The macbook air is just a small laptop. In what way is making things smaller an Apple technology? Laptops have been getting steadily smaller for decades now.
The iPhone may have created a market, but that was because of how it worked. The question was whether anything Jobs did influenced the technology of the device. The iPhone was an early (but not the first) user of capacitive touchscreens, but virtually everything else in the device was an off-the-shelf part.
And FWIW: I know who started WebKit. It wasn't Apple. :)
Apple pressured Intel to design the smaller chipsets that made the Macbook Air, and subsequently other ultrabooks, possible. Without Apple's influence, we might not have ultrabooks.
Similarly, Apple pressured Corning to make Gorilla Glass. I would also argue the iPhone's UI has heavily influenced modern smartphone OS's to be more user friendly.
I'll cede the WebKit point, though I do think we can credit Apple for popularizing it.
Apple pressured Intel to design the smaller chipsets that made the Macbook Air, and subsequently other ultrabooks, possible. Without Apple's influence, we might not have ultrabooks.
I remember taking a tour of an Iomega production facility when I was in high school. The tour guide explained how Toshiba (or someone) was demanding a Zip drive that was 2mm thinner so they could include it in their latest slim laptops. Sony has been making tiny, powerful, expensive laptops for longer than the Air has existed.
All manufacturers have been pushing for smaller, better, faster, stronger components. If it wasn't Apple, it would have been someone else. Apple was just the best at taking credit.
Sure, Intel had to offer something to Apple to make them switch from PowerPC to x86. But you could also argue that Intel's ultra efficient CPUs and chipsets are actually a result of the competition from companies like Transmeta. It's not at all obvious that without Apple there would be no utra efficent CPUs. (But without Apple we might well live in a world full of ugly netbooks.)
> It's not at all obvious that without Apple there would be no utra efficent CPUs.
That's a very slippery argument. It's pretty obvious that without Darwin, there still would have eventually been a theory of evolution (as seen be Alfred Wallace's work), but Darwin gets credit for being first. Similarly, it's not at all obvious that without Dennis Ritchie, there would be no C. I'm sure eventually somebody would have created a similar language, but Ritchie made it happen first, so he deserves credit.
Sure, Intel may have eventually come up with ultra-efficient CPUs without Apple, but the point is that Apple helped make it happen.
To be clear, I'm not comparing a CPU design to the works of Darwin or Ritchie. I'm simply saying that arguing that an invention would have occurred even without the inventor could be said for anything.
I think you got that one wrong. Transmeta happend way before ultrabooks at a time when Apple was still shipping notebooks with a very power hungry G4. Because of Transmeta (and because of a funny thing called the power wall) Intel had to reconsider their entire processor lineup and to start to focus on low power. IBM never produced a low power CPU for Apple, so Apple eventually switched to x86. To claim that Apple coerced Intel to focus on low power is not correct. Just look at the timeline.
Unlike C it was a net benefit even if a small one. Pascal was often the direct competitor to C and for low level tasks it's a much better language that lost out due to UNIX / tool chain support.
The laptop is just a small computer. It has a form factor which conveniently houses the components of a full-sized desktop plus a mobile power supply, the engineering of which is largely due to CAD.
Exactly. The distinction you missed is that I wasn't trying to credit the inventor of the laptop with being a technological innovator along the lines of DMR.
The iPhone may have created a market, but that was because of how it worked. The question was whether anything Jobs did influenced the technology of the device. The iPhone was an early (but not the first) user of capacitive touchscreens, but virtually everything else in the device was an off-the-shelf part.
And FWIW: I know who started WebKit. It wasn't Apple. :)