Top Ten … Things people think Apple invented (but actually didn’t)

Ask anyone to name an MP3 player and they’ll probably say iPod. When you think of smartphones, odds are the first one will be an iPhone, and likewise the iPad when thinking of tablets. Apple reigns supreme over the gadgets we use on a daily basis, so it’s unsurprising that many people make the mistake of thinking the company invented them outright.

With the patent war currently raging between Apple and Samsung – preventing us from buying the fantastic Galaxy Tab 10.1 here in the UK – we thought it was time to set the record straight and list the things Apple gets credited for inventing, but actually didn’t.

10. The computer mouse

A lot of people credit Apple with introducing the computer mouse to the world with launch of the original Macintosh in 1984, but the company was beaten to the punch by almost three years. Xerox, today better known for its photocopiers and printers, launched the Star in 1981. Although it looks incredibly primitive now, it was built around numerous technologies that are still commonplace today, including the computer mouse. Which leads us to…

It’s on the scrapheap here, but the Xerox Star introduced the computer mouse to the world

9. The Graphical User Interface (GUI)

There’s no question that the Apple Macintosh was the first commercially successful computer to use a graphical user interface, but it wasn’t the first overall. Yet again, Xerox got there first with the Star, which had basic versions of the icons, folders and menus that we’re all familiar with today. Designed around the concept of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), it made much more sense than other machines that used command line interfaces.

Words AND pictures? It might be laughable now, but back then it was revolutionary

8. The OS X operating system

Apple’s operating system is the software foundation of all Macs and MacBooks, but it wasn’t built from scratch in Cupertino; it’s based around on the UNIX operating system, originally designed by AT&T employees in the late 1960’s.

Lex knows the truth behind OS X – It’s a UNIX system

UNIX has gone through significant changes since it first appeared, but OS X still roots itself firmly within low-level code from both UNIX and the offshoot FreeBSD project. Even some of the most well-known features of OS X aren’t Apple’s own invention, including…

7. The Dock

If you’ve ever launched a program on a Mac, chances are you’ll have used the Dock. The floating collection of icons keeps your most used applications within easy reach, but don’t make the mistake of thinking this was Apple’s idea. It made its first appearance in Apple’s operating system with OS X in 1999, but Acorn had done the same as far back as 1987. Not only was it one of the fastest home computers available at the time, but the Archimedes had one of the first docks built into its Arthur operating system, a whole twelve years before Apple.

It might be primitive, but Arthur was light years ahead of the competition thanks to drag & drop support

6. The App Store

Apple hit a goldmine with the iPhone App Store, so it’s no surprise that its desktop operating system has just received a similar feature. However, based on the way it was talked about during the release of OS X Lion, you’d think Apple had invented the entire concept of a computer-based digital store. Software stores are nothing new, from the GetJar mobile library to Ubuntu’s software centre, both of which pre-date the App Store by several years.

Ubuntu has had a unified software centre since 2009, two years before Apple launched the App store for Mac

5. Multi-touch gestures

Apple has one of the best multi-touch implementations in the business, on both portable devices and laptops, but they didn’t invent the technology. As it has done numerous times in the past, it bought out the company that did it better and repackaged its designs as Apple’s own. Fingerworks had several great products on the shelves when Apple bought it out in 2005, but they were all pulled to make way for things like the magic trackpad.

Does the iGesture Pad look familiar? It’s practically identical to the Magic Trackpad

4. The Thinnest Laptop in the world

Everyone swoons over the MacBook Air. We know we’re guilty of this, as it’s one of the thinnest laptops around, but Steve Jobs wasn’t entirely justified in his claim that it was the thinnest laptop in the world when he first announced it. The Mitsubishi Pedion, released in 1998, was 18mm thick throughout, whereas the MacBook Air was 19mm thick at its widest point. Because the Air tapered to an incredibly thin 4mm, Jobs claimed it was now the thinnest. There’s been plenty of debate as to which should take the crown,

It might have had a paltry 233mhz Pentium processor, but the Pedion was thinner than the original Air

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.