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Woz Fears Stifling of Startups Due to Patent Wars
An anonymous reader writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says that Apple and other tech companies' patent hoarding could prevent entrepreneurs doing the same thing that he and Steve Jobs did in starting a computer company in a garage. Woz also says the jury is still out on Tim Cook as the right CEO to lead Apple forward after Steve Jobs."
He still gives Apple a bit of a break: "'Apple is the good guy on the block of all of them,' he says. 'It is creating so much and is so successful and it is not just following the formulas of other companies – [Apple is] totally establishing new markets that didn't exist.'"
You haven't seen multi-touch trackpad in other systems because of... PATENTS!
Wait, so did Apple innovate or not? How did they get that (supposed) patent if someone else had done it before?
Expanded the market, perhaps. There were tablets on the market long before the iPad was under development. They just kinda sucked, so there wasn't much demand.
The only tablets I remember before the iPad were laptops with touchscreens. There wasn't anything resembling a consumer focused ultra-portable entertainment hub which is what the iPad is.
iPhone? A polished convergence of the touchscreen PDAs and cell phones, without a stylus.
So in other words quite original. So original and ground backing that it basically revolutionized the mobile market and forced other manufacturers plus Google and Microsoft to scramble to copy the concept
iPod? The first model lacked features (and had less space) compared to its competitors.
But it was sleek, slim, nice to use, and integrated with iTunes. Before the iPod harddisk players were a bit of a non-event. iPod massively expanded that market.
What market did Apple create, other than the App Store, again?
Basically all of the above plus iTunes. Also the MacBook seriously shook up the laptop market hitting a combination of nice features (e.g. decent touchpad, well thought out charger), and a good balance between battery life, performance, looks and cost that no-one else was achieving at the time.