IBM and Apple innovate in different ways

Two of the most influential companies in the PC universe are IBM and Apple. There are others, including Microsoft. But I want to compare just IBM and Apple. These two companies have similarities, and differences.

IBM and Apple are both hardware companies. Apple is still a hardware company, although its main business is phones and not computers. IBM is more of a services company; it was a hardware company in 1981 when it introduced the IBM PC.

Both companies innovated and both companies created designs that influence the market today.

IBM introduced the detached keyboard (other systems were all-in-one designs or keyboard-and-CPU with a separate display). IBM also introduced the internal hard drive, the original 8-inch floppy disk, the 3.5-inch floppy disk, the ThinkPad TrackPoint (the "pointing stick"), and the VGA display and video card.

Apple introduced the mouse for personal computers (the original mouse was two decades earlier and for a system much larger than a PC), the PowerBook laptop (a year before the first ThinkPad), AppleTalk, touchscreen for iPhones, and (notably) iTunes which gave consumers a reliable, legal way to load music onto their devices.

Apple stands out in that it innovates not just by adding features, but by removing them. Apple was first in delivering a computer without a floppy drive, and then a computer without a CD drive. Apple famously removed the headphone jack from its phones. It also omitted the Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys on its laptops, going back as far as the first PowerBook. (As the PowerBook was not compatible with the IBM PC, it had no need of those keys.)

Apple, more than IBM or any other hardware supplier, has innovated by removing things. The makers of Windows PCs and laptops had typically followed Apple's lead. They have, over time, removed floppy drives, CD drives, and most laptops now require specific multi-key presses for Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn.

IBM innovated by adding features. Apple innovates by trimming away features. That's quite a difference.

Of course, one can remove only so much. Apple has trimmed the phone to a simple slab with a single port for charging and data transfer. It has trimmed the Macbook to a thin wedge that opens to a screen, keyboard, and trackpad. There is very little left to remove, which means that Apple has little room to innovate along its traditional methods.

But notice that Apple's innovation-by-reduction has been in hardware. Its operating systems are not the equivalent of a slim wedge. To the contrary, Apple's mac OS and iOS are somewhat bulky, which is something Apple shares with Windows and Linux.

Of the major operating systems, mac OS probably has the best chance of slimming. Apple has the "remove things to make it better" mindset, which helps to remove features. Apple also has close integration between operating system and hardware, and drops support for older hardware, which lets it remove drivers for older devices. Windows and Linux, in contrast, want to support as much hardware as they can, which means adding drivers and allowing for older devices.

Let's see if Apple's "less is more" approach works it way into mac OS and into Swift, Apple's favored language for development.