Apple As Innovator

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Tim O'Reilly
May. 29, 2003 01:04 PM
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Dave Zeiler of the Baltimore Sun's online sunspot.net site interviewed me for a column on what he called "the continuing saga of how Apple’s fresh ideas sooner or later get hijacked by the Wintel crowd and re-sold as a Microsoft or Intel “innovation.”"

Dave quoted only a few lines of my rather extensive email interview in his article, so I thought I'd reproduce the entire text here.

Dave asked: "Do you think this is true, or is Apple’s role as tech innovator exaggerated?" I replied:

Success always has a thousand fathers. Neither Apple nor Microsoft invented many of the technologies that they brought to prominence. So "innovator" in that sense is perhaps exaggerated. But what Apple does so well is to realize the potential in a technology, and to frame it in such a way that people discover that they need it. In a way, they are cultural innovators more than they are tech innovators. They have a really great sense of where technology is going. Microsoft's slogan "Where do you want to go today?" may be apposite -- Apple is great at asking "Where do you want to go tomorrow?" and helping to take the industry there. Apple tends to be a market innovator, while Microsoft is a fast follower, delivering that next generation of technology to a wider audience.

A great example of Apple's current market leadership is their realization that "productivity applications" now means applications for managing personal digital assets (music, photos, and videos), while the rest of the industry remained stuck in the 80's definition of office productivity. Their iLife suite is shaping up to be the Microsoft Office of the 00's.

I'm also incredibly impressed with Rendezvous. A lot of companies (notably Sun Microsystems, with Jini and Jxta) have been working on this concept for years, but Apple is the first company to get it right. Rendezvous is truly revolutionary. It's one of the things that is going to have the largest impact on application design over the next couple of years. All the UIs, and all the security models, are going to have to be rethought once all applications are rendezvous-enabled. And that is going to happen. Of course, Rendezvous is just the local version of the peer-to-peer concept that Napster and Gnutella launched on the world. We're just at the beginning of the second internet revolution, and Rendezvous is a big part of it.

And of course, web services are another big part of that revolution. Sherlock is a very cool framework that shows us how web services lead not just to B2B applications, but also to a new application model on the desktop, in which rich clients connect to remote servers over the http protocol, but shed a lot of the baggage of the Web's stateless model, allowing for the design of much better user interfaces. Of course, Macromedia is generalizing this idea and making it cross platform with its Central framework. But then again, Apple arguably didn't invent this idea either, since some people feel that independent developer Dan Wood of Karelia Software pioneered the idea with his Watson program. But innovation is always a game of leapfrog. And Apple does a great job of moving the game forward.

I imagine that Microsoft will do a good job of playing catch up. (And just to be fair, I think that Microsoft has done a great job of playing leap frog as well. While I tend to bash Microsoft for their shortsightedness in "taking all the mashed potatoes"(see some of my speeches at tim.oreilly.com for that reference), I also praise them for their consistent vision of the future of computing. Bill Gates is probably more responsible than anyone for the ubiquity of personal computing, something that all his detractors forget. The Linux opportunity, for example, wouldn't exist, if Microsoft and Intel hadn't created ubiquitous, low-cost, standard PCs. So the leapfrog continues. What's really important is that no one gets so locked in that they are able to stop the game. (That's Microsoft's real issue -- they became so successful in suppressing competitors that they have far fewer people to play leapfrog with. Thank goodness that Apple has survived, and that the internet/open source community has continued to bring in fresh ideas.)

Dave asked: "If Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Apple had never existed, where do you think (wild guess welcome) computing would be today?":

Alternate history isn't my strong suit. But there's no question that we'd be poorer for it. Jobs' vision of building computers that were "insanely great" brought a level of artistry to the computing industry that could easily have been completely lacking. Computing can be so boring. Apple has made it part of pop culture.

Dave: If Apple IS a prime industry innovator, why does it remain stuck with such a small market share?

Business model. It's clear that a commodity hardware business model with standard parts and multiple players works better than a proprietary business model. (We saw the same thing with Betamax and VHS.) What's remarkable is that Apple has survived and prospered despite being incompatible with an industry standard with overwhelming market share. It's a bit like imagining an electric automobile vendor with 5% market share. You wouldn't be thinking of it as a failure, but as a remarkable success.

It's interesting to note also that the disparity between Windows and Mac OS might not be anything like so great but for Microsoft's aggressive business dealings (which have, after all, been declared illegal under anti-trust law). If the PC market were more competitive, we might, for example, see the big three vendors, as we saw in the auto market.

