innovation
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Apple named most innovative company in the world for 9th consecutive year
A recent survey of 1,500 senior executives conducted by The Boston Consulting Group has named Apple the most innovative company in the world nine years running. The findings capture executives' views of their own innovation plans, as well as their opinions of other companies' innovation track records. As in past surveys, the 2013 results reveal the 50 companies that executives rank as the most innovative, weighted to incorporate relative three-year shareholder returns, revenue growth and margin growth. It has been suggested that Apple has lost its innovative edge. Some would dismiss the iPhone 5s as it so closely resembles the iPhone 5. In truth, Apple always challenges itself to push the envelope. Apple CEO Tim Cook understands that to survive in tech means the constant pursuit of innovation. In a recent Businessweek profile on Apple's executive team, Cook pointed to Nokia as a reminder "to everyone in business that you have to keep innovating and that to not innovate is to die." The pundits may not appreciate Apple's innovations, but senior executives from hundreds of companies across the globe sure seem to.
Google fuels the entrepreneurial spirit by launching Tech Hub Network in seven cities
Innovation, man. You either have it, or you don't. And, in the case of Google, you stand to gain all sorts of long-tail revenue if you help fuel the aforesaid fire. Google for Entrepreneurs was just the start, and now the company is branching out to partner with existing technology hubs and incubation labs across the world. Rather than crafting hubs of its own, Google is announcing a Tech Hub Network that'll launch with seven partners, initially located in North America. 1871 (Chicago), American Underground (Durham), Coco (Minneapolis), Communitech (Waterloo), Galvanize (Denver), Grand Circus (Detroit) and Nashville Entrepreneur Center (Nashville) have made the starting lineup, and if you're near one, you might want to consider dropping by. Google is committing to "providing each hub with financial support alongside access to Google technology, platforms and mentors, and ensuring that entrepreneurs at these hubs have access to an even larger network of startups." And, of course, being that much closer to Google Ventures can't hurt.
AT&T opens second Foundry lab in Plano, Texas, hopes to foster the 'Internet of Things'
Carriers need to innovate their way to bigger profits, so AT&T has been opening up foundries -- startup incubators that try and recreate the spirit of Bell Labs. While the company already has a software-focused facility in Plano, 'Ma Bell has now rented the office space directly above it for the follow-up. The second Texas facility will concentrate on hardware for the "Internet of Things," packing gear like a faraday cage, fast prototyping equipment and 3D printers. Aspiring inventors should just bear in mind that whatever you go there to build will probably need to sell a wireless plan alongside -- after all, AT&T is paying the bills.
On Apple, the new iPhones and points made and missed
As you might expect, overnight some smart folks wrote some smart posts about the smart things going on in Cupertino (our wrap up of the event can be found here). Yesterday I went on local TV to talk about the 5c and 5s, and as I drove away I realized that I hadn't had time to chat about CoreMotion, new camera modes and a half dozen other things Apple announced yesterday. To a casual observer, iPhones are improving in an iterative fashion. If you look a bit deeper and consider Apple's business, its purpose and its plans -- well, things are much more exciting than most people realize. Apple keeps integrating hardware and software in key ways that leave competitors behind. It's OK if most people don't "get it." But I do take exception when otherwise smart people begin grousing about how "Apple hasn't done anything new since Steve Jobs died" because that is both false and misleading. First of all, neither invention nor innovation began with Steve Jobs and it didn't die with him. Apple's core reason for existing is to make the best products it can. Everything I saw yesterday was an affirmation of this. Cost Speculation was the "c" stood for "cheap", but the iPhone 5c is not a cheap phone. As Ben Thompson points out, it's actually a bit pricey, especially compared to some Android models. Ben goes on to explain that Apple will sell a bunch of these, and the 4S is now the "cheap" iPhone. Beyond that, he makes an excellent point about the underlying message from yesterday's dog-and-pony show: Apple is still cool. The "c" stands for colors, and Apple has another cool product that comes in colors called the iPod -- a device that became revolutionary when coupled with the iTunes Music Store. As Wall Street, jaded tech writers and the like keep worrying about whether Apple has lost its mojo, Tim Cook made it abundantly clear that Apple isn't giving up ground in the cool department by kicking off the event with the iTunes Music Festival wrap-up and ending the event with several songs from Elvis Costello. How is having music in your DNA not cool, again? This is why people stand in line for the iPhone. Samsung can poke fun all it wants, but it's the sort of eat-your-heart-out parody that makes me feel badly for them, like the kid who wants to be cool and tries to make himself cool by making fun of other people. Beyond "cool" (whatever it means), what about features? Tim Cook explicitly said Apple doesn't cram features into a phone; the alternative approach would harken back to the boxed software days when applications like Microsoft Money and Intuit's Quicken would battle with bullet-point feature sets in an effort to woo customers. I'd like to think we're beyond this, but the market still rewards the "L@@K NEW!" mentality of feature-hungry bargain-basement consumers -- aka the "lowest common denominator." Is it any wonder Android's market share is larger than iPhone? Of course not, just as the streets are not teeming with BMWs or Mercedes. The point is, if you want a great experience, you buy Apple. If you just want features, choose your poison. And what about that experience? Simplicity Small touches mean everything when a human uses something. Apple excels at the small touches that add up to make something special. The 5s has an amazing camera, a way to track motion without nuking the battery, a new-to-Apple security technology, and an insanely powerful processor. What that means to, say, my parents, is that they don't have to worry about washed out or miscolored pictures when using the flash. My mom can probably skip that Fitbit upgrade she was pondering. The passcode-entry aggravation