alt Hacker News> the "new" Apple where the innovation comes from fine-tuning
That's actually the old Apple. Before the iPhone (and after Jobs' return) it was their standard operation procedure: the iMac was a refined workstation, the AirPort was a refined WiFi router, the Time Machine was a refined NAS, the iPod was a refined MP3 player...
Even after the iPad, they mostly cranked out middling stuff like the airPods, all the way to the Vision. They would take whatever good idea was floating around the hardware market, give it a careful polish, and sell it at twice the price. And there is nothing wrong with that - constantly chasing revolutions is risky (see the Vision).
Replies
greedo • today at 7:28 PM
I'll criticize Apple with the best of them, but AirPods being "middling?"
> the iMac was a refined workstation, the AirPort was a refined WiFi router, the Time Machine was a refined NAS, the iPod was a refined MP3 player...
The word "refined" is doing a lot of work here. Just a few examples:
- The iMac had a design unlike any desktop computer before it.
- While a couple products had come before it, AirPort was the first affordable, mass-market consumer Wi-Fi router.
- The iPod was the first MP3 player to incorporate the then brand new 1.8" Toshiba hard drives that enabled it to have for the time incredible capacity for the package size. And Apple innovated with the click-wheel user interface.
All three of these products most people would see as much more than "refinements" but actually big innovations compared to what was already available in the market.