How Steve Jobs 'out-Japanned' Japan

[imageWIS]

Originally Posted by eg1

Wasn't the whole icon-driven GUI a Xerox PARC thing?

Um, yes, 30 years ago, and really more regarding the original Apple / Mac OS, and through that MS Windows.

 

[A Y]

Originally Posted by Pantisocrat

So both research and manufacturing are outsourced. This is in contrast to many Asian mfgs. who vertically integrated research, design and manufacturing. Just how long do you think Apple can keep this up? How is IBM doing these days?

Wait, what? Research is not being outsourced, and if anything, the trend in computer engineering has been to push the US to more of a pure research model, because so many things can be done as software IP these days: you can literally have two guys in a garage with nothing but a desktop computer design world-class hardware. To manufacture prototypes, just email your files and send a bunch of money to companies specialized for the particular things you want, and you can have your device very quickly.

On the pointy side of the technology stick, Intel and IBM's semiconductor manufacturing still leads the world, and they make the fastest CPUs in the world. On the other end of the scale, some of the most power-efficient CPUs are designed by American companies. Apple's pushed Asian manufacturing processes pretty hard as well, and their mechanical packaging expertise is nothing to sneeze at.

People seem to equate innovation with higher spec numbers or some cool new feature that seems to exist for its own sake, but ignore or discount the daunting engineering it takes to not only integrate a bunch of disparate technologies so they work well together in a way that's useful to most people, but also to design and manufacture a mechanical package that puts it all together cleanly at a price point. Just look at the really lame attempts at tablets more than a year after Apple introduced the iPad: they're mostly a joke.

What the Asians can do well is pump out lots of hardware at a consistently high quality at the lowest costs, but that doesn't mean they have a monopoly on R&D.

--Andre

 

[Fraiche]

Apple's "innovation" lies in their simplication.

Everything may have already existed but they were the one's who knew what fat to trim.

 

[holymadness]

Originally Posted by Pantisocrat

If you really want to talk about "domestic innovation" then you should move to Mountain View or Sunnyvale and live there for a while too. Your domestic innovators are mostly foreign born, many of Asian extraction. So both research and manufacturing are outsourced. This is in contrast to many Asian mfgs. who vertically integrated research, design and manufacturing. Just how long do you think Apple can keep this up? How is IBM doing these days?
Only whites count as American. Good to know.

 

[Fred49]

"You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor"”Xerox"”who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin' in to steal a TV set. Only when you get there, you realize I got there first. And you're yelling: 'That's not fair! I wanted to try and steal it first!' You're too late."