Despite the heresy of it, I want to consider the question of what part innovation plays in Apple’s recent success(es).

Three things can be credited with returning Apple to glory: Mac OS X (to a lesser extent), iTunes/iPod and finally the iPhone. Mac OS X, rather than being an innovation, is a bit of a throwback (if I may), abandoning Mac OS “Classic” for the tried and tested Unix’ish base of FreeBSD and Mach. Lest you consider that quibbling or even misleading, let me suggest that by the turn of the millennium, the fan base for Apple computers/laptops was growing most significantly not among the graphic designers and hipsters who had previous embraced the brand, but among geeks and übergeeks, the very types who could appreciate and take advantage of a Unix back-end and all that that implies. They don’t make up much of the population; one reason for the low market share of Mac OS X.

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Doseido, makers of Headline have announced that they have something new on the way. Hope is low that it’s a new version of Headline that fixes some of its minor annoyances. Why? Because if you are a Mac app developer, you know which side your bread is buttered these days. (The answer, if you are not an iPhone developer: it’s the iPhone side. When’s the last time Tweetie updated their Mac app?)

From John Gruber today, a quote from MG Siegler on the superiority of the iPhone:

MG Siegler on the Nexus One MG Siegler: Perhaps the single biggest reason that I like Apple products, and their software, in particular, is the attention to detail the company puts in. In my mind, that’s exactly what still separates the iPhone from all the Android phones. It’s the little things. The things that are almost too small for you to even notice, but which make the experience subtly better.

Which is all fine, but it seems to me that history (even Apple’s own) has demonstrated that design, “attention to detail”, and so on have rarely fared well against buzz, FUD, user entrapment, collusion and other tactics (different subsets of which are the advantages enjoyed by Apple’s two primary competitors: Microsoft and Google). The difference in the “smartphone” market is, of course, that Apple for once is the most successful and advanced device, but let us see how this pans out three years from now.

[ link: Daring Fireball Linked List: MG Siegler on the Nexus One ]

If you recently got a Magic Mouse either because it came with your new Mac or because you got excited by the hype and bought one, only to find that the dratted thing is missing the third and fourth buttons which you had so cleverly bound to Expose and Spaces, there is good news. A free application calledMagicPrefs lets you not only add this functionality to the Magic Mouse but lets you define gestures and perform other kinky mods that should be worth a lot more than the millions that Apple paid to acquire Lala.

UPDATE: TUAW has a pointer to another free tool called BetterTouchTool.

Take a look at the screenshots from iTunes 9. It looks like Apple is (regrettably) returning to the white look (also note the blue hues for the checkbox). As well as (again regrettably) adopting the grungy buttons look pioneered by YouTube and adopted, with predictably shiny excesses, by Windows. Or is this just a conservative aesthetic instinct on my part? On the potential plus side, one day perhaps we will see the candy/lozenge scrollbars in Mac OS X replaced with the more subtle ones that iTunes has been sporting for a while.

iTunes 9

Image by Dekuwa via Flickr

The fanboy sites are buzzing today with the news that Apple has announced Aug 28th as the release date for the next version of their operating system. This one is called Snow Leopard and I won’t even attempt to go head to head with the likes of TUAW and John Gruber in trying to tell you all that is awesome about it… so go read what they have to say.

Me, I am wondering what tools I use currently will be replaced by new features that are built into Snow Leopard. For instance, text replacement is now built into the OS, voiding the need for Typinator. Tools that display date in the menu bar can be given the short shrift as well, though some of them support additional features (e.g: interface to iCal). Can the most excellent Formulate Pro be upstaged by the new Text annotation tool and other features in Preview? Will QuickTime X edge out video conversion tools? If you give me $29, I can let you know on Friday! ;-)