The Economist on Apple, the iPhone, and Innovation

portscan writes "This week's Economist has a special report on Apple, Inc. and innovation. 'The fourth lesson from Apple is to "fail wisely". The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple's original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both times, Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again. Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple. The wider lesson is not to stigmatize failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.' There is also an article on the business of the iPhone and the future of the company. "

Comments

Apples the king at failing

[Richard McBeef]

I mean, hell, they've been a doomed company for what 10 years now? 12?

Not to stigmatize failure but to tolerate it

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep telling that to my father.

Makes sense!

[Shky]

I tried telling my parents when I was in high school that those were *wise* failures they were seeing on the report cards. If only this article had been around back then...

Not sure why they brought the ROKR into this

[raitchison]

The Motorla ROKR was designed to fail with the arbitrary 100 song capacity limit.

The last thing apple wanted was a successful ROKR that might have cannibalized sales from the iPOD and the Apple branded music phone that everybody knew would come out eventually.

If the ROKR were an Apple product, you could make a case that Apple "failed", in this case Apple succeeded, they held off the market until they could debut their own device that makes them money.

Re:Fail wisely, OK

[timeOday]

Not only that, but I don't believe the iPhone is a response to the failure of the Rokkr (as claimed by the summary). I doubt Apple invested much in the Rokkr (since there was nothing special about it), rather Apple simply licenced some trademarks to Motorolla - i.e. Apple using Motorolla as an ATM.

On the other hand, the Newton was a pretty innovative failure, from which lessons were doubtless learned.

Re:Appeared to have failed?

[Weedlekin]

"The only NeXT technology that appears in Apple computers is BSD."

Well, there's Interface Builder. They got that from NeXT. But apart from Interface Builder and BSD, there are no NeXT technologies whatsoever in current Apple computers. Except of course for Cocoa, which is heavily based on NextStep/OpenStep, hence the fact that it has all those classes with names prefixed by "NS". But with the exception of BSD, Interface Builder, and Cocoa, there are no NeXT technologies in Apple computers at all. Unless of course you count Objective-C as a "technology", which NeXt licensed for programming in NeXTStep and OpenStep while Macs were being programmed in Pascal and C++. But I agree that apart from BSD, Interface Builder, Cocoa, and Objective-C, Apple computers are completely devoid of NeXT technologies. OK, I'll admit that Portable Distributed Objects also came from NeXT. I'll give way on that one. But if you discount BSD, Interface Builder, Cocoa, Objective-C, and PDO, current Apple computers are totally and completely free from NeXT technologies. Utterly without _anything_ from NeXT. Honestly. I mean, WebObjects, which is admittedly a NeXT technology, isn't even installed on most Macs, so _the majority_ of Macs are free from it. Well, they are. Really. So I can, without any pangs of conscience, categorically state that, with the exception of...

Over hyped? No, genuine excitement.

[Gary W. Longsine]

Apple really hasn't done much hyping of the iPhone, if you think about it.

• January 10, 2007: MacWorld 2007 keynote, introduces iPhone
• Apple.com iPhone web site
• A couple interviews showing the phone, letting reporters hold it for a couple minutes
• A very few magazine articles with access to Steve Jobs and the iPhone
• Super Bowl "Hello" iPhone commercial
• June 3, 2007: Apple starts running four new commercials that demonstrate features of the phone

Really, this is far, far less promotion than you see for typical new products. Heck, hamburgers at Burger King get more hype than this, by far, in a six month period. Even though they probably eat a whole bunch of them, bloggers don't get excited and blog about it.

Apple's biggest contribution to the "hype" came from keeping the project secret until it was up to a point where it could be demonstrated, and then keeping their mouths shut after the MacWorld Keynote, and refusing to answer questions about anything that wasn't demonstrated by Steve Jobs on January 10.

What we're seeing in the media, blogs, and in meatspace is, I think, genuine excitement. People can look at the information that's available, which is I grant you incomplete, but they can also look at the phone in their hand. They can tell immediately that several things they don't like about their phone are fixed by the iPhone. Visual Voicemail is damned exciting. A phone that can access the internet simply and easily is exciting. The Google Maps commercial makes girls squeel and giggle with delight when they see the pins drop... (try it sometime.) I don't think it's hype. I think it's genuine interest.