Technologies that have become popular because of Apple
“To invent something new we have to forget the old” – that’s the philosophy of the Apple. A lot of people on the Internet are talking about Apple’s potential abandonment of 3.5mm jack in new iPhones, but they forgetting the fact that Apple is leading Company in development of new technologies and also it is able to make old technologies to become mainstream. Apple didn’t invent the fingerprint sensors, yet the Apple is the one who turned that technology into mainstream and nowadays all of the manufacturers use it. There are a lot of other examples. Our fellows from BGR have listed 7 technologies that turned popular because of Apple.
Multitouch
If you will have some free time, watch the video of the first iPhone presentation – where everything started. It is impossible to forget the reaction of the public when Steve Jobs showed the work of multi-touch gestures on the iPhone. Multi-touch technology was developed long before the iPhone release and has been officially presented in February 2006 by Jeff Han during TED Talk. Once again, multi-touch was not Apple’s invention, they obtained it in 2005 together with the FingerWorks Company. Multi-touch was supposed to appear on smartphones, but the technology became popular only after the iPhone release.
Mouse and GUI
Back in 1980, when people mostly interacted with the computer by using command line, appeared a new computer called Lisa. Lisa was different, it provided users with concept of graphical user interface – the technology designed by Xerox. It was very convenient to interact with Lisa with the mouse, which also was not invented by Apple. However, the first Mac computer has set a standard that still exists to this day.
Laptop Trackpad
Take a look at any recent laptop and you will see that it has a trackpad. For the first time trackpad appeared on the Apple PowerBook 500 laptop. Since then, many developers abandoned the idea of a trackball and started using more convenient and efficient technology.
Fingerprints Sensors
It’s not a secret that smartphones and laptops with a fingerprint sensors existed before the iPhone 5S. However, iPhone 5S was released at a time when the protection of user’s personal data was a truly important issue and started chain reaction. Nowadays, fingerprint scanners are present in most of recent smartphones even from not very popular developers.
USB
Bondi Blue iMac – it is the first computer that has only the USB ports to connect devices and no floppy disk drive. It was risky move by Apple, but it was successful. USB ports are used in other computers, but everything started from iMac and today we can clearly say that we don’t need any other ports on the computer, but USB.
3D Touch
3D Touch is one of the most recent technologies, however the trend has emerged. ZTE and Huawei have already released a smartphone that can recognize the force of pressing on the display and the Synapics Company released technology, which is able to bring 3D Touch into every new smartphone. I think you know very well from where it started.