ON APPLE INNOVATIONS AND MIND SHARE (AAPL)

NO ONE-HIT WONDER HERE

The Washington Post has an interesting article describing how Apple gets a disproportionate share of product placement in movies and on TV compared to it's actual market share.  Specifically,

"A recent report by Nielsen Media Research prepared for the trade journal Hollywood Reporter found that Apple's products were mentioned or viewed 250 times over the past four months on TV shows around the dial..."

"...some would argue that the appearances of Apple products on TV and in movies are disproportionate to real life. While iPods, iMacs and iBooks are seemingly everywhere on-screen, Apple computers have less than 5 percent of the U.S. computer market."

The article goes on to highlight that this development is no accident.

"But Apple was one of the first technology companies to hire someone in Los Angeles to get Mac products prominently displayed in hot TV shows and movies, said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, a high-tech research and consulting firm. Today, he said, all such companies -- Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba -- have strategic Hollywood initiatives, following Apple's precedent.

"It's not an accident," Bajarin said. "This is something Apple works at. Apple has the longest history of doing this."

It's not the only thing Apple has had "the longest history of doing".

One could argue though that Apple also had a disproportionate share of innovation relative to it's market share over the last 30 years.

In fact MacWorld magazine a week ago published an interesting list of the top 30 Apple "greatest hits" over the years.  The occasion?  Apple's 30th birthday of course.  They are:

No. 1: Macintosh 128k
No. 2: iMac
No. 3: iPod
No. 4: Apple II
No. 5: iTunes Music Store
No. 6: Mac OS X
No. 7: LaserWriter
  No. 8: Titanium PowerBook G4
  No. 9: QuickTime
  No. 10: iMac Core Duo
  No. 11: iLife
  No. 12: iBook
  No. 13: AirPort
  No. 14: Mac mini
  No. 15: Final Cut Pro
  No. 16: Power Mac G5
  No. 17: AppleScript
  No. 18: The Apple decal
  No. 19: Fifth-generation iPod
  No. 20: MacWrite and MacPaint
  No. 21: iTunes
  No. 22: System 7
  No. 23: PowerBook 100 series
  No. 24: Hypercard
No. 25: Mac II
  No. 26: Power Mac G4 Cube
  No. 27: XServe RAID
  No. 28: Newton
  No. 29: First-generation Power Macs
  No. 30: 20th Anniversary Mac

Glancing down the list one is struck by how many Apple products and technology innovations ended up becoming mainstream fixtures in the products used by 95% of users who are not Apple customers. 

The obvious examples in recent years of course, were Apple's championing of USB and Wi-fi, which became mainstream features for the industry soon thereafter.

In some cases they were products that had nothing to do with computing, like the following pointed out by John Foster commenting to the MacWorld article:

"QuickTake 100 - The original digital camera. It ate batteries. It took 320x240 or 640x480 images. The first one I ever saw was on the street in Lexington Nebraska. The daily newspaper guy said it was the greatest thing that ever got invented for a newspaper."

I'd forgotten about the Quicktake, introduced in 1994 and discontinued in 1997, even though I'd owned one at the time.  Of course today, only a dozen years later, it's difficult to find a camera out there that is NOT digital.

MacWorld has put together a terrific list.  One can of course quibble about things that should be added, like the following items listed again by John Foster:

" AppleShare IP - The most under rated Apple product ever. It was simple to set up, easy to maintain and it allowed opening a HFS volume from anywhere in the world using an IP address or pointing a DNS entry at it..."

"LocalTalk Connectors - This was networking for idiots. Before, with things like TokenRing or Ethernet, you needed somebody that knew how to crimp the cables to make it work. With LocalTalk anybody, literally, could make a network work."

Going through a list like this highlights for me the disproportionate share of innovations from Apple, some of them obviously "cool" from a mainstream user point of view, and some of them, while not visibly cool to the mainstream user, cool nevertheless from an industry impact point of view.

To be fair, Microsoft has had it's own list of innovations over it's 30 years as a company.  I may even try and put together a list for a future post.  If any reader has already come across a similar list, I'd appreciate a heads-up.

But for now, anecdotally at least, I'd say that Apple's disproportionate mind-share in the media may be well-deserved.

Comments

[Alecia]

What is the next big thing that Apple will be coming out with? I love this top 30 innovations-but what is next?

Well, first I just hope they get the Beatles on i-tunes

[CynicalGeek]

I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing Apple make inroads on the PC world. I grew up on Apples, then as I entered high school it was obviously not the market to study under. I left the Apples for 15 years and finally bought a Mac Mini last year. After that, I bought an iPod. Look at the younger generation and their fascination with all things Apple. While compatibility may present a problem for very few (and there are numerous ways around that now,) a huge amount of the work done today is with just web browser and a email client. I think Apple has done a wonderful job with their "Switch" campaign and the subsequent hardware that they have rolled out. Bravo! I don't feel so much like a traitor now. My only problem is now I want a more expensive Apple. :-\

[Flowers delivery]

Flower delivery