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by TedDoesntTalk 1717 days ago
Jobs made the claim in his biography. Read the article or the book.
1 comments

To be fair, he (and many other people) consider significant quality and design improvements as “revolutionary”. I tend to agree especially when the entire industry makes garbage. For example the touchpad. It’s still one of the top reasons not to switch to anything else for me. Nothing else comes close to being as accurate and natural.
As the article explained, the Apple ][ SMPS didn't have significant quality or design improvements. It did have some novel design features, but they weren't good enough to be widely adopted by others, and Apple eventually dropped them too.
I'd say the word "revolutionary" has just become an inflationary term for "evolutionary": really - it's thrown around willy nilly with everyone, PR guys, and their mother to describe any sort of improvement (or, more often, "improvement").

It really dimishes (and mostly eliminates) its value.

And yes, it so grinds my gears.

Etymologically, it works (you “give another turn” to the base idea, you take an existing idea and you flip it, you tighten the screw on an existing idea, you adjust course by turning an existing direction, etc.)
According wikipedia, the latin origin means "a turn around", which I parse, going off in another direction. Not just another turn.