A Brief History ofApple Innovation.ppt

* * Wayne Gretzky was once asked why he was so good at hockey. He explained that he skates to where the puck is going to be, not where it is now. Apple embodies that philosophy in the technology world. Apple is disruptive. Usually they don’t invent a technology, but they transform it into something useful or great. Then the rest of the industry follows. * * There were computer kits that one could assemble before the Apple II. But Apple built the first computer that worked right out of the box and looked like a commercial product. The Apple II was the first huge success in personal computing because there were a lot more people interested in writing software than tinkering with hardware. It would be four years before the first serious challenger, the IBM PC, was introduced in 1981. Steve Wozniak’s elegant circuit board design and Steve Jobs’s marketing prowess were the keys to early success. * Apple didn’t invent the graphical user interface; they borrowed the idea from Xerox. However, they perfected it and commercialized it with the Macintosh. Xerox executives never knew what to do with the brilliant work at PARC, and many talented PARC engineers ended up moving to Apple so they could realize their dreams. It would be another 11 years before Microsoft had a functional version of Windows. The all-in-one design of the Macintosh was also groundbreaking, with its 3.5 inch floppy drive and the use of a mouse. * Years before this became the standard practice, Apple labeled its ports so you would know what to connect to what. And when you plugged it in, the devices worked properly without additional configuration. Apple invented plug and play. Trying to get a mouse or printer connected to an early Windows PC was an exercise in futility that people jokingly called “plug and pray!” Apple’s early marketing slogan, “It just works!” was actually true. * Apple computers were networkable right from the start using AppleTalk. You could share files and print to a network printer in