It’s Friday again and time to bring on something out of the ordinary for our beloved readers. Speaking of which, Apple is certainly the king when it comes to revolutionizing communications technology and computing gadgets. It’s known to be an innovator responsible for several computer and smartphone technologies that we use today. Be it their revolutionary Macs, iPhones, iPods or iPads; all these gadgets are considered the best and most advanced. Even several technologies such as iTunes literally skyrocketed digital music sales and forever changed how people listened to music.
Despite these amazing innovations, there are a lot of other features that Apple products and technologies take credit for but didn’t really create them. In fact, several technologies introduced by Apple were simply tweaked versions of existing features in lesser known gadgets or software. If this intrigued you as a gadget lover, we’ve prepared a small list that you might find worthwhile.
1. Siri
For those who cannot seem to stop glorifying Apple’s famous AI assistant, it was more of an acquired tech rather than something original. We know this might’ve taken several readers by surprise but take it with a grain of salt, Apple paid good money for acquiring Siri. Siri itself started as a simple iOS app on the App Store that was later bought by Apple and integrated in their devices. Shocked? Well there’s more to come.
2. Front Facing Flash
This feature was introduced with iPhone 4, which used the screen’s brightness to work as a flash when using iPhone’s front camera. This was certainly more of a tweak rather than a real flash, but Apple was highly praised by consumers for this awesome feature. However, to their dismay it was Snapchat (app) that first used screen brightness to illuminate selfies and this idea was later borrowed by Apple.
3. Online Music Store
We’ve already mentioned how iTunes transfigured the music industry by providing a digital platform to buy music. Nevertheless, this again wasn’t something that they came up with first. In fact, the credit goes to a relatively unknown online service that only catered to Latin-speaking audience back in 1998. It also featured a similar album wise allocation of music tracks and pricing for individual tracks and full albums.
4. Notifications
Most features we now see in iOS gadgets were once only seen in jail broken devices. It might be hard to believe but iTunes notifications were as intervening as God in ancient Egypt and would pop-up right in middle of the screen. It was only after a jailbreaker created a fix called ‘Mobile Notifier’ that this issue got resolved. The jailbreaker was then hired by Apple leading to this feature being officially incorporate in devices.
Also Read: Latest from Apple: iOS 10.3 beta 5 for iPhone and iPad
5. Multi-tasking
Love iOS gadgets cos you can open multiple applications and effortlessly switching between them? Well that was certainly not the case with earlier renditions of iOS. Users had to launch the app every time you exited it making the process extremely dreary. This was again cracked by the jailbreaking community and was integrated in iOS when the feature was
brought to their attention.
6. Mouse and GUI
Let’s blow this lid off this one, “Apple did not Invent the Computer Mouse or Graphical User Interface”. We know this might have a lasting effect on your existence but it was Xerox (yes the same company that bears the metonym for photo copy) that invented both mouse and the GUI late Steve Jobs wouldn’t shut up about. Now that we know this, what was all his outrage on Microsoft and Bill Gates all about? We guess no one will ever know.
Also Read: 7 Incredible iPad Tips to use it like a Pro!
We’re clearly not trying to say that Apple stole these ideas. But our purpose of creating the abovementioned list was simply to separate myths from facts. We hope above list didn’t offend fans but helped them know more about Apple Inc., while clearing age-old myths associated with the organization.