Everything is a Remix 3 features Apple, Macintosh history

If you haven't been watching Kirby Ferguson's video series, Everything is a Remix, go watch it now. The highly intelligent and well-researched series challenges modern views of creativity by pointing out that nearly all critically-lauded works are built upon the foundations of works that preceded them.

For the third video in the series, Ferguson offers up a great modern-day example: the Mac. It's a well-known bit of computing lore that much of the innovations of the original Mac OS drew inspiration from work done at Xerox, but Ferguson goes one step farther and points out the inventions and ideas that laid the foundation for Xerox's fledgling OS in the 1970s.

Ferguson's thesis is that truly revolutionary ideas never spring fully-formed from the ether, and his example of the original Macintosh reminds us that all the gadgetry we use today, whether we take it for granted, complain about it breaking or accuse one company or another of ripping off the other's ideas, is a product of a steady stream of evolutionary steps rather than revolutionary thinking. Whether you're talking about Mac OS X Lion, Windows 8, iOS 5 or the latest sugary snack-named version of Android, all of them are simply remixes of what came before when it comes down to it.

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If you haven't been watching Kirby Ferguson's video series, Everything is a Remix, go watch it now. The highly intelligent and...

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Tony

UM... Duh! Who didn't already know this?Way to point out the obvious there Fergy.

June 22 2011 at 11:53 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

paulgans

Great concept: copy, transform, combine. New to me.

June 22 2011 at 11:31 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

hfwbr

As someone who, among other things, worked on the Xerox Star and subsequently owned a 128K Mac, I can personally attest to Ferguson's basic sentiment that technological development is more a matter of evolution than revolution. Product mutations tend to be small within the overall scope of technological evolution, not major leaps.

Having lived completely through both eras, I can say with confidence that the Mac is the Beatles of computing. It isn't that nobody else was doing what they were doing; it's more a matter of gestalt, authenticity and timing. As Einstein stated: "If I have achieved anything, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

One standout, however, is the iPhone. it was an exception to this rule and a major leap forward. Truly different from anything that preceded it, the iPhone was the product of imagination moreso than a mere extension of previous products. That's the real reason the iPhone, and by further extension the iPad, has created lasting buzz—and income—for Apple.

June 22 2011 at 11:11 AM Report abuse Permalink +3 rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to hfwbr's comment

Publius

The "shoulders of giants" thing was Isaac Newton, not Einstein, but everything is spot on. That the Macintosh didn't appear to be the game-changer that you would think (or some people like to think) came down to some bad business decisions on Apple's part and some good business decisions on Microsoft's part; however, make no mistake: Microsoft would never have spent a nickel on developing something called Windows without feeling the heat from Apple. Windows 1.0 was a product to which any high school computer lab teacher would have unblinkingly assigned a C- grade on a particularly generous day. But Microsoft's assurances to the business community that "something like what Apple has over there" was coming down the pike, coupled with Apple's decision to keep a proprietary closed system (and the higher price tag that is bound to result) virtually guaranteed a win for Windows at the time.
I'm with you on the iPhone, as well. The January 2007 keynote will be recognized universally as a key point in the history of consumer technology, a moment where everything did indeed change.
To your list, and akin to the iPhone, many would include the iPod: equally a game changer.
I enjoyed the post, hfwbr!

June 22 2011 at 1:54 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply