I think the guys at Cupertino create beautiful products that everyone want to have.

Absolutely. Their neurotic attention to design aesthetics is largely unmatched.

The thing about innovation is that it is really a perception issue.

True. Which is why it is important to separate spin (perception) from reality.

But who created the first viable App Store that now everyone wants to emulate?

I can't think of prior instances of the app store... though you'd be hard-pressed to call one-click online software stores innovative.

And selling music online? Do you know who is the biggest retailer of music?

Back in the last century, MP3.com was huge in this area, they even had a huge IPO by those days' standards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3.com).

Bless Cupertino for delivering massively to its shareholders, but what they do is innovation-lite.

The secret lesson in this: look at others' good ideas and figure out why they failed (e.g., maybe they were under-capitalized). Then go do it better. But don't build on the quicksand of mediocre ideas; no amount of execution will save you.

saidi

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 3:33 AM, Philip Musyoki <pmusyoki@gmail.com> wrote:
I think the guys at Cupertino create beautiful products that everyone want to have. I doubt you can say the same about Dell or HP. The thing about innovation is that it is really a perception issue. It is like saying who first inveted the Graphical user Interface; was it Microsoft, Apple, Xerox (PARC) or even the Pentagon (DARPA). But the first useful GPU is associated wit the Macintosh. So take you pick.

i guess now there are very few things left to innovate. You take what is already there and make it better, and make people want to have it. If you manage to do that, you may end up being called innovative even if you are not.

Talkign about innovation, have you noticed everyone now is in a rush to create an App store? from Google, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, Samsung and even Safaricom. But who created the first viable App Store that now everyone wants to emulate?

And selling music online? Do you know who is the biggest retailer of music?

Are these innovations? Can't really say but their success speak for themselves.


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