that might have her avoiding any on-device security can be simplified and superseded with a single finger's touch. And while they won't be gaming soon, the fluidity and speed of the OS and apps will be a noticeable improvement (they are using a 4S currently). Federico Viticci wrote a lengthy piece on these small touches, and how Apple is able to integrate hardware and software in such a way that the device has a seamless operation you just don't get with most Android devices. Consider, as he does, the Touch ID technology. Apple integrated this to make the experience for customers a better one than they had before. As Viticci points out, when you add iBeacons microlocation awareness into the mix, things get really interesting and even more seamless. With those two building blocks, you can verify who you are and your device can interact with objects in real space. This tech has a while to go before customers experience it, but when they do I predict there will be very little head-scratching and confusion and more embracing of the "Internet of things" -- all of which is designed to make our lives better, simpler. I'm sure some tech writers will look at Touch ID as a gimmick (or worse, uncritically repeat absurdities about "Apple is sending your fingerprints to the NSA!" -- assuming Touch ID works through the same local tech as device passcodes, security maven Rich Mogull explains that Apple's passcodes and print data are hashed in a way that prevents their extraction). Worse, they will see it as a useless feature added on in desperation. Fact is, for the average consumer who tires of constantly typing in passwords, it will be a welcome relief. And for the millions of iPhone users who don't have a passcode at all, it will be a major security upgrade. If you were holding out for NFC, you're not getting it. NFC is hardly "simple" and support isn't going to be forthcoming. While I'm sure Apple has toyed with it, the company has made the decision that it doesn't line up with its core values (yet) and so it wasn't in the new iPhones. Until that tech becomes easier to use or more prevalent, I wouldn't expect to see it in Apple's gear. Right and Wrong-Thinking The bottom line here, and one people miss all the time, is that Apple designs products for people. Not pundits or analysts or even day traders. As Tron "fights for the users," so does Apple. You may feel that Apple deliberately creates "lock-in" to the iOS/Mac/iTunes ecosystem as a business strategy, but frankly, my Ogg Vorbis loving friends out there (you know who you are), every smart consumer electronics business is rapidly trying to do the same thing. Windows is not Mac is not Chrome OS is not Kindle, etc. You opt into an ecosystem and largely, through convenience or inertia if not through conscious choice, that's where you stay. I know the world my kids grow up in will be less interoperable when it comes to media, but more interoperable when it comes to services -- and I think I'm OK with that. When pundits try to push a point about "feature sets," however, they are missing the entire point. Witness this post by Doc Searls called "Apple Rot" wherein he tries to make the "Apple is doomed!" argument that has played out for many years (not coincidentally, immediately after Steve Jobs died, but certainly frequently brought up long before then). Notice how Doc's bullet points are remarkably like the feature bullets on the back of a box of Quicken from 1999? Doc is worried that Apple is merely updating things incrementally, and despite not using the worn-out term "breakthrough product" (whatever that means), that's exactly what he feels is missing. Apple isn't innovating. Apple is just iterating. Well, yes. But do we worry Mercedes will disappear because the company has yet to introduce a flying car? What's the last category-redefining washing machine you couldn't wait to try? And yet people still buy them -- the mind boggles. Doc is falling into the feature trap. I'm not sure if he missed Tim Cook's note on features, but the point of Apple is to make great products. If that means the iPhone just needs some spiffing up, because adding 30 more things (20 of which aren't ready for prime time) would be a waste to consumers, then so be it. My parents don't care about NFC. They don't want to wave their hands over their phone like an idiot to go to another photo. They sure as heck don't need a "phablet" device that covers half their face. Apple isn't about cramming features into phones -- nor is it about creating a nonsensical new product simply because it is new. iWatch? Give me a break. It's not time yet. The Delta Where Apple ends and Android (and others) begin has to do with the will of the creators. I honestly get the feeling certain features in Android devices are just trial balloons. And while Windows Phone seems compelling (I would personally be willing to try one for a while), stuff like a 41MP camera in a phone is mere gimmickry. Apple does things because the creators in the company and the management of the company want to do them, and ultimately because the guiding principle behind Apple is to make the experience for the consumer, on balance, better. That doesn't mean catering to every single need of every single human on Earth, although surely that is what Wall Street and pundits have come to expect. The delta in the jaded expectations of writers and the joy of consumers is vast. I have witnessed people jumping from feature phone to iPhone or cheap Android to iDevice and see the delight in their lives as a result. They don't wax poetic about the A5 processor, they don't rave about the Retina screen, they just know "it's so much easier to do X with this iPhone." Look, I suffered through a lot of interfaces in my life. Remember DOS? Remember GEOS? Remember Windows Me? Never mind all the software we consumers are forced to suffer through today in the form of lazy website designs and poorly-planned enterprise applications. We do suffer them because we have to. Apple is aware that people do not have to suffer through a phone's interface. They have choices. Typically the limiting factor for consumers all over the world is money. On this, Apple is unwilling to compromise, and that's why it remains the King of Consumer Experiences. Steve Jobs cooked that into the DNA of the company, and Tim Cook -- a leader in his own right -- continues to carry that banner. And by the way, Apple will be making three iPhones in 10 colors, so how's that for choice? Say what you want about Cook's leadership, cite all the market share analysis you like, but unless you're pointing to a product with a more integrated, easier-to-use experience than what Apple offers, you are pointing in the wrong direction. In my humble opinion, Apple is going in the right direction.
