News Apple iPad Air and new Retina iPad mini unveiled

Who needs apps when you have a full Flash-capable, WebGL-capable browser?

 

Exactly, they do tend to get App-happy but in most cases they just aren't needed 😉

 

Ha ha.

So they weren't the first company to make serious money out of digital music distribution?

They weren't the first company to have mass adoption of a capacitive touch 'large screen' (at the time) mobile phone?

They weren't the first company to adopt glass and aluminium for mass market manufacturing?

They weren't the first company to develop a gesture based user friendly mobile operating system?

They weren't the first company to make serious money out of mobility focussed digital software distribution?

They weren't the first company to introduce a user friendly, all day usable, capacitive touch screen tablet?

They weren't the first company to bake usable and reliable high DPI capabilities into their operating system? (This is one of many many little things that Apple have done before anyone else. They are at the forefront of dropping legacy crap and introducing the new. Not first at everything, but first at many.)

There's LOTs of things that Apple didn't do first, but to say they have never done anything before anyone else is quite simply incorrect.

Sure you can throw stones at Apple and say the iPad wasn't the first tablet etc, but boy was it the first usable and user friendly tablet. Everything that came before it was a dog.

 

They are still the only company who posts figures for there Digital distribution btw.

Question, Who was the first then to mass market with a large screen touch device. I know IBM made there ipaq in 1994 but was it ever released to the mass market?

3rd question no idea if its true or not, Can not say I remember another product.

4th they were the first to mass market with such a thing, Cornwell Uni made the first actual one in the late 90s.

5th That could be debated to the cows come home, Id suggest they were the first to reach the mass market with a tablet and still are the go too for many users, They were not the first tablet but they were so poor im not sure companys would like them been classed as such.

Do not own OSX or have used it so can not say, On the phones and tablets at least the Retina works fine makes text alot sharper in high resolution devices.

 

1st 4th 5th is google search time ( Might bother to search it eventually). 3rd as ive said I have no idea would love to know though.

 

I'd like to see your products/evidence for disclaiming Guinevere's statements, Gareth? Some are bound to be contentious, and really revolving around what we define mass market adoption/sales as.

From my perspective, Apple take ideas and concepts from wherever they find them, polish them and spit out a product that works. Taking the case of the iPhone, we did have previous "smartphones", but I can't think of any that combined the capacitive touch, large glass display and lack of buttons in to a single product. I remember (fondly) the Sony Ericsson P1 as a prime example of what smartphones used to be like, and then the iPhone came along.

 

Well, I can make a stab...


So they weren't the first company to make serious money out of digital music distribution?
This has to refer to the iTunes Store, which opened in ?2003. From memory, at that time there was very little out there in terms of legitimate, paid for distribution, with most digital music being acquired via less legal means.

They weren't the first company to have mass adoption of a capacitive touch 'large screen' (at the time) mobile phone?
Can only mean the iPhone. I really can't think of a device that did this beforehand - everything prior was resistive touch (usually stylus driven), and had plenty of buttons as well (usually a full keypad). The iPhone was the start of the glass front, handful of buttons and capacitive technology (noting that Apple didn't invent capacitive!).

They weren't the first company to adopt glass and aluminium for mass market manufacturing?
Guessing unibody MacBook Pros here, based on monocoque techniques first used in airplanes (i.e.: loading through external skin, rather than internal support structures). This is pretty hard to prove, but a Google for "first unibody computer" consistently comes back with the MacBook Pro, which was using the alu/glass approach.

They weren't the first company to develop a gesture based user friendly mobile operating system?
iOS. However, arguments can be made for Palm etc. (or even Apple Newton?), but then it hinges on the "user friendly" aspect. I had a Sony palm device, and dear lord was it a pain in the rear.

They weren't the first company to make serious money out of mobility focussed digital software distribution?
App Store. Yes, Apple were there first, but we're restricting use to "mobility focussed" - digital software distribution has been around donkeys years. However, I think Apple may well have been first to hit upon the App Store method of curation and also sheer profit.

They weren't the first company to introduce a user friendly, all day usable, capacitive touch screen tablet?
Again, we're giving Apple a win by applying caveats. Yes, they did come up with the first capacitive touch screen tablet, but the tablet form factor had been around a lot longer. Apple re-invented it with modern technology.

