> iMac: 1998. Started a whole breed of computers with fancy physical designs.
What? How many computers are there out there other than the iMac with "fancy physical designs"? The iMac had virtually no impact on the industry.
Your other points are dubious at best. Apple are never first to market with new products, they only ever tweak existing markets and set up hype and an ecosystem around them.
The question is, are there any other markets out there right now that are just on the edge of taking off, that Apple can sneak into?
Take a look at the smartphone and tablet markets and tell me with a straight face that Apple did not turn them upside down. I don't care who was first to enter a market, I just care for the first one to get it right.
Tell me with a straight face that phones would not currently have multi-touch capacitive touchscreens if the iPhone never came out.
Tell me with a straight face that mp3 players would never have taken off without the ipod.
Apple have had a big impact on the market, but most of the time they just release products at a time that the market is changing anyway and then claim to have "invented" all the technology that goes into it.
I'm not sure what your point is. That dell laptops have become thinner over the last 10 years? Or is it that they have been absolutely in no way influenced by the imac?
If I recall, all the whitebox parts makers started making "bondi blue" knockoffs after the iMac came out. The iMac was the first to drop the floppy, and the first to really push USB into the mainstream.
> all the whitebox parts makers started making "bondi blue" knockoffs after the iMac came out.
Yeah, and how long did that "trend" last?
USB was fairly mainstream before the iMac. I don't think I ever saw an iMac in the wild that didn't have an external floppy drive sitting next to it. I've seen computer labs with banks of iMacs and external floppy drives sitting next to them.
That trend lasted for a while, until case manufacturers started copying the G-whatever tower, and then eventually the Mac pro tower. The Shuttle small-form-factor PC I bought in the early 2000's had a Mac-like "candy" design.
>> USB was fairly mainstream before the iMac.
I was Windows 9x user (I left Macs right before Jobs came back) when the iMac came out, and most of the peripherals I was buying were still parallel devices. It wasn't until a lot of peripheral makers realized that one hardware version could sell to multiple platforms that USB really took off.
>> I don't think I ever saw an iMac in the wild that didn't have an external floppy drive
That's not the point. I didn't say that the need for a floppy was obviated by the iMac design, because you always have legacy users. Apple has a history of dropping legacy features in their hardware (VGA, mini-DVI, optical drives, the soon-to-be EOL'ed dock connector) before PC vendors do.
I think you're not looking very closely. Sure, it's all about small details, but a quick and highly unscientific Google image search shows precisely what computers used to look like at the turn of the century:
Exactly. And here we are just ignoring iTunes, for example. I guess one can expect Apple to deliver the TV of the future given all it's been said about it so things will keep coming on a different segment, just like before.
Exactly my thoughts, if any, Apple has spoiled it's users (media mostly tbh) and we are always expecting new changing tech from them. And since that hasn't happen in like 2 years all you read is "Apple is doomed to die"
Original iPod: 2001. Completely destroyed the walkman/cd player industry.
iPhone: 2007. Redefined the mobile phone.
iPad: 2010. Defined what tablets look like.
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How often do you expect one company to completely shake up an entire ecosystem?