It's interesting to note, of course, that Linux is now doing a good job of breaking the Microsoft lock, and that software is being commoditized the way hardware was during the PC era. In this turn of the wheel, Apple is ahead of the curve, with an OS that leverages the commodity software componentry of Unix. (And of course, Linux and Unix are really just two versions of the same basic component set.)

Dave: And of course, any further thoughts or insights you may have on this issue are encouraged.

Steve Jobs is a top caliber conceptual artist. His vision seems to be more of an aesthetic vision than a technical or even a marketing vision. In this regard, I think that the Apple saga may be far from over. I'm mindful of Dave Hickey's observation in Air Guitar, his wonderful book of essays about pop culture: when the automobile became something of a commodity, Harley Earl, who headed the design division at General Motors after WW II, turned the auto industry from one driven by manufacturing innovation into one driven by design. As the computer industry is increasingly commoditized, will the computer market too become more of an "art market", one that, in the words of Hickey, "stopped advertising products for what they were, or for what they could do, and began advertising them for what they meant"?

Apple started this process with the famous 1984 lemmings ad, and has continued with its Think Different theme, but above all, with a consistent set of design innovations in its products, innovations that are aimed at the self image of the consumer, that, again quoting Dave Hickey, "create desire rather than fulfilling needs."

No one in the computer industry has come close to Apple in this regard. Only Sony, with its Vaio line, has even tried. And this is one area that Microsoft, for all its ability to embrace and extend the innovations of its rivals, has never found a way to do more than chase Apple's tail lights.

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world, and an activist for open standards. O'Reilly Media also publishes online through the O'Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and the Web 2.0 Conference. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. For everything Tim, see tim.oreilly.com.

What do you think about Apple's role as an innovator?
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Showing messages 1 through 23 of 23.

Low cost PC's
2004-04-08 11:43:31 lgraba [Reply | View]

The Linux opportunity, for example, wouldn't exist, if Microsoft and Intel hadn't created ubiquitous, low-cost, standard PCs.

I think I would quibble with the credit you give to MS for low cost PC's. The key thing driving costs down was the competition from clone makers building IBM compatibles. MS was included on these clones because it was on the IBM PC. During all of the 80's, MS had little that could compete with the Apple OS, and yet people bought IBM compatibles because they were lower cost. Why should MS get credit for that, since they did little to make this occur?

That continues to be the case. PC HW continues to both increase in functionality and decrease in price. The Windows OS and other products do increase in functionality, but their prices have not decreased over time like HW prices have.

I'll grant that MS was very shrewd in recognizing the strategic power of the OS and in leveraging this power (and revenue) into other areas, and that having one dominant SW provider reduces the issues of software compability (except between versions of MS products, of course.) However, without HW clones driving down HW prices, I don't think MS would have had anywhere near the success they had.

Present course and future of computing...
2003-06-02 10:33:45 -=someone=- [Reply | View]

Thanks for the insights, Tim.

I do miss the other computer hardware players of the 80s. That era was one of great excitement and people interested in computing (like myself) simply absorbed as much information as they could. In particular, I miss the hardware vendors like Atari and Commodore whose computers had a certain richness and life to them that no current computer manufacturer has (except for Apple).

Any computer historian should not forget to mention the Commodore Amiga in any current discussions, as the computer was way ahead of its time. Think about it - they had a fully multi-tasking OS and GUI that ran in a fraction of the memory space that OS X requires. While Apple has the candy-coated OS X, I always think of the opportunity that Commodore missed due to mismanagement. The designers of AmigaOS were true visionaries who were thinking of the future.

So...Apple's 1984 commercial is not that far off from our present situation in the personal computing industry. One bland OS dominates the industry, with several other minor players simply trying to survive.

apple as an innovator
2003-05-31 11:50:53 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

I love the srticle, it brings out many good points. I find it amusing that every time Apple comes out with a new product the Wintel world has to race to compete, as with windows, the IMac, the iPod, and multi colored anything.

Sometimes I think Apple doesn't try to compete with them they just do there own thing and let them try to contain them.

J. D'Avignon

Where we would be if Apple would not be here
2003-05-30 18:11:35 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

If Apple did not exist, Tom Warren would probably have written the computer history... As it was, he worked for Apple at the end of the seventies. His ideas were very good but his hiring in Apple as a technician slowed down and eventually cooled down his aspirations completely.
If Apple never existed, Tom would have started his own company... Teligent.
He really believed that computers should adapt to humans, not the other way around. Through the years, Interfaces were designed to allow a more "human" control over the computer.
The computers were designed to support the human thought process and processing habilities, not supplant them.
Since the beginning, computers were not designed to sit on desks but to be worn... but technology was a little slow to catch on that at first.
His idea of computing were so much out of the streamlined thinking that it took him a few years to demonstrate their validity. His core ideas were that processor speed is not important... If the computer allows us to do things our way, we'll do things even faster than with faster processors. He was right.
He also thought that computers, above and beyond were instruments of communication and of knowledge.
By this time, there were computers that interacted more directly with our bodies and that provide a much more "idea oriented" interface than the desktop interface we have...
3d holo screens were common place since the UI had been designed as a 3d interface since the beginning but for a while, technology level was not ready
On other fronts, Microsoft never really existed and the small company was bought by Sun Microsystems in 1976 .

