Comment by vmception
5 years ago
I'm guessing this article is from 2011, back when Apple fans were just ending their role as being a niche that believed anything.
At this point it is - I think - a pretty common assumption that Apple just puts things together in a decent ecosystem. If Apple devices offers a new frequency range, its because Qualcomm's radio allowed for it, which was dependent on other things further in the stream.
This is an interesting trip down memory lane. Apple still says magical sometimes in their keynotes, but nobody is really mystified only occasionally glad they decided to offer something in that way, since its more about the Apple implementation than the Apple innovation.
Not an Apple fanboy but I don’t this is completely correct. As a huge buyer of semiconductors they can, when they want to, exert a lot of pressure on suppliers. Famously they did this with Gorilla glass; they have done so with Intel and qcomm. Sometimes not so successfully (all the expense on the “liquid metal” company, for example).
It’s not all sheer pressure; they do a lot of collaborative design. After all they have one of the best semiconductor design teams (both digital and analog) around. And they are on standards bodies; they allegedly (some non-Apple people told me) contributed contributed significantly to USB-C.
I emphasized completely because in the modern ecosystem it’s broadly true (RAM, displays etc)
Apple’s supply chains and how they can apply pressure is massively underrated.
People still have this idea that “so and so actually invented it”. Or “Apple just combined X and Y”.
But they fail to see how truck loads of money and a customer willing to pay for something and making large pre-payments can change the trajectory of a company. Or even has impact on other players.
I don't like Apple generally. And it wasn't "their" technology - but thank fuck they brought "better than 1080p" screens to the mainstream.
Throughout the 90's screen resolutions were getting better and better. Then LCDs came and 1080p stopped mainstream screen resolution improvements for at least 5 years.
Thankfully Apple got the screen resolution race going again.
Mainstream 1080p wasn't the worst of it. Just a decade or so ago it was impossible to find a non-17" Windows laptop without a 1366x768 TN screen with awful contrast and viewing angles so bad there was no good angle. Even super premium $3000 "Ultrabooks", it was true insanity.
The last Windows app I worked on, I made sure the tester always tested at that resolution because it was so ubiquitous. I even wrote a utility to set the app resolution so I could run it at that size myself.
Plenty of Windows laptops with good quality IPS screens were available 10 years ago, even 13" models.
And I primarily remember pre-Retina Apple for only offering laptops with very low screen resolutions.
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No need to guess, the year is in the URL.
*thanks to a necessary mod edit