Remember those times when we didn’t have the Universal Serial Bus? Maybe not. It was awful. We had weird connectors only used by specific stuff like the parallel port, the serial port. We had to be careful about these fucking IRQ conflicts with for example, sound cards. A la mano, with jumpers on the motherboard. Ugh.
At these times, nobody –at least in Europe- was using Personal Computers. Later came the USB port, and then the USB 2 port. These made computers so much more easier to plug devices in, making them more accessible to people, who would use more and more computers and a little by a little –with the help of others widespread technologies like TCP/IP, APIC– it would change the world and make computers easier and easier to use to the point where they are everywhere.
What I want to say is this: innovation is not innovation unless it changes the life of a large number of people. Innovation is innovation when it’s cheap and makes it through the life of everyone without them even noticing it that much.
*idea*
I know, it’s playing on words but what we call innovation is useless if it needs 20 years to make it to the market or when it’s just in the hands of a few lucky –dare I say wealthy?- nerds. It’s not innovation, it’s research.
Innovation needs to spread out and find as much people possible. You might say that I’m wrong and that Apple is a walled garden and that it works for them. But it’s not really true:
They got back in the game by switching from ppc to x86 architecture, more generic and widespread. And cheaper.
They made the iPod and iTunes available on the OS touching hundreds of millions of people, Windows (I remember being shocked about it, so not Apple). They aggressively market the mp3 player with the cheap Shuffle/Nano version.
By switching to a standard PC architecture they made their machine totally compatible, like 100% compatible to almost anything, from windows software (Bootcamp) to memory sticks and stuff. Cheaper for users. Cheaper for them.
But they totally made their mobile platform closed as hell, as they did with the Mac in the 90s. And fucking expensive. Are you surprised that Google Android, with its openness and constant improvements through cheaper phones is totally hot right now or that these cheap, opened netbooks sales went from 0 to 18% of the entire computer market share in only three years?
I am not. Microsoft did the same in the 90s with the openness of the beige PC. Bye Commodore, Atari and all. MS had the same aura that Google has now, if you remember. Oh, sure it seems less slick when MS/Google are updating stuff because they fail all the time. But they increment all the time too, with hundreds of partners while with Apple it’s either perfect (iPhone) or a massive fail (AppleTV).
A closed platform is not an innovation. It’s research with users paying a lot to beta test it.
Trying to bring that research to the masses, being agnostic and just trying to make it better to the most people possible, is IMO innovation. It took MS and his partners 25 years from Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 to have an OS working on millions of different configuration and giving people almost anything they want in 2010 with an OS. It took a year and half for Google to make their Android system as widespread and functional as possible. It’s not over but they already are going so fast that it’s hard to be sure that they’re going to fail. This little droid is everywhere like the butterfly was, once.
Business wise the Big Three are doing fine, with different approach from selling hardware (Apple) to selling services and data (Google). But one thing is sure:
“Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries — but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.”
Billou, aka Bill Gates.
ps: Enough with your Android tablet prototypes. I want them, under 300 thanks. And please hurry the fuck up.