<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Heh, I didn’t say the iPhone wasn’t an innovation; I actually said it was the kind of innovation that only a big company could pull off. The prior art that failed in the marketplace more or less reinforces this point. <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The airplane was an innovation regardless of who invented it; I tend to lean toward DaVinci on that question. <br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Jul 4, 2018, at 4:32 PM, Craig Partridge <<a href="mailto:craig@tereschau.net" class="">craig@tereschau.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">I'm sorry, but my immediate reaction is that by this logic, the airplane was not an innovation because, when the Wright brothers invented it, they created a device that, using modest horsepower, could move a single human being a short distance and since they already sold bicycles (which achieve similar goals), they hadn't innovated. That said, thank you for the pointers -- I'll go do some reading and see if I'm converted to your point of view.<br class=""><br class="">Craig</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 1:23 PM, Richard Bennett <span dir="ltr" class=""><<a href="mailto:richard@bennett.com" target="_blank" class="">richard@bennett.com</a>></span> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word;line-break:after-white-space" class="">With the iPod, Apple sold people on carrying a highly portable computer around with them everywhere they went. It had a screen, a UI, and an earpiece and the ability to run a very limited set of programs. It also had a rudimentary networking capability, limited to short periods of connection via USB. <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">iPod became iPhone with the addition of a microphone, a radio, and a somewhat more capable operating system. With the expansion of iTunes to include apps, you got the whole banana.<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The iPhone was therefore an incremental enhancement of two of Apple’s existing products, a portable one and a network-based feeder system. It’s hard to see two dudes in a garage pulling something like this off. </div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div></font></span><div class=""><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888" class="">RB</font></span><div class=""><div class="h5"><br class=""><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Jul 3, 2018, at 9:29 PM, Dave Crocker <<a href="mailto:dhc2@dcrocker.net" target="_blank" class="">dhc2@dcrocker.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="m_-220640618318263197Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">The research on innovation very clearly shows that significant, game <br class="">changing inventions almost always come from big companies. The myth of <br class="">two dudes in a garage ignores the fact that it takes big money to take <br class="">big risks.<br class=""><br class="">Apple succeeded with the iPhone while Handspring and Nokia failed in <br class="">large part because of the music infrastructure the company had built <br class="">around the iPod, another second or third mover that succeeded where more <br class="">ad hoc MP3 players had failed.<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class="">This casts things as either or, which is in line with how the thread has <br class="">gone, but probably misses a basic distinction, namely basic innovation <br class="">from what I'll call scaling innovation.<br class=""><br class="">Creation of the basic capability versus delivering a version of the <br class="">capability that gains widespread success. The latter is not a 'mere'.<br class=""><br class="">Being able to get the balance of features, costs, marketing and sales <br class="">choices just right is, obviously, not obvious. But it is quite <br class="">different from what we often call 'technological breakthrough'.<br class=""><br class="">d/<br class="">-- <br class="">Dave Crocker<br class="">Brandenburg InternetWorking<br class=""><a href="http://bbiw.net/" target="_blank" class="">bbiw.net</a><br class="">_______<br class="">internet-history mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org" target="_blank" class="">internet-history@postel.org</a><br class=""><a href="http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history" target="_blank" class="">http://mailman.postel.org/<wbr class="">mailman/listinfo/internet-<wbr class="">history</a><br class="">Contact <a href="mailto:list-owner@postel.org" target="_blank" class="">list-owner@postel.org</a> for assistance.<br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></div><span class=""><div class="">
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