Apple never really existed either and the idea that Jobs and Wosniak had of the first Apple computer never appeared. Humorously, the Apple company name was used by a wallpaper company...

Neural interface was created in 2006, but the idea actually emerged first in 1982 and computer history was changed forever. No more screen just a 3d, 360 workspace.
Teligent's ideas shaped the computer industry for years, until the great integration of 2014 where a worldwide consortium of companies decided to move to a single self evolutive operating system.

Question on licensing
2003-05-30 06:36:14 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

I'm curious about one thing in regards to Apple. Why did they stop the licensing of their hardware and why won't they do it again? Imagine how great the market would be if Dell was able to build and sell Apples for both servers and desktops?

Question on licensing
2003-05-31 13:19:11 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

The fundamental problem here is viewing Apple as a software company, and the inherent comparisons to Microsoft. While Apple produces software, their primary revenue stream is hardware.

In fact, their business mode is pretty much exactly opposite of the Wintel market. While Microsoft uses cheap commodity hardware to sell overpriced software, Apple uses relatively inexpensive or free software to create desire for hardware that is in some, though by no means all or even most cases more expensive than its hardware competitors (HP, Dell, Gateway, etc.)

The former model works for Microsoft they have, from day one, built the company around the idea of shedding the low-margin, high-volume hardware business onto other companies, and removed themsellves from that cut-throat market. They've merely been the third party that sees a war and sells weapons to both sides.

Apple, on the other hand started out with Steve Wozniak, whose genius was as the designer of really good hardware, and this has remained Apple's primary business ever since. To transition away from this now would be a massive effort for the company, even if we assume the "clones" being made continue to use a limited range of components. But this business model works for them, as well as Microsoft's does for that company, if not to the same magnitude.

Either company would be ruined by trying to use the other's business model. Microsoft as a PC maker wouldn't have a chance of competing with the likes of Dell, which has shown itself brilliant at optimizing inventory.

Similarly Apple would likely not survive the transition to a pure software business model. They could simply not surive competing directly with Microsoft in x86 softare, and their developers would jump ship at such a dramatic hardware shift. Additionally, there would be no greater market for PPC Macs if Dell and HP sold them than there is now (something the company learned painfully during the original cloning escapade), and that's not a large enough established base to support a company the size of Apple if their only revenue stream were their own software offerings, which Mac users have come to expect at lower prices.

Question on licensing
2003-05-31 18:11:37 Tim O'Reilly [Reply | View]

I agree. There might have been a time, early in its existence, where Apple could have created that clone market, and tried to compete with Microsoft as a software company on top of a competing commodity platform. But that was a long shot. The commodity PC was already a reality.

Apple is the last of the great *computer* companies (that is, companies that make both hardware and software). Interestingly, though, now that Microsoft has reached the limits of revenue extraction for software on commodity hardware, they are eyeing the idea once again of an integrated hardware/software bundle to improve the user experience. So it's not certain that the market isn't going to cycle around again in some interesting new ways.

In any event, I agree with the previous poster that Apple's genius has been as a hardware company, with software that seamlessly integrates with that hardware.

According to another Expert, Apple is not an innovator
2003-05-29 17:40:49 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

Tim O'Reilly:

Surprise, surprise. So when should Apple port Mac OS X to Intel? Why didn't you comment on Apple's innovation in _colors_?

While it seems Apple has been having trouble seeing the value in its own technologies*, every day some expert talks up an insignificant "buzz" technology (Jini) and completely ignores an Apple technology that worked so well it was almost invisible.

Rendezvous is simply a translation of the AppleTalk ethos into a TCP environment using broadcasting protocols.

Microsoft fills its glass houses with enough megalomaniacs and PHD's to bury innovative developers, then it innovates via press release.

Sincerely,
Sean Broderick

* How could anyone justify omitting AppleScript terms when upgrading an application--forcing users to rewrite scripts or an obsolete version? Compare old and new versions of Disk Copy.

According to another Expert, Apple is not an innovator
2003-05-29 17:54:20 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

I'm not sure what you're responding to. I thought I was saying that Apple *is* an innovator, though more of an innovator in driving technology forward to the market than necessarily in *inventing* that technology.

