As far as iPhone is concerned, is Apple really innovating? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Glyn Williams, game industry veteran, on Quora:
Is Apple really innovating?
It depends on how you define innovation.
A lot of people interpret the word to mean “the addition of new things.”
But in truth, the right word for that is “novelty.” A lot of product manufacturers add features and say “Ooh look, we are innovating!” They might add a fingerprint sensor and show it as an example. Even if the use of the feature is awful. Novelty is not innovation.
Innovation is not invention. Invention is about the creation of an idea. But an invention is divorced from execution, delivery or integration. Invention is easy, execution is much, much harder.
Genuine innovation requires a few more steps. It needs to have genuine utility, and then it has to be widely adopted, creating change. And that adoption requires convincing people to use it.
When it comes to major innovations, Apple has had a string of products which tick that box. Products that transformed how the world works.
On a product like the iPhone, the big-ticket innovation is the creation of the product category itself. In the years following that, the trick is to continuously sustain and re-invent the product. These iterative improvements are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. But it’s a mistake to not regard this as a source of innovation too.
Using the same definition, the innovation is not the addition of novelties and gadgets, but rather changes which bring significant utility and transform how people use the device.
Things like biometric security and secure payments are often overlooked, and then the rest of the industry scrabbles to replicate them.
In this regard, Apple is firing on all cylinders.
This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:
