Things I know they invented
SCSI
Firewire
iTunes
Digital cameras
Personal Computers

And there is a huge list of products that they either brought into the mainstream or where the first to market them.

Dual-Processors
DVD-R
Bluetooth (maybe)
WiFi (:D)
slot loaded laptops
Spotlight (windows has been trying for ever)
All-in-one machine (iMac)
64bit
GUI (Xerox)
Mice (Xerox)

Best of all they were the first to kill the floppy drive and give computers to schools when you bought a bunch of grocieries at Vons.

Here are some web quotes.

Unicode was a joint development between Apple, IBM, and Xerox. It is the basis for cross-platform use of multiple languages where little existed prior to it. Apple’s WorldScript and relevant research led to this innovation.

first succesful music download service thats practical and legal

first commercial hard disk file table (mac file system)

the double click, the dragable icon, the pull-down menu, overlapping windows, etc.

the first PDA (at least commercialy) that also had natural hand writting recognition

the lisa office system, that was basically the first integrated office suite, came out in 1983, forbearer to MS Office

Quarts Extreme, the first 2-D UI to be Graphics Processor Accelerated (mapping windows to Polygons in an actual 3-D scene)

Apple, with Macintosh and LaserWriter (Canon print engine), brought about the acronym WYSIWYG

first consumer digital camera (a.k.a Quicktake 100)(Which was actually a Kodak camera with Apple’s name on it.) The Kodak DC40 and the Apple QuickTake 100 were both made by Kyocera (Kyoto Ceramics

multiple independently regulated thermal zones (in the G5)

titanium and aluminum enclosures, illuminated keyboards, a UNIX-based OS that *anyone* can use
Rendezvous (automatic network resource recognition and configuring
Macintosh was the first computer to have square pixels, something that IBM touted 3 years later when they introduced VGA

– 1977- Apple II, first personal computer with colour graphics
– 1979 - VisiCalc, first spreadsheet program, released for the Apple II
– 1983 - Lisa (forerunner to Macintosh), first personal computer with a GUI
– 1984 - Macintosh released. First personal computer with dynamic memory allocation, API programming support (the Toolbox), a graphics API (QuickDraw) a global clipboard, Undo feature, 3.5″ floppy disk.
– 1985 - First personal computer with built-in networking.(LocalTalk) Also, LaserWriter helps establish the Mac as the standard for DTP
– 1986 - First personal computer with built-in SCSI (Mac Plus)
– 1987 - Plug-and-play expansion (Nubus in Mac II)
– 1987 - HyperCard introduces visual programming; MultiFinder brings multitasking (albeit not preemptive) to the Mac
– 1988 - Plug and play SCSI CD-ROM
– 1988 - SuperDrive introduced. Read/writes to Mac, DOS, OS/2, and ProDOS floppies
– 1989 - 32-bit QuickDraw allows Macs to display photo-qulaity, true-clour images
– 1991 -The first plug-and-play Ethernet cards
– 1991 - Apple petitions the FCC to allow personal computers to exchange information via wireless radio
– 1991 - QuickTime, the first standard architecture for dynamic media
– 1992 - WorldScript, the first worldwide language support for an operating system.
– 1992 - QuickTime for Windows makes QuickTime the first cross-platform dynamic media standard
– Jan 1993 - ColorSync is the first colour-matching technology bulit-in to an operating system
– July 1993 First personal computers with built-in video digitisers and speech recognition (660AV and 840AV)
– Aug 1993 - Newton Message Pad introduced
– Oct1993 - First unified telephony and e-mail architecture for a personal computer operating system (PowerTalk and PowerShare)
– Oct1993 - First personal computer with bulit-in TV and CD stereo system (Macintosh TV)
– Mar 1994 - PowerMacs debut, become the leading RISC-based personal computers
– Mar 1994 - System 7.1 for PowerMacs is the first operating system to use emulation to run parts of itself, as well as legacy application software (ie the backwards-support is done in software instead of tying down the hardware Ë? la x86)
– Mar 1994 - First 24-bit colour camera under $1000 (QuickTake)
– Aug 1994 - First next-generation typography engine (QuickDraw GX)
– Fall 1994 - First panoramic virtual reality technology for personal computers (QuickTime VR)

The more I uncover about how Apple pretty much just takes technology that others have already made and claims it as their own, the more they remind me of Microsoft. To be fair, Apple doesn’t actually claim that an MP3 player like the iPod or “wifi” were their original ideas, but as you can see, many of their advocates still believe it.

P.S. - In case you can’t tell, I hate the term “wifi”, it’s totally ridiculous and has no meaning that makes any sense.

If they invented WIFI that’s great, but they haven’t exploited it much - or should I say innovated it to reach the bottom line in a big splash like the ipod.

Apple has been the first in a lot of fields, look at Wifi, a lot of people didn’t know they brought the WiFi world to us. I think they invented it too, but could be wrong.
When I was talking about inovation I was also thinking of how they implement new technology faster then anyone else, they also have the best designers. The new iMac g5 is awesome.

If you want more comments than you were getting, then I don’t know what to advise.