Top Ten … Things people think Apple invented (but actually didn’t)
Apple makes some truly great products, but you'd be wrong in thinking it got there first with many of them
3. The tablet
The iPad launched in 2010 and revolutionised tablets as we knew them, but you’re a long way off if you think Apple invented the form factor. The first patents related to touchscreen devices that could recognise handwriting were filed in 1942, but you can trace its origins as far back as 1888! The first true tablet was the GRiD Pad, launched in 1989. It ran MS DOS and used a stylus to input text, but the foundations for the devices we recognise as tablets today are clear to see. It took twenty one more years for Apple to launch the iPad, during which time a whole host of companies had released tablets.
It was chunky and had a monochrome screen, but this was the first real tablet
2. Video calling
FaceTime – it was enough to convince countless people they needed miniscule hardware updates to their iPod Touches and iPads, but it’s difficult to see why. Apple was a long, long way behind other mobile phone manufacturers with bringing video calling to the masses; NEC and Motorola were among the first, with the E606 clamshell (remember those?) and A920 respectively. Unlike Apple, they could both send video calls over 3G, in 2003! That still didn’t stop Cupertino from trying this outrageous marketing scheme prior to the launch of the iPhone 4.
Most of us weren’t dreaming about making video calls, but were actually making them
1. The MP3 player
There could really only be one winner in this list. Nothing turned Apple’s fortunes around more than the iconic iPod; the company went from standing in Microsoft’s shadow to the peak of the portable music world, but this doesn’t mean the MP3 player was a Cupertino invention. The first ever portable music player was a prototype, built in 1979 and only capable of holding three minutes of audio, but there were plenty of others to make it to market before Apple launched the first iPod in 2001. The Audio Highway Listen Up launched in 1997 in (very) limited numbers, but was quickly succeeded by the Diamond Rio in 1998. The HanGo Personal Jukebox and Creative Nomad both used laptop hard disks rather than flash memory, several years before Apple.
With a whopping 32MB of memory, the PMP300 was the pinnacle of music technology. Once.