But you seem to be reading everything I said backwards. I was talking up Rendezvous rather than Jini, precisely because "it works so well it [is] almost invisible."

So I think we're in violent agreement, except about tone of voice.

Tim O'Reilly

According to another Expert, Apple is not an innovator
2003-08-06 22:17:53 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

One word: QuickTime.

-Mark Anderson

According to another Expert, Apple is not an innovator
2003-05-31 08:00:16 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

Tim O'Reilly:

You're correct about the tone, and I apologize, but only because I value your place in the industry. To be a vital commentator on Apple, however, would require you demonstrate more knowledge of their contributions.

Overlooking AppleTalk when talking about simple local networking is akin to believing Bill Gates invented the PC. In the context of this interview, it's irritating, but if you were the journalist, it would be sin.

Lots of journalists and pundits are in need of penance for their discussions and commentary on Apple.

A few points:
1) Analysts constantly misrepresent Apple's business and discount its leadership.
2) Apple is a hardware *and* software company, and has made significant contributions to the computing field in both roles.
3) The Next team brought some valuable technology to Apple, but there has also been some regrettable not-invented-at-Next nonsense (hence, the bile and anger over the treatment of AppleScript).

While it is true Apple often drives technology adoption (USB), it also invents on a regular basis (Firewire).

So overlooking tone, we agree that Apple is an innovator, but you relegate that role to market innovator, i.e. Rendezvous being a rarity. As a hardware engineer programming on the Mac OS platform, I disagree, and maintain Apple is also a technology innovator.

While Macworld magazine might not be a worth your time overall, I think you should look at its new back page "The Big Picture" by Matt Deatherage. He also publishes a journal, see Macjournals.com.

Thank you for praising Rendezvous in a context most developers and users new to the platform will understand. It's great fun showing someone its magic.

I hope you can spare some empathy for Apple partisans ;)

Sincerely,
Sean Broderick

According to another Expert, Apple is not an innovator
2003-06-05 04:08:47 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

I'm not sure that Sean and I were reading the same article.

According to another Expert, Apple is not an innovator
2003-05-31 18:17:19 Tim O'Reilly [Reply | View]

I still think you're reading a lot into my message because of things you wish I'd said. I stand by my main point, which is that Apple's greatest innovations have been in putting together existing technologies in such a way as to make them *desirable*, and so they have helped to create new markets.

This isn't to say that there aren't lots of small technological innovations along the way. But heck, Microsoft also has made lots of small technological innovations. But Apple's genius is in seeing a greater whole in the sum of possible parts.

According to another Expert, Apple is not an innovator
2003-06-01 10:15:28 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

Ummm, right. Apple 'innovates' iTunes and a viable online music delivery service. Microsoft 'innovates' iLoo.

According to another Expert, Apple is not an innovator
2003-06-01 13:10:11 Tim O'Reilly [Reply | View]

It's easy to bash Microsoft, and I've done more than my share of it. But they have also done some neat things. To give one little-noticed example, but a personal favorite: In Windows 98 and later, you can have a command-line right on the Taskbar (the windows equivalent of the dock.) It's called the Address Toolbar. And I find that terrifically useful. I wish Mac OS X had such a feature.

And of course, Microsoft's biggest innovation was in business model -- leveraging OEM channels to the max to get the upper hand on an entire industry. But they also make lots of small advances that do add up. They did a huge amount to create a layer of consistency over the jungle of incompatible hardware that the PC market represents. The problem they've been trying to solve is much harder than the problem Apple solves, controlling both hardware and software together.

And heck, we all like to point out that Microsoft didn't invent the internet, but (as a point of comparison) they brought it to the masses more urgently than Apple did. Is that different from what Apple did with desktop publishing, or is now doing with digital media?

Has Apple done more *interesting* innovation over the years? Absolutely. It's been coming out of their pores lately. From Digital Photography to online music, they are way ahead of the pack.

But I stick by my original comments. Apple didn't *invent* most of the things that they are now popularizing. They just put them together perfectly in a package that inspires users to want them, and to know what to do with them.

I'd love to get away from "either-or" thinking. Loving what Apple or the open source community is doing doesn't make me hate everything that Microsoft does. Let's celebrate the good stuff whereever we find it!

Lemmings was in 1985.
2003-05-29 16:52:34 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

If I remember correctly, the Lemmings ad was Apple's second big super bowl ad, which played in 1985, one year after the more famous 1984 ad.

