What’s Innovation?

From a Facebook wall-conversation (Nick Swenson):

I said that mainly cause your points fall a lot in line with what Steve Jobs and other Apple lovers keep saying. You must at least realize that.

But I’m not sure how Apple is particularly innovative. All they ever do is stick a nice UI on technologies that have already been around. It works well on the mindless masses, who go “ooooh pretty pictures,” but frankly, Apple scares me. They keep taking powers away from consumers and giving it the media producers. I believe this far outweighs any innovation they’ve made UI/integration wise. I’m going to have to agree with Google: “don’t be evil”

What is going to take it’s place? The Ipad? Things like the Ipad? I just don’t see that happening. I’m curious, what do you mean by “not mattering?”

And my response:

I can’t say anything about supposed “Apple lovers,” but my points are in line with what Steve Jobs keeps saying because we’re both right.

I’m not really sure how you can look at the Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad (yes, all of them) and cite any of them for lacking innovation. I suppose if you think the only thing that’s innovative is the actual advent of some technology that’s not actually used for anything but a white-paper, sure, Apple’s not innovative. But that’s not how I look at innovation. I think innovation is taking that technology that no one else knew how to use and building something with it that changes how we live and work. That’s what’s really relevant to people. Not some obscure proof of concept. And in that sense, Apple is not just tremendously innovative, but they’re the *only* ones innovating. Everyone else is just playing catch-up.

(Case in point: do you think Xerox is innovative for inventing the GUI and mouse, or is Apple innovative for knowing why it’d change the world?)

Your attitude toward “the mindless masses” is offensive. You call them mindless because they’re not nerds who want to spend their time deciphering shitty, obscure user interfaces so they can feel accomplished. They’re real people, with real lives. Apple’s products appeal to the “mindless masses” because they make the technology disappear and focus on what you can actually do with it. *That’s* what real technology innovation is about.

Who gives a fuck about multi-touch or 4G or processors or RAM or specs? What matters is a 93 year old woman who’s never touched a computer before flipping through photos on an iPad without any instruction.

Who gives a fuck about lofty industry phrases like “platform openness” and a bunch of nerds throwing their arms up — like you are — about “control” being taken away from consumers? Consumers don’t want control. What matters is a bunch of normal, middle-aged women talking and getting excited about what new apps they found for their iPhones, because they don’t have to worry about “installations” and “licenses” and every other piece of bullshit/complexity/fear that results in 99.99% of computer users not touching a single piece of third-party software.

What matters is hearing an awesome song in the mall and, in seconds, having that song in your iPod library so you can listen to it on the way home in the car.

We’re engineers, yes. But we don’t do what we do for ourselves or other engineers. We do it for real, normal people. People whose lives we can make better.

At least that’s why I do my job.