Apple And The Art of Innovation
A Links entry from Friday, June 8, 2007Apple And The Art of Innovation
The cover story of this month’s print edition of The Economist is all about Apple (see above title). The article is okay, but for all of the great covers that they have, this has got to be the least artistic and least innovative of any of them. Oh, and the thing about the previously failed attempt at a music phone is not true, all Apple did was license a mobile-version of their iTunes software for Motorola.
Here’s a good excerpt:
Apple illustrates the importance of designing new products around the needs of the user, not the demands of the technology. Too many technology firms think that clever innards are enough to sell their products, resulting in gizmos designed by engineers for engineers. Apple has consistently combined clever technology with simplicity and ease of use. The iPod was not the first digital-music player, but it was the first to make transferring and organising music, and buying it online, easy enough for almost anyone to have a go.
And on a separate note, even though Bill Gates might be the more philanthropic of the two, Steve Jobs is still way better. “To the best of my knowledge, in the last decade or more, Jobs has not spoken up on any social or political issue he believes in—with the exception of admitting he’s a big Bob Dylan fan.”
Way better.
Alex Taylor
Bryan, We’ve been having this argument for almost a year now, so I think we should settle it right here, right now. As I’ve said before, Apple is better than Microsoft is a totally viable argument. Steve Jobs is better than Bill Gates isn’t. Microsoft’s practices are extremely shady and questionable, and Bill Gates is to be blamed for a lot of that. Apple is much more ethical in its business practices, and Steve Jobs might be to credit for that. So he has the moral high ground on that. But that’s completely overshadowed by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which is a larger and better-funded World Health Organisation than the actual one, as well as UNICEF, Medecins Sans Frontieres, and all the others. The foundation is one of the greatest forces for good in the world. And Bill Gates’ generosity is the engine behind it.
Steve Jobs is cooler than Bill Gates. He wears rectangle-framed glasses and has a better fashion sense. He says he’s a Bob Dylan fan (although that’s hardly his only social statement; the core of Mac’s OS is called Darwin). That’s all really cool. Bill Gates is a dork.
Would that matter if you were dying of Malaria in Bangladesh? Bill Gates is a better man.
Bryan Klausmeyer
I think that the way you’re seeing Bill Gates is like through a magnifying glass through a key hole. It’s nice and all that he donates money to poor people, but the way he earns his money is completely illegitimate. The anticompetitive tactics used by Microsoft are so heinous, and the company so spread out across all forms of electronic entertainment, that they surely deserve to be broken up. He’s a modern day robber baron and, while similar ones, like Andrew Carnegie, donated mass amounts of their profits to charities, museums, libraries, etc., the way they earned it was through profiteering, pilfering, strong-arming and other (less than legal) means.
If anything, Bill Gates demonstrates the disastrous potential of capitalism at it’s worst, and we only justify his outrageous exploitation of consumers because he gives a fraction of his treasure to poor people.
I choose to root for the underdog because Apple is the only company that poses a quasi-serious threat to Microsoft dominance.
Bryan Klausmeyer
bryklaus@umich.edu
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