Reality Absorption Field: Apple Shrugged
Like other public companies, Apple is judged by financial analysts on its ability to maintain and improve unit volumes and revenues, market share and margins. But since it would be difficult for Apple to substantially increase its share and profitability in many of its categories, what Apple is really judged on at a macro level is its ability to disrupt, launch and capture the value in product categories. In this, the company isn't quite alone; Amazon and Google, for example, are also expected to be disruptive, but each flanks Apple. Since it has to run on the tight margins of an Internet retailer, the expectations of Amazon are not as broad as they are for Apple. Its current obsession, for example, seems to be trying to kill Netflix. On the other hand, much has been made of Google's moonshots such as the self-driving car (and surely many more behind lab doors). These represent amazing, even inspiring, research efforts that may demonstrate Google's commitment to innovation to investors. However, it's impossible to tell when they may have an impact on Google's short-term financial performance. Apple, on the other hand, is expected to not only invent or reinvent new categories, but ones that represent the next great successive growth curve for the company. At the risk of comical understatement, this is not so easy. Take, for example, the alleged Apple watch. Wearables appear to be the only way to do to the smartphone what the smartphone did to the PC; this explains Google's interest in the market. The manifest engineering challenges include design, input methods and a long battery life. But Apple must go beyond that to satisfy the Street. It must show that this is a market the size of the next iPod, iPhone or iPad and that it can enter it with a product that carries comparable margins. Furthermore, it must show that it can reinvent the rules of wrist wear to the point where it can defend an opportunity that will attract a host of competitors from out of the woodwork. It would not be in Apple's nature to shy from such a challenge with a product, but it also would not be in Apple's nature to ship that product before it's right. This is not to say that Apple doesn't substantially revise products after their release, e.g., AppleTV, but it's rare that the company is expected to get something right on the third try as in Microsoft lore. Unfortunately, the Street hates that as well. You know how Apple keeps missing shipping dates for its watch and TV? And how those are the only two game-changing products it could possibly be working on? Of course you don't. But some of financial analysts seem to believe both of those scenarios to be true. Management teams should be scrutinized, but there will certainly be no letting up on fundamental skepticism regarding Tim Cook's team until it can create the next sea change opportunity for Apple. To stay focused on the products that have meant success for the past 15 years, Apple must show the apathy of the honey badger when it comes to stock price changes driven by such skepticism while its financial results are sound. Until then, the most reassurance one can derive is in the imminent Mac Pro. While it is in a category that will make a seismic difference to Apple's revenue, the scope and ambition of its redesign is a signal that Apple intends to keep capturing imaginations as it captures revenue. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Apple falls on Forbes list of innovative companies
Since 2011, Forbes has issued the Most Innovative Companies List, ranking the top 100 of what it considers to be the companies that benefit both from existing innovations and what's anticipated to happen in the future. In 2011, Apple was in the No. 5 spot. Last year, the company fell to No. 26. This year, Forbes ranked the company at No. 79. This ranking follows criticism of Apple in the press for not introducing completely new product categories every few years. In 2007, the company jump-started the smartphone revolution with the iPhone; in 2010, it did it again with the iPad. Bruce Upbin of Forbes was quoted as saying, "Apple's already done so much. What could they do that would top the iPhone and iPad?" Google also fell in the rankings, from No. 7 in 2011 to No. 24 last year and down to No. 47 in 2013. Who topped the list? Salesforce.com, which has been in the No. 1 spot for three years. Apple shouldn't feel too bad; Microsoft and Intel, which both spend incredible amounts of money on research and development, have never made the Forbes list.
The Tattered Notebook: It's OK if EverQuest Next is a niche game
I'd like to open today's column with my favorite quote from SOE's EverQuest Next reveal: "Enough is enough. Enough of the same game already. It's time to get some new ideas into the genre." Now, you would think that this sort of unambiguous mission statement would be picked up on and understood by everyone who has even a passing interest in EverQuest Next. After all, the quote rolled off franchise director Dave Georgeson's tongue during the first two minutes of the EQN reveal speech. And if it wasn't clear from that opening monologue that EQN isn't going to be your daddy's combat lobby, the rest of the reveals that focused largely on the game world, the building tools, and a wee bit of the ol' ultraviolence should have been the second clue.
The Soapbox: A new mode of interaction
Video games are, by definition, an interactive medium. The entire point of playing a video game is that you get to explore the world, talk to the characters, slay the monsters, and reap the rewards. And you do all this with a keyboard and mouse or controller or futuristic headset or whatever. Players are in charge; players create their own experience. Every video game ever released hinges on player interaction to tell its story. Without the player, a game's inhabitants are meaningless pixels guarding empty checkpoints, staggering through the woods with a groan, or walking in endless circles selling bread. In order for a game to function, players must be able to interact with it. The only question is how.
Jeff Bezos to open Center for Innovation this fall, aims to inspire young would-be entrepreneurs
What's an e-commerce tycoon to do after funding everything from nuclear fusion startups to commercial spaceflight ventures? Why, help develop a museum exhibit to inspire young folks and teach them about innovation, of course. After more than two years of development and $10 million from Jeff Bezos' own pockets, the Museum of History and Industry will open the doors to the Bezos Center for Innovation on October 12th. Not only does the center aim to help visitors learn about "the importance of innovation" through interactive exhibits, but it will toot Seattle's horn for being "the birthplace of so many trailblazing companies." If you can't make it to The Emerald City, we're sure Bezos has a few learning alternatives in mind.
On Apple's 'inability to innovate'
During WWDC 2013, Apple's Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller presided over a sneak peek of Apple's upcoming Mac Pro and boldly exclaimed, "Can't innovate anymore, my ass!" Schiller's off-the-cuff remark was in response to the increasing number of tech pundits who seem to think that Apple has lost its inability to innovate, now that Steve Jobs is no longer running the show. Of course, anyone who has followed Apple over the years knows that the "Apple can't innovate anymore!" refrain is nothing new. Indeed, every time Apple releases a new product, critics are quick to proclaim that Apple has peaked. "What can follow the iPod?" they asked. "Okay, the iPhone is amazing, but what's next?" they impatiently wondered. "The iPad is a game changer, but Apple is now out of ideas!" they declared. What's funny is that Apple, more so than most any other company, has a proven track record of innovation that stretches back for over a decade. Yet, curiously, Apple has seemingly garnered no credit amongst tech pundits when it comes to its current ability to innovate. At the same time, tech pundits are all too eager to predict Apple's demise and levy the tech crown upon whatever tech company happens to challenging Apple at the moment. Remember when the Palm Pre was going to steal the iPhone's thunder? Highlighting the shockingly absurd and oftentimes foolish sentiments that frequently swirl over Apple, John Kirk over at Techpinions has assembled a goldmine of blurbs that unabashedly paint Apple as a "has-been" company. One such blurb comes courtesy of David Goldman of CNN Money who wrote the following this past June: Apple will hold its first major product event in nine months on Monday, a stunning gap for a company that relies on regularly impressing customers with new innovations. I always find it funny when folks think the Apple ship is sinking simply because there isn't an annual iPhone-level product introduction. A revolutionary device like the iPhone doesn't come along every single year, which is why such products are so transformative when they are introduced. Gauging Apple's ability to innovate within the timeframe of a lone year is anything but instructive. The gap between the iPod and iPhone introductions, for example, was more than five years. The gap between the iPhone and iPad introductions was three years. And now people are going nuts because nine months go by without a brand-new shiny device? Addressing this very point, Kirk references an old and on-point Jobs quote about catching the waves of technology. Things happen fairly slowly, you know. They do. Those waves of technology, you can see them way before they happen, and you just have to choose wisely which ones you're going to surf. If you choose unwisely, then you can waste a lot of energy, but if you choose wisely, it actually unfolds fairly slowly. It takes years. Instant movies. Instant shopping. TV on demand. So much is immediately accessible these days. What's more, many great tech companies are working furiously to give consumers even faster access to the goods and services they crave. Amazon's ongoing efforts to establish same-day shipping comes to mind. This "I want it now" attitude, or perhaps expectation, has clearly seeped into the psyche of tech pundits when it comes to Apple. The reality, though, is that true innovation doesn't happen in an instant. As intimated by Jobs, it takes time for all of the pieces of the innovation puzzle to coalesce. And the funny thing is, even when Apple does come out with a game-changing device like the iPod or the iPhone, the very same critics that are quick to declare that Apple can't innovate are just as quick to predict that said products are nothing special and will flop in the marketplace. Sometimes it seems that Apple is quick to be painted with the "can't innovate anymore" brush simply because they don't come out and say what products they're working on months in advance. I'll close with this. Here's a quick look at some of the products Apple released within the last 12 months. An iPhone 5 An iPad mini A fourth-gen iPad New MacBook Airs with almost double the battery life A revamped iMac Not bad for a company, which if you believe the headlines, is plummeting into mediocrity.
Editorial: The subtexts of Apple's WWDC keynote
Monday's much-anticipated WWDC keynote was Apple's most crucial presentation in years. AAPL stock has fallen 37 percent over nine months. Android has grown into a monstrous competing platform, differentiating along the lines of lower cost, variety of devices and appealing operating-system features. In this sharp-elbowed environment, Apple has been widely accused of losing its innovation mojo, and of over-reaching with premium product concepts and prices, in what is increasingly viewed as a commodity tech category. Facing an audience of developers whose businesses depend on Apple's continued success, especially in the mobile realm, the company's keynote mission was not only to excite buzz around new products, but to establish clarity around the company's mission, values and key competitive advantages. Did it succeed?
The Daily Grind: Have MMOs gone as far as they can go?
