 |
More of my sitesWinInfo Daily News
|
About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Saturday, January 01, 2005With the Mac, Apple has lost its way I recently read Andy Hertzfeld's excellent Revolution in the Valley, a collection of stories that first appeared on folklore.org. I've been reading books about Apple Computer for over a decade and a half now, so most of the information in the book wasn't news to me, though of course Hertzfeld's perspective is, of course, interesting because he was a key figure on the original Mac development team.
More important, perhaps, Hertzfeld reminded me why I first became fascinated with Apple and the Mac all those years ago, and how I've largely lost that fascination in recent years because of wrong-headed Mac fanatics and the poor leadership at the modern Apple. While it should be obvious to anyone that the Apple of today in no way resembles the Apple that shipped the first Mac in 1984, less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that the Mac today bears absolutely no resemblance to the wonderful machine envisioned by Hertzfeld and the others on the original Mac team. I'm not sure whether those people mourn that loss. But I do. The original Mac was going to be the computer "for the rest of us," an innovative and easy-to-use all-in-one computer with barely any expandability at all. The idea was that the Mac would be more appliance than computer. It would cost $999 and be accessible to everyone. It would use a mouse instead of keyboard commands. And it would open up a new era of desktop computing, available to one and all. That's not what happened, of course. Starting a trend that continues to dog Apple to this day, the company's executive staff decided to build a much heftier profit margin into each machine sold, and the price quickly doubled to $1999, and then rose to $2495 by the time the Mac was actually announced. By setting such a high price, Apple guaranteed that the original Mac would never be a computer for anyone but the truly affluent. And the company gave Microsoft an opening it quickly exploited with cheap Windows software running on commodity PC hardware. The Mac was doomed from day one. Fast forward to the mid-1990's, and Apple was on the ropes. The company merged with NeXT in order to acquire that company's excellent NeXTStep/OpenStep system, and Steve Jobs returned as CEO. One of the first things Jobs did as CEO (interim CEO at the time) was decide to continue development of the iMac, a machine that would briefly reinvigorate interest in Apple in 1998. The iMac harkened back to the original Mac, offering an all-in-one, barely-upgradeable design. Unlike the original Mac, however, the iMac was affordable, and more of an appliance than a PC. It sold fantastically for a Mac, and put Apple back in the black. Apple--and perhaps more important, the Mac--was back. However, the success of the iMac, and subsequent similar products like the first generation iBook and PowerMac G3, was the beginning of the end for the second coming of the Mac. The reason is simple: Steve Jobs learned the wrong lesson from the success of the iMac. What he should have learned is that Apple could return to its roots as a volume seller of simple, well-liked computers. But that's not what Jobs learned. Jobs took the success of the iMac as proof of something he had long believed: Despite no formal training and little evidence, Jobs suddenly believed he was the harbinger of world-class design. And instead of continuing the success of the iMac, he threw it all away in a bid to prove he had better taste than anyone. I won't belabor the point by moving through all of Apple's products since 1998. Instead, I'd like to focus on the iMac, which should have always been the all-in-one successor to the original Mac. The second generation iMac, however, bore no resemblance at all to the first generation iMac, or to any Mac that preceded it. Instead, the second generation iMac was an over-designed, overly-expensive engineering oddity, the type of thing a first year graphics arts student would come up with when asked to design a computer of the future. By actually making such a radically designed computer, Apple ensured that the second generation iMac would never sell as well as the first, because it had to be so expensive. More problematic, it's bizarre and tightly-packed half-dome base unit would prove to be too restrictive for the heat-happy G5 processors that were coming down the pike. So another expensive redesign was in order. The current third generation iMac is even worse, and Apple's advertising for the machine highlights the problem. "From the makers of the iPod," one ad says. "Where did the computer go?" another asks, as if there were any doubt that the two-inch thick computer-in-a-screen more than just a flat-panel display. With the latest iMac, it is the design that matters, not the cost, and not the utility. What about the eMac, you might ask? What's hilarious is that the eMac was an unplanned product that came about because one of Apple's core customer segments--education--complained after the second generation iMac was released that Apple had abandoned the successful iMac design. In fact, Apple originally tried to limit eMac sales to educational customers only, later expanding those sales to consumers after so many complained. So what did Apple learn from this experience? It designed the even less friendly third generation iMac. Because to Apple--no, Jobs--design is what matters most. Customer needs be damned. I wrote previously about the many useful features Apple notebooks lack, such as 6-in-1 media readers, dedicated multimedia buttons, and dual headphone jacks. But the problems with Apple's iMac speak even more clearly to the problems that grip Apple's computing business today. Because as successful as the original iMac was, even that success is dwarfed now by the success of the iPod. And rather than apply lessons learned from the iPod to the quickly dying Mac brand, Jobs has once again learned all the wrong lessons. The latest iMac looks like an iPod, as if that is the one thing that will fix the iMac's sales problems. Once again, Jobs is putting his ego ahead of his customers' needs. The third generation iMac is not the computer it could be, and should be. It's not an iMac. So now we hear rumors about a potential headless iMac, a la the failed Mac G4 Cube, which I always thought was a cool idea, because of its appliance like design. However, the Cube was, of course, hugely overpriced, and it failed horrifically. I don't know if Apple is really planning a lower-cost iMac, but I hope so. Because otherwise, it's pretty clear that the company has abandoned the ideals that drove the original Mac team. What those people accomplished twenty years ago is both monumental and inspiring. I'd like to see those qualities reappear at Apple now and replace the needlessly over-designed [computer] products that so few people can afford and so few people want. Apple will likely succeed for a while as a high-end consumer electronics company, and that's great. But it's the Mac I'm concerned with here. Anyone else remember the Mac? [ Posted at 8:55 PM | Permalink ]
