Wearable Tech. Apple still stinging from Newton

[Suff]

Once upon a time Apple was a go ahead company who thought they could do another "Apple" in the computing world and take it by storm with another ground breaking product. That was 1987 and the product was the Apple Newton.

The combination of Microsoft winning the OS wars with IBM in the 1990's followed by a massive and unexpected internet boom which mandated a cheap and cheerful PC to read your mail and the news; almost destroyed Apple. Newton was abandoned and Microsoft had to invest in Apple shares to ensure it still had a competitor in the PC arena to stop all the antitrust charges.

At the time two things were missing.

Java as the ubiquitous programming language
Linux (and other free Unix clones), as the operating system

Also extremely fast processors which sip power and produce games quality graphics on a handheld didn't go amiss either.

Having learned their lesson the hard way, the iPod and iPhone were neither new nor groundbreaking technology. However they were flashy, innovative in control and management software and they were relatively mature in ease of use. At least for the novice new entrant users.

So Apple brings out an expensive, flashy and usable piece of equipment in a fragmented and warring market. The rest of the market has done the groudbreaking work and Apple just had to add the polish.

They did one seriously innovative thing. They created the Apple App Store. They gave away the development kit and based it on standard technologies which zillions of developers were already using on the web.

So Apple creates the iPod/iPhone phenomena.

Then they create the iPad. I recall a son of a friend saying "It's just a large iPod I can't put in my pocket". That remains true today, but he was thinking about what was and not what was to be. He was not thinking that his iMAC would become redundant for 50% of the work he did on it; by the iPad.

Was the iPad groundbreaking? Not at all. It was mature technology even then and they just improved it and standardised it and made it pretty. What sold the iPad was the hundreds of millions of people who already had either iPods or iPhones who would be able to use it relatively easily and a massive apple app store which would also work on the iPad.

So we come to wearable tech. Watches, bands, glasses, other widgets designed for people to wear them and interact with them to bring this digital world we live in into use when we are walking, running or simply don't have a hand free to take the phone/tablet/music player out of the pocket.

Where is Apple? Conspicuously absent. As wearable tech evolves and the early adopters get burned and the tech changes with the clothes, because wearable tech is highly linked to fashion, Apple sits and thinks and waits for it to become accepted. Then they will produce some glitzy new product. It will be pretty, it will be usable, but not anything which you could not do with any other product. But it will pretty, it will be expensive and 100 million developers will produce 500 million applications for it you never knew you really needed until you saw them....

Apple will never forget their "Newton" moment, when the Apple fell on their head and nearly crushed them into the ground. It is obvious to those who know and who remember.

Isn't it odd that those who are charged with telling us this stuff like to forget.....

[TheOstrich]

Innovation is a risky business ...... and companies are answerable to shareholders.

Wearable technology like Google Glasses - I don't know. They're now beginning to tout wearable tech that monitors your heath and reports directly to your medic. It's a bridge too far for this old bird. I haven't even mastered texting yet!