Do you ever feel like MMOs have gone as far as they can go? I don't mean to be a downer, especially on a Monday, but occasionally I'll play a single-player title that knocks my socks off and -- as an incurable MMO fan -- the first thing I think of is could/should this be made into an MMO? And usually the answer to that question is no, it can't be done because of technical limitations, latency, or lack of gamer interest. Over the weekend I played Mirror's Edge, a first-person platforming thing that I missed way back in 2009. I fell in love with the free-running, the expansive environments, and the vertigo-inducing perspectives and I realized, sadly, that all of those things and many more simply aren't in the cards for MMOs. I know that not everything has to be an MMO, but I'd love to experience Mirror's Edge with a persistent world behind it, as well as share it with my MMO-playing buddies. What about you, Massively readers? Do you think MMOs have gone as far as they can go, or do you think we're in store for anything new and exciting beyond continual refinements to the existing formula? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
On the eve of WWDC: What are Apple's three greatest innovations?
An awful lot has been written recently about whether Apple is has lost its spark. "Does Apple have an innovation problem?" asks the Washington Post. Forbes claims to lay out "Apple's innovation problem", although that piece is so muddled and lacking in specific details I came away more confused than illuminated. "Apple hasn't created an innovative product in years", claims inc.com. "Has Apple's innovation engine stalled?" asks USA Today. Fox News tells us "Why Apple is ailing." The Telegraph reports that "three in four investors [say Apple is] losing [its] innovative edge." There are hundreds, if not thousands, of posts like this, and many of them come from the mainstream media -- so it's possible that this is becoming, or is already, the view of the man in the street. It seems Apple has been stung by some of this criticism; Tim Cook took the time to reassure investors that "we're unrivalled in innovation," as reported by ZDNet. Phil Schiller slammed Android in an interview with the WSJ just hours before Samsung launched the Galaxy S4. And the "Why iPhone?" page added to apple.com has a tinge of defensiveness to it, at least to my eyes. Other people agree; Apple was named "most innovative company" in a wide-ranging poll late last year, for example. John Gruber wrote about how strong narratives can displace the facts. I think this is particularly true in tech reporting, which (let's be honest) isn't all that dramatic a lot of the time. As the sublime @NextTechBlog put it: "REVIEW: New Telephone Is A Black Rectangle That Provides Phone Calls, Text Messages, The Internet, And Other Applications, Plus A Camera" and "I'm Replacing My Old, Black Rectangle With This Brand New, Black Rectangle Because This One Is New". That's a pretty neat meta-story for almost every smartphone launch ever. You and I like to obsess over the details, sure; but most people don't care that much. People like you and I read tech blogs. To hook those other people in, though, the mainstream media needs a little drama, and if it doesn't have much to work with; well, it has to sex up whatever it can lay its hands on. Hence, Gruber suggests, the virulence of the "Samsung steals Apple's crown" meme. I think there's a related meme afoot also, though. It comes in two parts. Firstly, the idea that Apple under Jobs was an innovating powerhouse, constantly turning markets upside down or creating them from whole cloth with unexpected new gadgets. And secondly, that those days ended with Jobs's passing, and that Apple's innovating days are over. I think this is pretty risible, but to explain why I'm going to have to dig a bit deeper into what innovation, exactly. For Apple's critics, such as those writing the articles I linked to above, "innovation" seems to be defined mostly as "entering or creating new markets" and Apple's innovation showreel is the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Consider the Fox News piece, which seems to be pretty typical to me: Since October the price of Apple shares have fallen from $700 to about $425. No one should be surprised -- the company has been misstepping for a long time. Without the genius of Steve Jobs for neat, wholly-new products, it is going to take tougher management, and a change in the company's core business strategy to match its past record of profitability. Apple's remarkable success was premised on being first and better with a succession of new products, dating back to the earliest computers to smartphones and tablets. It was greatly aided by a superior operating system, which provided a more elegant and user friendly experience than rival Microsoft offerings, and the fact Apple both wrote the software and designed its products. This thinking leads to people pondering "what fields could Apple enter next" and in turns leads to people calling for Apple to prove its innovation credentials by releasing a smartwatch or a television, to name but two of the Rumours That Will Not Die. However, I strongly believe this view of 'innovation' is reductionist -- I think concentrating on innovation at the product level glosses over too many details. If we're really going to seriously look at whether Apple has become less innovative we're going to have to be a bit more clear about exactly what we're discussing. Defining innovation Let's start by considering what we mean by innovation in the first place. The concept of innovation is a bit like art: everyone knows it when they see it, but ask five people to define it precisely and you'll get a dozen different answers. The Mirriam-Webster Dictionary defines innovation as "the introduction of something new; or a new idea, method, or device" and defines innovate as "to introduce as or as if new". Merely defining it as "making changes", however, is rather shallow and overly broad. When Apple released speed-bumped MacBook Pros in February, for example it had certainly changed something old into something new; but few would put that in the same sort of class as the release of the iPad mini. It seems to me that if we're to debate the merits of innovations then we're going to need a framework to weigh up the qualities and quantities of very different kinds of changes. When I first started drafting this post, the Wikipedia page quoted a set of multi-faceted definitions I liked; they've been removed now by some capricious editor so I'll summarise them here instead: Innovation as novelty: Most people would agree that for something to innovative it has to be new in some way, either in and of itself or the application of an old idea in a new way or a new context. Innovation as change: The most potent innovations provoke changes, perhaps opening new doors for the user to work with. In the best cases, they might change whole industries, creating new product sectors or new ways of thinking that entirely replace the old. Or to put it another way: