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Yep, Apple is a success because it takes marketing as seriously as product development. Got to hand it to Cupertino on that count.

MS just doesn't get marketing as well.

yes, NOW aapl is viewed as a marketing wiz company...but only 10 years ago they were the dog of the stock market and coudln't get anything right...microsoft until ~2000 was viewed as THE marketing genious...times have changed, but they are about to change again! viva windows 8, cross-platform os, yes!

Well put. I wonder if MS has figured it out yet. Judging from what I have heard about Win8, I am not so sure. The telling case will be how well the ARM version performs. ARM requires Microsoft to stop building OS designed to be all things to all people all of the time.

They do seem to be rethinking the experience, but also still bent on making the mobile devices work like the PC. Apple has figured out that the mobile experience is quite different and needs to be designed as such. We shall see what MS has learned...

How can Kinnect be the 'best example' when it was developed by an Israeli company with Apple in mind? When Apple dragged their feet on it, only then was it shopped around to Microsoft.

faust4445, on 04 June 2012 - 05:52 AM, said:

Ten years ago was 2002, the iPod was taking over the world and iTunes was saving the music industry.

You have to go back 15 years to the point you are speaking of.

No!
This is like saying that the person who first dragged something along the ground invented the wheel. Microsoft tried to "evolve" the laptop into a tablet by putting a touch screen on it. Apple looked at the tasks that people do and designed a new device that did those thing better. That is innovation!

Phones were the same thing. Microsoft didn't innovate, they strapped their existing tech (aka square peg) into a new need (round hole).

Apple looked at the growth in blackberry usage (an innovation in it's own right) and determined other use cases for mobile devices. It came up with some innovative ways to make those use cases work on a hand held device and REVOLUTIONIZED the smart phone market.

That is innovation.

I'm not sure that Apple's marketing prowess is the reason for the success of it's products. In part, it's Apple's market marketing prowess, but at the heart it's Apple's user-centric vision. Apple seems to come up with new ways for users to interface with the digital future in ways that will capture consumers' imaginations and desire for a richer experience. Realizing that vision is a matter of finding (and in come cases invent or innovate) technologies and integrating them in a beautifully designed and executed product.

Microsoft and most other manufacturers seem to take a top down, technology-driven approach relying not a rich and refined user experience but on tech specs to attempt to capture consumer interest and sales. Sometimes it works, especially with the techie crowd but, for the majority of consumers, it seems that Apple's approach is more compelling.

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The very premise of this article is flawed. Who developed a smartphone OS first, Apple or Microsoft? When phrased that way, the answer is Microsoft. How about a more relevant question like who developed a "mobile" OS first? Well, that sort of conjures up images of the Newton, etc. Similarly, the same would likely apply to the tablet.

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Huh? It was a hack. A re-factored laptop in slate form factor with a stylus and a few simple software hacks doesn't somehow equate to innovation. These hacks were available on the Mac side also (Axiotron modbook anyone?). The weren't successful because the concept wasn't well thought out and the software wasn't optimized for the form factor. I wasn't until Apple demonstrated what a tablet done right could be that anyone had any real interest in a tablet. That's innovation, not marketing.

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On this issue I agree. I'm not sure Microsoft has learned from this lesson. I blame Ballmer.

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Kinect is cool, but it wasn't developed by Microsoft (developed by a small Isreal based company) and it was implemented as a response to the Wii. All the same, Microsoft did "get it right" and latched onto a good idea. Further, they didn't try to push the Windows branding onto a cool new technology.

"Apple has long been portrayed as the technology world's leading innovator, coming up with visionary ideas well before anyone else and creating entire product categories from scratch."

In reality, "Innovation" has nothing to do with "creating entire product categories from scratch".

Here is the definition from a dictionary:
"Innovate: make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products."

This is exactly what Apple does, and what makes them such great innovators.

Poor Microsoft. Still tone-deaf after all these years, without a clue as to what end-users want.

And they are doing it again with Windows 8, which is going to be another Vista. Microsoft has leaned nothing from its first tablet failure. It is almost as if Microsoft has taken a page from RIM's playbook. (Pun intended.)

Microsoft didn't invent the tablet -- how soon we forget the much maligned Apple Newton, which predates the MS tablet by 8 years.

Apple computer is decent at marketing but in many respects they are also very weak in that area. To say that is the significant reason for their success fails to look at everything else the company has accomplished in the last twelve years.

The above article implies that Microsoft was first for innovations and Apple was a me-to company and simply did a better job of execution than Microsoft. If you want to go to that level of detail you can say the exact same thing about all of Microsoft's innovations. The tablet was simply another iteration of Palms, Newtons, etc. Everyone added something. Apple also planned a tablet but decided the idea would work better as a phone first.

What Apple brought did bring was...
1) Complete emphasis of the user experience
i) Tweaking until they felt a product was "perfect". Steve Jobs didn't believe in "that's good enough". (Most companies were marketing driven. Apple was really engineering driven. The marketing part was simply we can still do better.)
ii) Opening retail stores so they can control the whole experience
iii) Support that is generally considered the standard by which not just technology is measured but other industries to.)
2) Vertical integration or complete ecosystem (what some people call the "walled garden"). Basically another variation of point 1.
3) Tying together industries that were previously been in conflict. (Think music and digital distribution.)

Apples marketing emphasized the above. They never marketed on technical specifications. That would be a never ending war to fight. No matter how good your specs the next product released in two months will have better specs. Android on the other hand has to market with specifications. Motorola can go head-to-head with Apple and market their phones on user experience but that would help Samsung just as much as them. Samsung, HTC, Motorola, etc. are really more each others competitors anyhow and so can't really differentiate themselves with user experience. So specs are all that is left.

Apple is also known as a very secrecy centered company. Well that is also with reason. To be able to execute item 1-i) you need time. If you competition knows what you are doing then you have to rush. Look no farther than the iPhone to illustrate this. When it was released it was revolutionary. Phone, music player, computer, runs apps, can understand addresses and phone numbers to get directions or make a call. There was no comparable product around. Apple was able to develop the next iteration before competition really appeared.

In my mind Microsoft's strength has never been its innovation. It has been its aggressiveness and confidence that its products will win out in a war of attrition. They wore out Borland, Novell, Banyon and others. They didn't have the best of products but would eventually match the others and win with being able to out integrate them. Microsoft always behaved as a company that fighting its way to the top.

What I think has been Microsoft's problem is computing matured and stopped being a growth industry. There were no more wars to fight and win there. Microsoft did expand into other areas like gaming. Still gaming consoles is an industry also in decline. Microsoft simply didn't see the real growth would be in web or mobile.

Ted13, on 04 June 2012 - 12:07 PM, said:

And how much sooner do we realize that the "Newton" was John Scully's folly, which was eliminated by Steve Jobs, upon his return, in 1996.

Apples major marketing point is they aren't MS and they have the bonus of being closer to a consumer electronics company so they can have ads with the end product in them.

It's NOT innovation when you "create" something that hardly anyone wants. Plus, both devices you cite were clearly inspired by the previous Apple devices, the first lightweight real computer, the PB 100 (inspired by the RS TRS-80, of course but both innovations because they sold very well) ... and of course, the Newton PDA (1998) which begat the Palm and later the MS smartphone but the Palm was innovation vecause it served millions of people as useful technology while the MS smartphone was a dud because it WAS NOT useful. MS is not without innovations certainly but many people confuse innovation with thinking - this is why Dell claims to be an innovative company but in reality, they do not understand what it actually means. Innovation means creating something many people find useful. Of course, this means different thing in different industries but in CE technology - the measure is simple - how many people bought it. By that measure, MS has pretty much stopped innovating in 1998 as that's been their last success in the consumer marketplace. A LONG TIME in internet years. BTw, Apple's iPhone division now generates more revenue than ALL of MS. A product dismissed and missed by the CEO of MS ... in other words, Apple has created a an entire Microsoft in 6 years. That's not a miss, that's a bloody disaster - still think MS is innovative? And in 2-3 years, the ipad division will be bigger than all of MS. MS' interpretation of a hit? XBox. Forever $20 billion in the red, it is losing money AGAIN AND no one explained that by cramming a $5k PC into a $299 console (at orginial release) price, MS effectively killed the high end PC business which ultimately stymies and holds the WIN PC market now to the under $500 market ... Apple owns 98% of the $!k plus PC marketplace - in other words, MS has lost 98% of that market share since the Xbox arrived. Meanwhile, MS has wasted billions on MSN, Live, Watches, Bob, plays4sure, WMA and the Zune. Innovation, really? And now the death knell. The METRO look. Will corporations actually pay hundreds for a WIN PC and then have to spend BILLIONS to retrain millions of emplyees or will they simply hold off buying WIN PC's or switch to ipads, or chrome notebooks? MS is the poster child for not understanding that randomly releasing products is NOT INNOVATION. Innovation means creating products that people actually want. that is a distinction lost on Ms and apparently you.

Kahuna, on 04 June 2012 - 12:03 PM, said:

Hate to tell you but Vista sold more and still have more users than OSX.

Apple innovates - Microsoft steals.

It is obvious that Preston Gralla does not understand the meaning of the word "innovate".

Just bringing out a tablet or a "phone" before some else has no bearing on innovation.

Apple developed and produced a smartphone with a real smartphone operating system (OS) that was better than the Blackberry. The iPAD is a tablet with a real tablet OS, not a "warmed over" desktop PC OS that was never the better technology, just more popular by force.

It is true that Microsoft has litle of no innovation. Just look at their full range of products - OS, Office Suite, Database, Groupware - all imitators that were forced on the public, in a similar manner to the Mafia providing "insurance" to small businesses.

I challenge Mr. Gralla to show any and or all the "real" innovation from Microsoft - not purchased by forced or finagled along the way.

In truth Steve Job was the best salesman in the world. He can sell ice cubes to a Eskimo. This and 5 to 8 year to look at others mistake and learn and correct them is what made Apple more popular with the consumers. Keep in mind that 5 years of technology advances is a big thing, considering that technology changes and advance every 6 months. So Iphone had 5 year of advance technology to beat down Windows mobile. The Ipad 8 years to correct all the issues with the tablet. Add to this, that Microsoft is a software company. No hardware except for Xbox, some keyboad and mouse, while Apple have always done both. The hardware and the software done by Apple is what let them build nice product. Microsoft have always works with the hardware partners which no always want to do it right.