Fast Company ranks Apple as world's 'Most Innovative' for 2018
Business magazine Fast Company on Tuesday selected Apple as its "Most Innovative" company of 2018, spanning 350 enterprises and 36 categories.
The magazine noted that "for a company slagged for not having had a hit since the iPad in 2010," the company did pretty well in 2017, reaping high sales of AirPods and the Apple Watch Series 3, and praise for offerings like ARKit and the iPhone X.
Although people tend to judge companies on their latest products, "creativity is more than skin deep," Fast Company continued.
"Apple's approach to the hardware and software engineering that creates its experiences has never been more ambitious," it said. "Other makers of phones and tablets buy the same off-the-shelf chips as their competitors. Apple, by contrast, designs its own chips -- so an iPhone packs a processor designed specifically optimized for Apple's operating system, apps, display, camera, and touch sensor."
The magazine also cited things like CareKit, Apple Music, and "major inroads" in artificial intelligence, the last including examples like optimizing battery performance and favoring on-device processing instead of the cloud.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
The magazine noted that "for a company slagged for not having had a hit since the iPad in 2010," the company did pretty well in 2017, reaping high sales of AirPods and the Apple Watch Series 3, and praise for offerings like ARKit and the iPhone X.
Although people tend to judge companies on their latest products, "creativity is more than skin deep," Fast Company continued.
"Apple's approach to the hardware and software engineering that creates its experiences has never been more ambitious," it said. "Other makers of phones and tablets buy the same off-the-shelf chips as their competitors. Apple, by contrast, designs its own chips -- so an iPhone packs a processor designed specifically optimized for Apple's operating system, apps, display, camera, and touch sensor."
The magazine also cited things like CareKit, Apple Music, and "major inroads" in artificial intelligence, the last including examples like optimizing battery performance and favoring on-device processing instead of the cloud.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
Comments
https://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2018
What's important is what their customers say.
I guess the problem is that you have to look under the surface to see where the real innovation is going on. Most folk can't do that.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/OLED-panel-glut-looms-as-Apple-slashes-iPhone-X-production
Apple is still unparalleled in hardware and core software, in a league of their own. Now, if they can only get siri to do the basic tasks that they've been promising for the past 6 f&%$ing years...
Nonsense. This stuff doesn’t design, engineer, improve, and build itself. It doesn’t fall off the tree fully formed.
Who else came up with AirPods? Completely fixed the broke ass BT pairing model? Put two miniature computers literally in your ears?
Some of you “meh” moles need to get serious and see the day light out here.
What can bring down Apple? Not much. They have survived some balky software by fast fixes or improvements. (Maps ain't bad now; iOS 11 improving) From my view, they still seem hungry and responsive, not arrogant like IBM and Microsoft in their heyday.
My hunch would be AI. This is a battleground to make your life easier, more cost-efficient, healthy, fun, and productive. Imagine several years from now, if google restricted its Top Performing generation of agent to each years Pixel and Google Home, then maybe Apple could witness defections if Siri has not had infusions of intelligence.
I'm definitely not one of those people you see tripping on the sidewalk and walking into people because they are staring at their phone.
best line in the article: creativity is more than skin deep.
Just because you cant see it, doesn't mean it's not there.
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
"Exhaustive acoustical analysis demonstrates HomePod is '100 percent an audiophile-grade speaker'" http://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/12/exhaustive-acoustical-analysis-demonstrates-homepod-is-100-percent-an-audiophile-grade-speaker
"The developers have done an excellent job of having the HomePod adjust to the room; (it has) Impressive consistency in overall level and frequency response," said Brian MacMillan, associate general manager at NTi. "The HomePod automates spatial compensation that previously required a real audiophile's expertise, tools and time." from: http://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/13/acoustic-testing-finds-homepods-adaptive-audio-tech-delivers-highly-consistent-sound
"Audiophile Review: HomePod 'Sounds Better' Than $999 KEF X300A Digital Hi-Fi Speakers" https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/12/homepod-audiophile-review-standing-ovation/
see also:
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/08/homepod-first-impressions-regular-users/
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
This was ten years ago. By that, I mean only ten years ago. People said it was an expensive toy, and without a keyboard or a stylus, no one was going to take it seriously. That was only ten years ago, and there is a long list of things the one in your pocket can do that was not yet available in the the one Steve’s holding in the picture. Of course Apple has been innovating, and at a furious pace.