these are the changes that a company will be remembered for in fifty years. Innovation as advantage: Assuming anyone actually wants the innovation, then it seems reasonable to conclude that it'll convince people to buy the innovating product. Hence the company will sell more stuff than it would have done so otherwise. The most significant innovations, I claim, will be those that score highly on all three of these fronts. Bubbling under: candidates that didn't make the cut There were a number of possible things I considered for inclusion in this post but ruled out for various reasons. I dismissed the iPhone, iPod, and so forth because I believe it's more interesting to say "no whole products." To say "the iPhone is innovative" is, to my mind, reductionist and frankly not that interesting. I want to dig into which specific bits of it are innovative, and why. So I ruled out entire products and instead chose to focus more closely on the individual features of products. I ruled out the graphical user interfaces, something which certainly caused industry change and Apple certainly played a crucial role in the history of. As with entire products, I think it's perhaps a little sweeping to count "GUIs" as one innovation -- I think it would be more interesting to dig deeper into individual elements. However, I must confess that most of the real cutting edge early stuff predates me; my involvement in computing only goes back to the mid '80s and I don't want to overreach by claiming I'm familiar enough to be a good judge of what is "most innovative" from that era. If your memory is longer than mine, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments on what you think might be the biggest innovations from Apple of that era. I'm going to confine the scope of my article to the last fifteen years or so. I've also ruled out iOS itself (or, as we called it when it first arrived, "iPhone OS"). Like Harry McCracken, I also think the first iPhone owes a significant debt to Palm OS: the full-screen apps and app launcher comprised of a regular grid of icons are both very similar concepts, and notably different to how Apple designed the Newton. To my mind, the greatest innovation iOS offered was how it brought a large number of features together and made them work in a brilliantly accessible way; but I think that accomplishment, as significant as it was, is eclipsed by the things I list below. So here's what I did come up with, after some hard thought and bouncing ideas around in the TUAW newsroom. Third place: Retina/HiDPI displays Apple introduced the "Retina display" with the iPhone 4 in June 2010, since when it's rolled it out across various iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks. Defining "retina" as "a screen where the pixels are too small to be individually perceptible at typical usage distance" (which is a claim that stands up to scientific scrutiny), these screens were immediately very popular, offering a degree of visual fidelity that few had seen before. Now it must be noted that this was not the first ultra-high-density display in the world. I remember salivating over the IBM T220, a 21" monitor from 2001 with a breathtaking 3840×2400 screen and a $22,000 price tag. At 200 pixels-per-inch, at a distance of 17" it was a true "retina" display, with a pixel density only slightly below today's MacBook Pro with Retina display. The T220's resolution even tops the now-cutting-edge 4K format. It required three DVI cables to drive it to an even remotely sensible refresh rate of 41 Hz, because of the sheer data rate necessary to keep this monstrous screen fed. It was sold to a handful of customers, mostly for use in medical imaging, physics labs, and other specialised applications. Still, this behemoth is (clearly!) in quite a different category to a smartphone retailing for under $1000. The Retina display's innovation was not just skin deep, either. Quadrupling the number of pixels on the display means you also need four times the graphics memory and four times the bandwidth, just to maintain performance parity; then you also need a correspondingly more powerful graphics chip, and you have to do all that without compromising battery life, or weight, or making a device you can't sell for a reasonable price tag. This is why many of Apple's devices like the space-compromised iPad mini don't yet have retina displays. Apple was the first to climb this technological mountain -- but far from the last. Since the iPhone 4's release in 2010, no high-end smartphone has dared to arrive without a similar pixelicious screen. As Apple has spread Retina-quality (or HiDPI) screens beyond smartphones and into tablets and laptops, so other manufacturers have followed also, with devices like the Chromebook Pixel arriving with rMBP-class screens. So, to sum up: novel? Certainly in terms of consumer level devices. Change? A big fat check. Advantage? Difficult to gauge -- sales of Retina-equipped devices are high, for sure, but then the iPhone and iPad were already wildly successful before they were introduced. I think it's hard to imagine that retina displays didn't help, however. Second place: Capacitive multitouch I think the iPhone was a good deal less innovative than many people believe. You might have seen this snarky image by Josh Helfferich doing the rounds on forums and Twitter, purporting to show how the iPhone changed the phone market. The inconvenient truth it glosses over is that the iPhone's basic design -- a black touchscreen slab -- was far from unheard of at the time. To name just one example, consider the HTC TyTN, which was the smartphone I had before my first iPhone, and predates the latter by six months. But there was one piece missing, one thing no-one else had, and it was key to massively increasing the appeal of this design with consumers. The clue is in the two elements of that HTC that are radically different from the iPhone: it has a stylus, and it has a physical keyboard. It needed both of those because it lacked a screen that worked when you touched it with a fingertip. The TyTN's resistive touchscreen worked only on pressure, and needed the precision of the device's stylus to function. To my mind, the capacitive multitouch screen was by far the most innovative feature Apple brought to the market with the first iPhone, enabling an intuitive UX built around touch, swipe, and natural gestures such as pinch-to-zoom. There were compromises though. Fingers splodge over a much larger screen area than a tiny stylus tip, so on-screen buttons had to get bigger to compensate. That meant screen size had to increase too, by quite a lot. iPhone early adopters will probably remember friends asking how we carried phones that were "so damned big", a puzzling attitude now in this world of 5.5 inch smartphones -- but it made sense in the context of a time when for many years the fashion was for ever-smaller phones. (An aside. A common meme in the Appleverse is that the original iPhone 3.5" screen size was some sort of platonic ideal for one-handed use, as proposed by Dustin Curtis. I