the definition of bias.
I don’t hate Apple, I like Apple, as a matter of fact I appreciate a lot of things about Apple. There is only one person here who hates something and you know who is that person.
I appreciated a lot of things about Apple which I don’t have to repeat just to make the point that I don’t hate them. But you hate to say lots of things to make sure that you are not biased. After one after your comments proved to be wrong, pointless, biased.
According to your comments it sounds like Apple will break a record by selling these iPod devices. I mean you have no idea how these things are produced. These devices are all produced in asia. Believe me Japanese companies produce far more better products than ipods. There was one from Toshiba which was better than iPod.
You gave Tom’s Hardware article as an answer to my questions, but you don’t even realize that they support what I say. Apple doesn’t have any technological advantage on this market. The only thing Apple is good at is that the design. They are good at using design tools to create attractive devices. These things are not pantented, you can create something similar with less cost. Apple has to create these things attractive because they can not compete in price with other companies. They rely on this fact, otherwise they will go bankrupt. Everything Apple produce has to be candy. You can not see something from Apple which is ugly but technically superior. This is a well known fact, and it has nothing to do with hating Apple.
What I hate about Apple is the lies about it. I am hearing so many lies that I thought it is time to step in and tell something about it. People shouldn’t listen to lies just because some people want to feel special by having Apple machines. This is wrong. I mean this Apple cult is all based on this false impressions, and there is no reason to buy Apple at all.
It is ridiculous that you are trying to depict me biased in your comments, and it shows that this is the only way you may win these arguments. You are the person who admit that even though .net is technically superior you will use sun’s java platform just to make sure that Microsoft doesn’t gain anything. It is this mentality that creates pollution in online community, and it is this mentality that creates all sorts of distortion of facts. It is a sick mentality.
Also just you think nobody produced ipod like stuff doesn’t mean that there is none. Go ahead and make some research you will find similar devices with less price.
“Can” is not an unsupported assertion. They already did produce similar devices, example Toshiba’s device.
I am neither jerking your leg nor hating Apple, but it is obvious to me that YOU HATE MICROSOFT. You can’t even stand to the fact that they have superior products, even though you have no idea about .net, you come and say don’t use it.
If it’s so easy to copy the iPod, why hasn’t anyone?
The box on the iPod (just bought one for my girlfriend) says Made in Asia, Designed in California.
Why do you assert that the only thing Apple did was make a “pretty” mp3 player. That is not what Tom’s Hardware says. They talk about the engineering aspects of it, the good battery life, the ease of use (which is not looks, it’s software design) and on and on. Your argument about “looks” is simply not fair to apple.
Look, I am sure companies will copy the iPod. Imitation is a form of flattery. I have no problem with that.
But Apple did such a nice piece of engineering and all you can do is denigrate it. Again, who is biased here?
Let me be clear. I have said MS has made some good things. I am reading more on .NET and I think the jury is still out on this one. If they really make it crossplatform like Java (or they help or allow others to do that), then I will reevaluate.
I think MS has a chance to “reform”, and not do the things that I disagree with (e.g. working against open standards from time to time). The market may force them too. I don’t think they want to be hated either, I think they would like to please their customers.
MS also did a good job with office in the early years, when they were competing with Wordperfect and 1-2-3. They made a better product and won (problem is since they won, and everyone has to buy Office to get file compatibility, the innovation — to put it charitably — kinda slowed.
Sergio: “Also just you think nobody produced ipod like stuff doesn’t mean that there is none. Go ahead and make some research you will find similar devices with less price.”
Toms Hardware: “What stand out are the reasons why iPod is better than its competition. It is easier to use, offers exceptional battery life, has a very readable, well-lit display, excellent shock protection with its 32MB of RAM, speedy transfers with its 1394 Firewire interface, good sound on both the high end and the low end, and, maybe best of all, it comes in a small and very sexy package. When you combine all of this, you come up with a product experience that is well beyond the norm. . . ”
How many times must this be repeated before it gets into your skull?
Sergio: “and there is no reason to buy Apple at all.”
What if you want the best mp3 player?
appleforever, as I understood now, I think you need to read not only .net but more about consumer electronics and what does it mean intellectual property and so on.
What kind of a product ipod is? It is consumer electronics product. Now which company is the best on this field? Sony. Do you know how hard it is for Sony to make good money on consumer electronics? Obviously no. Why is that, because there are all sorts of companies which imitate Sony products and they are far more cheaper. Sony is not able to charge a lot on those products.
Now, what you didn’t understand about my argument is that Apple doesn’t have any particular technology on ipod which only Apple can do or has right to do. Putting nice buttons, placing nice batteries is not a problem for any other company. These are third party stuff, there is no particular intellectual property of Apple there. Now you refer to Tom’s Hardware again again and all I can say about this is nothing, because what Tom’s hardware has nothing to do with what I am saying. Are you trying to say that a product like iPod can only be produced by Apple? I mean either you are really kidding, or you are really ignorant about this stuff. I am sorry to say this, but all I can do is laugh at this. You will see that Apple will not make tons of money out of ipod. It will make some money, because it was a well received product, nicely designed and so on, but it will not save the company or make it the king of the consumer electronics industry. I hope I am more clear now, but please don’t specify Tom’s Hardware again, I got the point there which has nothing to do with what we are discussing.
Ok, this is my last post on this topic.
Sergio: “Are you trying to say that a product like iPod can only be produced by Apple?”
I said: “Look, I am sure companies will copy the iPod. Imitation is a form of flattery. I have no problem with that.”
The fact that something can be copied does not mean that there is no engineering skill or innovation in it. People have said .NET is to a large degree an improved copy of something pioneered with Java. That’s fine. But that doesn’t mean that Sun did not innovate with Java.
Until someone copies it, they can’t offer it for a lower price. So in the meantime, profits will be made. Tom’s Hardware is clear that right now there is no competition that has copied the iPod.
You keep shifting the subject. I was not even arguing about whether the iPod will be profitable or whether it will save the company.
I was saying it’s the best mp3 player, it’s innovative and Apple’s success with it will likely lead it to produce other digital hub peripherals. Whether they will succeed is a harder question. You’re so all knowing, you know they will fail. I guess I will see what happens.