“I was sitting in the third row of the Foothill College auditorium when Steve Jobs unveiled the Mac,” Tim Bajarin writes for TechPinions. “My first reaction upon seeing it was ‘that does not look like any computer I have ever seen.’ But as he got the Mac to say hello to us and started showing us how it worked, I began to realize that Apple did not think like the PC vendors I knew at the time.”
“The Mac broke all conventional wisdom of what a PC would and should look like and in my notes of the event, I wrote that Apple clearly thinks differently then the other PC vendors at the time,” Bajarin writes. “Little did I know that this term, or the grammatically incorrect ‘Think Different’ theme would eventually become a major marketing campaign for Apple as it strove to set itself apart from the rest of the PC vendors schlepping PCs that all looked the same.”
Bajarin writes that unless “competitors start innovating on their own, is that Apple will continue to have at least a two year lead on them and thanks to their ways of “thinking different,” management style and design DNA, will keep their competitors following them instead of truly leading the market forward themselves.”
Read more in the full article here.
Just how are PC vendors going to “think different” when they depend on Microsoft for everything?
And now Google.
A giant, sprawling empire will overawe the masses and can last for generations; but lacking a moral compass and an internal source of renewal, the leadership increasingly grows indolent, feeding off the carcasses of those it vanquished, squandering the time needed for fresh provisioning; and are easily persuaded by sycophants to believe in their own infallibility. Inaction leads to decay, then poverty, then doubt, then irrelevance.
Gibbon, I think. Funny that even hi-tech companies follow this pattern—aren’t they supposed to exemplify innovation? But maybe there’s a natural life cycle for everything that hasn’t been morally and consciously PLANNED the way that Apple obviously has been planned, namely as a self-sustaining organization designed to improve people’s lives, not just to make money.
Apple seems like an armored Noah’s Ark.
A PC vendor could start to put some thought, design, and resources into R&D, even using Windows as its OS. The problem is that costs money and you need talent to make it happen, neither of which any PC vendors seem to want any part of.
My recollection is that Dell relied almost entirely upon outside Asian manufacturers to design their computers until sometime in the last 3-4 years.
I recall an article back then that noted they had hired about 100 engineers for their design department.
Exactly. Engineers to do design.
I’m sorry, Tim Bajarin, but after all this time one would think that you and others had figured out that it is not grammatically incorrect to say “Think Different”.
Imagine, you have your designer in talking about redoing your living room. You ask: What do you have in mind? She answers: ” Think Blue.”
This is not grammatically incorrect and neither is “Think Different”.
It’s not how you think, the adverb, but what you think, the idea(s).
+1
You’d think he might have read his biography, where Walt explains all its nitty gritty detail.
My thoughts exactly.
Think Different and Think Differently are both grammatically correct, they just say different things. You can think “different” without thinking differently.
If you are driving too fast, someone might tell you, “Whenever you come to a curse, think slow.” They don’t mean you should think slowly.
Took the words right out of my mouth
I always think slow when I come to a curse. It keeps me from saying things that I’d later regret.
I’d also think slow if I were approaching a curve and I were driving fastly. 🙂
Or “Whenever you come to a curie, think slow”—slow death, from radiation poisoning
That’s still very poorly worded. “…think about slowing down” is grammatically correct, and sounds better.
No, “think about slowing down” means somethIng else.
“Think slow” just means to think of slow it doesn’t specify the speed of the car, it’s about the general concept…
I had this discussion once with a girl going off to college. I tried to explain it to her but she never got it. Funny thing, she came back after her first year of college and made it a point to tell me I was correct and that she finally understood. She’s an avid Apple fan now. haha
I wrote something similar, but not the same back on 6/24.
http://strategicmac.com/2012/06/24/the-x-factor-why-apple-succeeds-where-others-fail/
At the moment, if you look at pretty much all of the smartphones and even new laptops like the Ultrabook as well as competing tablets, they all are mostly copying Apple’s smartphones, tablet and thin Macbook Air designs.”
So true.
1984: Foothill.
2012: Neverest.
+1
All of the PC manufacturers started as bargain PC clone makers. Because of IBM’s prestige back then, the only way they could compete with the IBM PC was on price.
Now IBM is gone. IBM’s price is no longer a reference point, but they are trapped with a business model that is now outdated. Apple has arisen in the role of IBM; the one every one else clones. The clone makers are still making clones of a computer that doesn’t exist, resulting in an uncontrolled race to the bottom.
The PC makers have massive gear-shifting to do. There is one thing about Apple they have to copy: don’t sell products, sell customer happiness.
Apple has a knack for making gadgets that evoke love. Let’s be grateful that they don’t make inflatable dolls. If the did, the human race would be extinct.
I wonder what hilarious typo I put into this comment.
“If the did”