think this is bunk, if only because it only works for people with fairly large hands and quite flexible thumb joints, which can only be some small proportion of Apple's desired target audience for the device. I think it's much more likely that the way Apple designed the screen was as follows: (1) work out the minimum width that can hold a QWERTY keyboard and still have the keys wide enough to be typeable on (2) multiply width by 1.5, desired screen aspect ratio, to calculate height (3) There is no step three. Look at an iPhone keyboard some time -- it's hard to imagine typing on it if those keys were even just a few pixels narrower. Just a personal theory. Any Apple engineers reading this are quite welcome to let me know off-the-record if I'm correct.) Novel? I've never encountered any prior devices that used capacitive touch, so if anything did exist I'm pretty sure it was very obscure. Change? This is where Hefferich's picture does have a point -- although all-screen smartphones were not unheard of before the iPhone, they were rare. Now there's very few models that aren't cut from that cloth. So yes. Advantage? Arguably, this was the iPhone's biggest unique selling point -- and Apple has sold nearly half a billion of them now, plus the iPad. I think that's a yes too. First place: Microtransactions Now for the big one. For decades, e-commerce experts were crying out for some feasible way to charge consumers for small amounts ($1, $2 and such) without being eaten alive by the credit card fees and transaction costs in the process. What new forms of commerce could be enabled, they would wonder, if this was achievable? We could unbundle albums, and sell consumers individual songs. We could sell them individual TV show episodes instead of box sets. We could unlock all sorts of interesting economic models that simply cannot exist with microtransactions. Then Apple quietly built exactly that for music, turning that industry on its head in the process, and then changed everything again by rolling it out for apps. Think of the impact that this has had. Without microtransactions, the App Store would be far less vibrant; with no middle ground between free and (say) $10, there would be orders of magnitude less developer interest. That bracket between free and how much apps used to cost before the App Store is where almost all of the interesting stuff is. And that's before we talk about the revolution in the music industry, now shifting to an almost entirely digital model, powered by microtransactions, and other digital content distribution channels, undergoing the same seismic shift. Novel? I think so -- I cannot find any substantial adoption of microtransaction commerce before iTunes, with the arguable exception of e-cash systems which skirt the issue of card fees by loading a smart card with some sort of alternate currency. Not really the same thing, in my opinion. Change? Without a doubt. Microtransactions enabled the app market, which everyone has copied, and dramatically changed how we can buy other kinds of digital content. Advantage? Content lock-in to the vibrant App Store ecosystem is probably Apple's greatest asset in terms of encouraging customer loyalty at phone contract re-up time. I'd say for sure this is a compelling advantage. So why does Apple bore people now? Wall Street seems to define Apple's innovation according to a simple narrative: Apple enters an existing product category (portable music players, smartphones, tablet PCs), turns it upside down, redefines it, and a few years later, ends up owning it. So all Wall Street wants to see is Apple doing that again and again, to new categories: televisions, smart watches, who knows what else. But when we examine Apple's track record in more granular terms, I think we come to the conclusion that genuine, feature-level innovation is very hard and consequently very rare. I don't think there's any evidence at all that Apple has become less innovative. Sure, Apple hasn't produced anything breathtaking new for a little while now, but when we look back over the last fifteen or so years, it's always a few years between the real big-hitting innovations anyway. So something's probably on its way -- many of you said as much in our recent TUAW poll. But! These are only my opinions, and this is a highly subjective topic. Perhaps you disagree entirely with how I've defined innovation, or perhaps you agree with my framework but think I'm an idiot for overlooking Feature X. Comments are open. Have at it!
Daily iPhone App: House of the Dead Overkill - The Lost Reels is gross but innovative
There are some really excellent apps arriving on the App Store tonight (including Firaxis' great Haunted Hollow), but before we tackle that new crop, I did want to mention this app, released last week by Sega. House of the Dead, if you're not aware, is an arcade shooting game, where you take on a whole haunted house full of zombies and demons with a light gun (and usually a friend, if you're playing in an arcade with quarters). House of the Dead: Overkill was a version of the game that came to Nintendo's Wii system a little while back, and this version, sub-subtitled The Lost Reels, is a revamp of that game, made specifically for iOS devices. Now, this game is gross, and if you've not into gory zombies and bad guys (and girls), then you probably won't get much out of this -- like I said, stay tuned for Haunted Hollow and a few other big releases tonight. But the main reason I wanted to mention this one is that it has one of the best control schemes for a first-person shooter on the App Store I've ever seen. Most FPS games don't end up quite making the jump over to a touchscreen interface without stumbling. There's two routes devs have gone so far: Either they just go all-in on clumsy and not-so-precise virtual controls, or they try something really nuts (Zynga's The Drowning and Industrial Toys' Morning Star are two upcoming FPSes with innovative control schemes). House of the Dead does have a pretty lame virtual control scheme, if you want to try things that way, but the game also has an accelerator-based control scheme, and that one's really fun. You tilt your iDevice around to guide your target, tap to fire, and the whole thing actually feels very intuitive. It's one of the best ways to play a game like this I've ever seen implemented on iOS. Unfortunately, the rest of the game is kind of a mess. To stay under the download size limit, Sega has cut off a lot of the in-game dialogue and cutscenes that made the original Overkill as charming as it was, and while the game costs $4.99, you actually have to buy extra levels and content via in-app purchase -- why Sega chose to do these things the way they did, I have no idea. Honestly, I can't really recommend this one at full price, though it's worth a try for a buck or two. All that said, however, that control scheme is very impressive. If someone can lift that scheme out of this game and put it in a game worth playing, I'd really appreciate that. House of the Dead: Overkill: The Lost Reels is available right now.
