Genuine question.
I know they were the scrappy startup doing different cool things. But, what are the most major innovative things that they introduced, improved or just implemented that either revolutionized, improved or spurred change?
I am aware of the possibility of both fanboys and haters just duking it out below. But there’s always that one guy who has a fkn well-formatted paragraph of gold. I await that guy.
The graphical user interface.
They don’t invent it (xerox PARC did), but Apple correctly identified that the user experience of existing computer systems was holding it back from being a thing everyone owns, and made computers a bad fit for many types of work that seem extremely obvious now (digital media creation particularly)
They did this more or less again with the smartphone: business folks and super nerds were the smartphone market before Apple. Now it’s the average person’s computer.
A million times this. Not only did they popularize the ideas, but MacOS’s UI design was so ahead of its time that it’s barely changed since then. It was by far the most polished operating system at the time. Old Apple actually was innovating while the market was kind of stagnant.
This screenshot was in 2007. The competition was Windows Vista. It’s a night and day difference. I had this version of the iMac at the time and was super impressed, even if I did switch back to Windows a couple of years later. Looking back at it, it still looks quite “modern”.
Well, KDE3 could look cool too.
I’ll admit, back then I really wanted a Mac.
Just after trying to use them a few times I know that behavior is more important than appearance on screenshots. Also such looks exhaust you emotionally.
Wrong wrong wrong. Macontoshs gui was crap and buggy as hell. Every seasoned it expert knew it was a shit lousy interface designed to dupe people into believing it was secure when in fact it proliferated viruses and security holes, and drove the control of computing into an avaricious humanity destroying company culture known as apple. DO NOT EVER PROMOTE THE GUI AS GOOD. ITS CRAP.
No it wasn’t
That has nothing to do with GUI
and i think in general, their attempt to really focus on user experience first always seemed to define their business… trying to make things that people would WANT to use was what made Jobs and Apple stand out… other brands were better known for performance, for example…
Jobs really wanted to make tech usable for the mainstream. Just look at the first iPod all the other MP3 players at the time were for the geeks and music nerds. They were clunky, had ugly geek esthetics and the software was hard to use for most people. And the non techies had no idea where to get mp3s. The iPod together with the iTunes Store really sold the MP3 player to the masses.
Wrong wrong wrong. It was never about ease of use. It was always about taking control away from the user, and hiding authority for control. This kind of deceptive practice has led to what we gave today - cars selling subscription hearing seats. The truth is, the gui was always buggy and a product unfit for its purpose from day one. Apple sold it as a means to get consumers to accept a defective product from the start, perpetuating their ability to always sell updates, forcing consumers to pay for things THEY DO NOT NEED.
Wrong wrong wrong. The graphical user interface is crap and will always be crap. The whole matter of popularity is marketing bunkum. Console command interface was al ways faster and better than any gui for general computing tasks. The gui is fine for office tasks, but shit for everything else. The popularity of the gui today has driven a massive upscale of cruddy bloated virus infected software. The fact that most people now only know gui has meant that control of viruses has slipped away. Had console commands been the mainstay for computing, viruses and security holes would never have been allowed to proliferate as they do today.
The first virus was made in 1986 for IBM personal computers. Nothing is free from computer viruses. Not macOS, not iOS, not Android, not GNU/Linux, not freeBSD, not even an IBM PC from the 80s. All software can be exploited. The only reason GUI software is the most exploited is because it is what people use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_(computer_virus)
GUI is not only intended for office tasks. In fact, I would argue that many office tasks are better suited for command line, but I’ll agree that nobody knows how to do that anymore.
GUI was always best suited for artists. Apple has, for a long time, especially since OSX, been explicit about catering to artists. Can you imagine editing video in a terminal? Or editing a layered image? Or producing music?
While you may be correct I think you’re still missing the point. CLI is for super nerds. While you and I may know how to use it, the average person doesn’t, and is unlikely to put in the effort to learn. That is the innovation that Apple made in bringing computing to the mainstream. It was precisely because people didn’t have to learn how to navigate the CLI environment and instead got an easy point-and-click interface that computers caught on with the public at large, and that gained Apple an absolute ton of cash money and noteriety.
Let me guess, you use arch?
If this guy isn’t rolling his own distro he’s basically a scrub like the rest of us.