Lemmings was in 1985.
2003-05-29 17:01:08 Tim O'Reilly [Reply | View]

Of course, you're right. I was conflating the two ads. Both were wonderful, but it was the 1984 ad that made the bigger splash. And of course, both made a statement about the meaning of owning an Apple, which is the heart of Dave Hickey's point. My prediction is that this point will grow in importance as computers become more of a commodity. Apple was just ahead of its time in seeing the computer market as an "art market."

Jini and Rendezvous: Apples and Oranges
2003-05-29 14:59:13 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

Jini and Rendezvous have little in common. They both support service discovery and that is about it. Rendezvous does nothing to solve many of the interesting networking problems when dealing with networked services. Allocation of service resources with leasing, availabilty of servcies with activation, dealing with service events, and distributed transactions are all dealt with in Jini and decidedly not in Rendezvous. With Rendezvous the application or OS must understand the service protocol or SOL. There are *NO* protocols with Jini. At least none you would see in dealing with a Jini service. So after all these years all we get is sevice discovery? Excuse me for being less than impressed.

When you say Rendezvous got it right, you must mean that Apple just did a better job of putting a lesser technology to more visible and actual use.

Jini and Rendezvous: Apples and Oranges
2003-06-03 11:08:39 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

Could we go back to the ISO layered model for one minute?

When a machine starts, it has to get its IP address some way or another. It could be a preset (hard-coded) adress, given by a DHCP server or set using some kind of peer-to-peer technology like rendezvous.

It is only when the machine has started and well established as a node in networked environment that it could start offering and/or looking for network services.

Here, Jini could start playing its role to help clients to connect to services and helping services to broadcast their existence and capabilities to potential clients.

Jini and Rendezvous: Apples and Oranges
2003-05-30 04:59:42 Daniel H. Steinberg [Reply | View]

There are two things that Rendezvous got right: (1) They explained their technology in a compelling way to consumers -- here's what it can do for you. Conferences with wireless are changed with Rendezvous. (2) They explained their technology in a compelling way to hardware and software vendors so that we've seen shipping applications within the first six months of Rendezvous' public announcement.

Do Jini and Rendezvous have little in common? I would agree that Rendezvous doesn't solve the leasing and transaction and other problems that you detail above. But one of the biggest barriers to using Jini has been the "out of the box" problem. Getting it up and started.

I would argue that Jini and Rendezvous complement each other nicely. A Rendezvous enabled Jini application could lead to local dynamic grids built around JavaSpaces. Making the Jini lookup service a Rendezvous service could have interesting applications.

Jini and Rendezvous: Apples and Oranges
2003-06-01 17:57:09 anonymous2 [Reply | View]

To me as a user of technology rather than someone who understands the guts of things, Rendezvous is adding back some of the best features of Appletalk to the TCP/IP world. It is back to the future. The ability to identify printers and colleagues on the network and interact with them simply is just Apple getting everybody to do what we used to do all the time. It will advance the digital hub idea greatly.

Jini and Rendezvous: Apples and Oranges
2003-05-29 15:28:36 Tim O'Reilly [Reply | View]

This comment reminds me of the disparaging comments that SGML proponents made about HTML and the WWW. Ditto the folks who were building GUI apps, or beautiful multimedia CD-ROMs. All of them saw how much was lacking in the WWW. But sometimes, less is more. This is a major point of Clayton Christenson's book, The Innovator's Dilemma.

We have to ask ourselves why Jini and Jxta never took off? I think that the answer is that they tried to solve too many problems too early. My guess is that much of their work will be rediscovered. But right now, we just need a low-barrier-to-entry method for getting started in ad-hoc networking, and Rendezvous seems to fill the

Jini and Rendezvous: Apples and Oranges
2003-05-29 15:22:39 tychay [Reply | View]

Change a few words around and put it in a different time period (1993) and you could make the same case about HTML & HTTP (web protocols) vs. everything else out at the time.

HTML/HTTP does little to solve many of the interesting documentation problems: A primitive bastardization of SGML designed to be more human-readable than machine read (no XHTML) that mixes logic and content (<strong> and <b>), capable of not even the basic in information design and aesthetics (not even a <table> with single pixel gif, no stylesheets), that is stateless (no cookies), bandwidth inefficient (no consistent connection, TCP only), non-interactive (no java or plugin architecture, just helper apps), insecure (no SSL, passwords passed base64encoded) with a toy protocol that can't even automatically validate link consistency.

To paraphrase: ``When you say that the Web got it right, you must mean that Tim Berners Lee and others just did a better job of putting a lesser technology to more visible and actual use.''

Sometimes, it's all about hitting the "sweet spot". Which, I think, is Tim O'Reilly's point.

Take care,

terry

Showing messages 1 through 23 of 23.

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