This is the Modem World: Nothing is new. It's been done before.
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. It's funny how things come back around. When I was growing up in the '80s, music was looking back at the '50s and '60s and re-creating it into some of the best bands the world has seen. Paul Weller wouldn't have become the songwriter he is had he not grown up on the Beatles. Likewise, Paul McCartney wouldn't have become the genius that he is had he not been raised on Little Richard. And now, bands are looking back at the '80s and re-doing that explosive era -- with both good and bad results that I will not go into here lest I make new enemies. Culture is cyclical, and we're beginning to see that technology is bound to follow that same rinse-and-repeat formula.
Samsung: battle with Apple 'a loss' for innovation
Samsung Executive Vice President David Eun has told All Things D's Kara Swisher that the legal battles between his company and Apple have been "a loss" for innovation. He made the comments at the D: Dive Into Media conference on Monday. He did acknowledge that Samsung makes money off of every iPhone sold, but Eun wasn't legally able to expand on his thoughts about lawsuits between the two companies around the globe as most are ongoing. However, his views echo some tech pundit's views that legal battles over patents hurt innovation. Others, of course, say patents spur innovation as companies are forced to come up with new ways of doing things. Interested readers can view the interview here.
HTC exec lauds licensing agreement with Apple
Ray Yam is the president of HTC China, and he recently said in an interview with the Economic Observer of China that the company's recent licensing agreement with Apple will "pay off" sometime this new year in 2013. HTC and Apple, you may remember, finally settled a longtime patent disagreement back in November, and Yam says the company is ready and eager to move on. In the interview, he called the lawsuits "a sword hanging over our heads," and said that being free of the disagreement will open up the company to "take broader steps" and "put more energy into innovation." Analysts agree, saying that HTC's access to the licensed part of Apple's patent library means the company has a much better chance at navigating the market of new smartphones going forward. Previously, says one analyst, the company would have to have spent money on workarounds and coming up with alternative solutions to these patents, but now, HTC can move forward onto new innovations rather than trying to remake the past. That's good news for HTC, obviously, and it's good news even for us Apple fans, as it means more competition on innovations in the future. Apple certainly hasn't shared every secret it knows, but at least this agreement means an end to the back-and-forth accusations this case had running in the past. [via BGR]
MMObility: Why the closing of Glitch matters
When it was announced that Glitch was closing, I felt a blend of shock and sadness. Glitch is one of my favorite MMOs, but it's special for a number of reasons. The game achieved a lot in a crowded market that is filled with the same gameplay, same lore, and same stock characters that we have seen for years, and it achieved all of this within a Flash-based browser environment. The official announcement gave us a lot of clues as to what happened, but it looks like the money was just not enough to keep the game afloat. It's also very possible that the money was enough, but just barely. Running a business is hard, and running an MMO that is so unique and unusual can be the same as living paycheck to paycheck. It's stressful and scary when the future is never certain... sometimes it's easier to call it quits.
Apple remains atop list of innovative companies
For three years in a row now, Apple has landed on top of a list of most innovative companies in the world, according to consulting firm Booz and Company. The list was compiled from a survey of more than 700 companies, and Apple came out number one, with Google and 3M following close behind. "Innovative" is obviously a very subjective word in this case -- some could argue that Apple innovates on ideas originated by other people and companies, while others might argue that with a new model for each of its devices nearly every year, this award is well-deserved. But either way, no one can argue that Apple is pushing forward extremely quickly, both in the field of mobile devices and in the traditional desktop space. Apple of course spends a huge amount of money on research and development, but it turns out that's not all you need to be innovative. Microsoft actually tops the list in R&D spending on software, and it was ranked as the sixth most innovative company on the list. Again, "innovation" is relatively subjective, and certainly Microsoft believes it gets plenty of benefits from spending so much on R&D. But Apple has done a lot of great things to get to where it is now, and being efficient and wise about its choices around innovation is definitely one of them.
Apple named "most innovative" company three years running
Global management consulting firm Booz & Co. named Apple the world's most innovative company for the third year in a row. The report notes that Apple spent less than its rivals on R&D and still trumped companies like Amazon, Google and IBM because of how it invested its money. ...it is not how much companies spend on research and development that determines success - what really matters is how those R&D funds are invested in talent, process and tools. Apple kept its top spot over #2 Google and #3 3M, both of which also defended their spots successfully for the third year in a row. One of the biggest movers was Apple rival Samsung, which climbed from #9 in 2010 to #7 in 2011 and finally to #4 this year. You can read more about Booz & Co.'s 2012 Global Innovation 1000 study on the firm's website. You can also download the full PDF report, watch a video discussion of the results from the study's authors and browse through other relevant materials. [Via Fortune's Apple 2.0]
