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by viraptor 2111 days ago
> to USB and WiFi brought to the mainstream

Not sure what you mean here. USB was used everywhere and around the time iPhone launched, microusb was used by a large portion of new phones. Apple is pretty much the only actively USB-avoiding company left. They still use a proprietary connection for their devices.

They certainly sped up the wifi on mobile trend, but I would argue with bringing it to the mainstream.

1 comments

It was meant as a separate statement to the iPod/iPhone one, separate innovations that (I would argue) Apple majorly popularized or brought to the mainstream. The iMac G3 and PowerBook/iBook G3 brought USB and WiFi (Airport) to the masses, respectively. The iMac G3 famously came with FireWire and USB as it's only peripheral connections, while the iBook was the first consumer laptop period that included WiFi standard, and IIRC Apple released one of the first consumer WiFi routers as well.
iBook included wifi, but they killed pcmcia more than provided wifi itself. Everyone who needed networking had a pcmcia card then, whether ethernet or wifi. (Or both) So I'd give them half a point for the first wifi in practice.