Megol (golem960.delete@this.gmail.c) on September 29, 2013 6:35 am wrote:
> Aluminium cases laptops existed at a time when they were _laptops_. Not that aluminum is the best
> material for portable machines - properly engineered magnesium chassis with ABS+PC/aluminum/carbon
> reinforced plastic shells are structurally and thermally preferable. Chicklet keys was introduced
> by Sony. "Retina" screens was provided by IBM as an option for Thinkpads. Super-thin laptops was available
> from a lot of sources long before Apple tried it, one example I've owned myself is the Toshiba Portege
> that was thinner than the Macbook Air long before it existed. The same with the smartphone, long before
> the Iphone I used a smartphone with touch interface and it even had an app store.

Well, yes. It's not that Apple invents things from scratch that never existed
before in any form. It's more that they take ideas which exist in low-volume
niche products and make them accessible to a high-volume market, at an acceptable
(though many argue still too high) price.

Retina screens as "an option for Thinkpads" is very different from retina screens
on iPads and millions of Macbook Pro's. The iPod wasn't the first portable music
player, but by a combination of excellent design, easy user interface, and clever
deal-making with the music industry, it created a revolution (in the music
industry as well as consumer electronics). The iPhone wasn't the first touchscreen
smartphone, but it was the first one that tens of millions of people would
find to be worth the price. And chiclet keys ... well, I think chiclet keys
kinda suck, but they're an example of something Apple did on all their products,
and everyone else copied blindly.

> There is much fanboyism surrounding Apple products and a that's
> even in otherwise technical articles/discussions.
> E.g. the capacitive finger print reader on the new Iphone that quickly got mythological
> proportions as ("as all knows") standard fingerprint readers are optical and this
> Apple technology couldn't be fooled as it requires a live finger to scan.
> It's just that the standard readers _are_ already capacitive
> and the Apple reader is as easy to fool as other readers.

True enough. But on this technical forum many posters have an equally serious
bias against Apple products, perhaps based on an over-emphasis on technicalities
like benchmark performance, and a tendency to dismiss ease of use, industrial
design, quality manufacturing, and marketing, as trivial issues. Meanwhile the
PC industry is going down the drain, Intel is struggling to figure out a way
into the smartphone/tablet market, and Microsoft is just baffled.