This is the third installment in the "Everything is a Remix" series by a guy named Kirby. These are VERY well done and if innovation, progress, and the future of creation are of any interest to you, you ought to sit back and watch this for 11 minutes. Make sure you stay until the end, after the credits. [vodpod id=Video.11432879&w=425&h=350&fv=]
It is, without a doubt, an interesting take on the world and the progress within it. It is true that Apple did not outright invent Graphical User Interfaces (most people ought to be aware that it was a visit to the Xerox campus that changed Steve Jobs. He has been quoted as saying, "They showed us three things that day but I didn't see the other two. I was so caught up with the first thing that I missed the rest of the presentation.") Apple did, however, innovate in many ways. As the video points out, they made things easier, they made things make more sense. Those are innovations. They innovated in price, too, which made it more acceptable to the commercial market.
I don't think anyone doubts that one company or person has created things that were simply unheard of before. Some do, however, have better methods of creation and presentation that truly allows something to become...new. Apple has done this in computers since the late 70's. Disney has done this in animation and theme parks since well before that.
This quote from Henry Ford can be found at the end of the video:
I invented nothing new.
I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.
So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable.
To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
-Henry Ford
-B
John Gruber says Kirby "nailed it." I think I agree.