Quote:
Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan
I can't get over the fact that the company that literally invented Retina displays has just come out with two new phones whose ppi is bested by ALL of the new Android phones.
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I can understand why
Apple might not get over that fact, but I'm having a harder time grasping why
you can't. Rome was once cutting edge, too, and so was the British Empire -- though fortunes needn't fall to fluctuate.
In the past, Apple cut deals, followed aesthetic ideals and spun the result in ways that seemed to presage the curve of tech fashion. That doesn't necessarily last (although it can). It's predictable that other companies -- particularly ones with a manufacturing edge, like Samsung -- would find ways to usurp and/or undermine Apple's dominance (and it isn't the first time, is it?).
It's also possible that the American iconclast represented by Jobs, and the American aesthetic represented by Apple, would fade in fascination as global influences converged, just as the decentralization of storage and even applications undermines the sealed object that Apple's hardware represents.
It never surprises me when the impetus and innovation of a trendsetter congeal into inflexibility. If you doubt it, look at Sony.
Also: The structural intricacy of a company and its decisions can behave like a crawling piece of architecture. The foundation that works with one landscape might easily topple with another.
Apple has rarely been the company that set tech benchmarks. It's a company that innovates in ways that can
include benchmark-setting innovation as the means to aesthetic/industrial-designed/user-facilitating (or user-
controlling) ends.
BTW: I don't see Apple's manipulation of the user as always being a bad thing -- it often is, but not always. The limitations of a work of art can also condition and limit the responses of the person who views it in ways that lead to a new and possibly revelatory experience. Limitations can be freeing, just as they're often in the way.