They weren't the first company to bake usable and reliable high DPI capabilities into their operating system? (This is one of many many little things that Apple have done before anyone else. They are at the forefront of dropping legacy crap and introducing the new. Not first at everything, but first at many.)
I'd award Apple a point here. Windows is still terrible at high DPI, whereas OS X does quite a reasonable job. Note, not a perfect job. However, willing to listen if some other OS did it first?

 

Oh, I'd totally forgotten the LG Prada - I knew somebody with one, and I remember it flying out of a 3rd storey window due to frustration (okay, they had a short temper). With the Prada, I remember rumours of a lawsuit against Apple that came to nothing - indeed, that Apple had prototype iPhones from 2005 (revealed in the Samsung lawsuit). That said, you're right, LG did beat Apple to the punch with that one in terms of launch - no idea which went in to R&D first though.

Alu & glass I assumed computers was intended, otherwise we could take a trip in to the world of architecture or whatever. I think this is a case of selective choice of words - Apple probably were the first to use "aluminium AND glass" in a laptop, but obviously both had been used separately before.

As for PalmOS...oh dear. Really? I remember trying to take notes on the damn thing, and swearing at its inability to work out my handwriting, which I swear was following the silly rules!

For Canonical, that's kind of my point, it's again careful use of words in the original post (mobility focussed) that lets Apple get a "win". Does then fit with my logic as to how Apple work - take an idea and make it better/slightly different.

Linux DPI? Do tell, I'm interested!

Oh, completely missed that FrontPath. What the hell is it? Capacitive touch? Resistive? But again, the caveats have emerged, particularly "All day" - the FrontPath stuff I can find indicates only 3 hours on battery.

 

Ahhh, the Palm 3C. I settled on a Sony Clié NZ90 in sliver. It was incredibly well built, and swish as hell, but limited by the OS to be honest. I've still got it, just needs a new battery.

 

I think what makes the apple products different is that it combines all of them into one product. It combined a mass of revolutionary ideas admittedly some from other companies into a new device. Sure people had aluminium devices and some had touchscreens, but not many had both.

 

Heh. Last time I changed the DPI in Windows on a hi-res, hi-PPI laptop, it made the text huge , but the images were the same size. It made everything feel "ugly".

However, my solution was to turn down the resolution. Not the ideal solution, yes, but it "made everything look good".

Now, I have an HTPC with Linux installed. The keyboard has a trackball instead of a touchpad, but feels GREAT on a lap! (Older PS2 keyboard, only place you might get it is eBay. Sejin Electron Inc 3wr-140) As for the DPI? Well, it made the interface still "beautiful" 10 feet away, and it allowed for less precision on hitting the buttons, while still getting 1080p.

(Then again, most DEs require several images from 16*16, all the way up to 256*256 icons. So there's that.

 

Ipad air seems a good upgrade to the lineup not sure if it's enough to warrant upgrading from my 4th gen tho.

At the end of the day does it matter who did it first it doesn't guarantee success. Apple did set the benchmark for a lot of products, they also showed people where willing to spend on quality. As a company that almost went under it was simply in the right place at the right time, I wonder if Microsoft ever regrets it's investment.

 

Wanted a Newton, but of course it was unaffordable so I started with a PalmPilot Personal in a nice black leather filofax-like cover (sequel to the PalmPilot 500, and its brother the PalmPilot Pro to the 1000). Then moved to the PalmPilot 3C, then the PalmPilot Tungsten with the slide-out design. Then I tried finding something a bit more tablet-ish before tablets even existed as such, like the Siemens SimPad with Windows CE --but that was simply not viable enough to even work.

Then I switched to a (second-hand) Motion Computing LE1600 Windows XP Tablet which worked rather well, slow boot times, short battery life and weight notwithstanding --and the rather touch-unfriendly interface. I modded it with Yahoo Widgets Informer, Samurize and Rocketdock and thus created a smartphone-like springboard before iOS and Android even hit the scene...

When the iPhone came out (and yes, I had the LG Prada before that for a while, but always came back to my Motorola Razr) I switched to the iPhone 3G --later the iPhone 4.

Since then, the Surface RT --what my Windows XP tablet should have been-- and the Lumia 920.

EDIT: In fairness to Apple, the iPhone was pretty much already leaked by the time the LG Prada come along. Everybody knew it was coming and what it would look like. To me the Prada felt like a pre-emptive move of an iPhone clone. In terms of functionality it was nice, but basically just a dumbphone with touch screen. No email, no full-fledged web browser.

 

I assure you the reason other companies didn't create a device as successful as the iphone was not because of morals. They just simply didn't have the capability or the will to do it.