Thursday, December 30, 2004VacationMy apologies for not getting back to people via email or posting more often this week. I'm actually on vacation, and my Internet access has been much less frequent than I had expected. We're down Cape Cod with the kids for the week, and I'm currently accessing the free wireless access at Sandwich Public Library if you can believe that. I'll be back on a normal schedule by the end of the weekend. [ Posted at 10:18 AM | Permalink ]
Science ... fun? Quake may have altered Earth's rotationReuters:The deadly Asian earthquake may have permanently accelerated the Earth's rotation--shortening days by a fraction of a second--and caused the planet to wobble on its axis, U.S. scientists said Tuesday.[ Posted at 10:16 AM | Permalink ]
Tuesday, December 28, 2004Grim Macintosh Market Share Forebodes CrisisPC Magazine:The Mac platform is essentially stagnant. That becomes obvious when you look at the declining market share numbers—not from research firms, but from the W3C, which monitors online activity. As of December 2004, the Mac share as measured by online activity is 2.7 percent (Linux is 3.1), with all the rest going to various flavors of Windows. I'm now convinced that this stems mostly from Apple's inability to make the Mac a commodity computer by pricing it to compete with PCs made inexpensively in China and selling with razor-thin margins.John Dvorak is a smart and experienced guy, so I know he's bunkered down right now with his asbestos suit, just waiting for the flames to start. Sadly, of course, he's right, which makes this all the more painful. But what's really amazing is the way he cuts right to the heart of the matter. Check out this passage, which I'll relate to a very recent PC-buying experience: The ease-of-use and simplicity of the [Mac] platform is killing it, because people cannot perceive that simplicity is ever worth MORE than complexity. Simpler should be cheaper ... Apple is the easy-to-use, less complex platform. Thus it should be cheaper, not more expensive.And yet. Just today, I purchased a laptop computer. I don't usually buy laptops, since I get to review so many of them, but the truth is I'm tired of switching from machine to machine and I want something small and light I can travel with. Believe it or not, I had hoped that the Apple PowerBook G4 12-inch I bought 6 months ago would be it. However, the PowerBook has proven to be woefully inadequate for the task. Rather than bash the expensive and frail little piece of crap, however, let me explain why the machine I got--a recently-discontinued HP Pavillion dv1010us--is so much better. And no, I'm not talking about any Windows vs. Mac OS X baloney. First, the Pavillion cost me just $899 after rebates ($1099 before), compared to almost $2000 for the PowerBook. It features a fairly low-end 1.4 GHz Celeron-M processor, 512 MB of RAM, a 60 GB hard drive, 802.11g wireless, and a DVD writer, much of which is vaguely comparable to the Mac. (My Powerbook has a 1.33 GHz G4, 256 MB of RAM upgraded to 768 MB.) It has an integrated 6-in-1 memory card reader, compatible with SD, Memory Stick, and other memory cards, which the Mac lacks. It has incredible (for a laptop) Harmon Kardon speakers, which blow away the sad little tins on the Mac. It includes QuickPlay, a cool BIOS/hidden Linux partition solution that lets you hibernate or shut off the PC and play DVD movies without being in Windows, giving you 2-3 times the normal battery life, a feature that the Mac is obviously missing. And it has a gorgeous 14-inch widescreen display (compared to the Mac's tiny 12-inch 4:3 display), all in a 5.5 pound package (the Mac weighs 4.6 pounds). It has three USB ports (two on the Mac), one small Firewire port (vs. one large port on the Mac), and so on. Time will tell whether the HP is as road-hardy and durable as the Dells I prefer, but it's certainly going to be better than the PowerBook, which has developed a lovely and expensive-to-fix screen gap that is quickly threatening to destroy the lid; this happened despite my constant babying of the machine, and it's never been abused. Obviously, I need a Windows machine for 99 percent of my work, and because I travel a lot, small and light are preferable. The HP has a near-full-sized keyboard and ... that screen. God, I just love widescreen (I have a 23-inch Sony LCD at home). Anyway. What separates this from the PowerBook, really, are the options. They're everywhere. Buttons that you can use to control playback of DVDs when you're not in Windows. Slots for memory cards and a cool little remote control nestled in the PC card slot for when you need it (there's no PC card slot on the Mac, naturally). What's really happening here, and this is the point that Dvorak is alluding to, is that Apple (Jobs, really) is choosing form over function. No bit of functionality will marr the PowerBook's smooth case, no matter how useful it would be. Hard drive light? Never! SD slot? Heresy! Switches to turn off the trackpad and wireless? No way! And that's the point. The HP has all those things and more. Yeah, it's a bit busy looking compared to the PowerBook. But it's also more powerful and more full-featured. It does more of what I--and most people--want. Sure, the Spartan design thing is cute for a little while, but real people need to get work done. And in the end, more should cost more, not less. Conversely, less (the PowerBook) should cost less. But it doesn't. It costs a lot more. And that, friends, is not a sustainable market. Dvorak is dead right on this one. [ Posted at 3:28 PM | Permalink ]
Sunday, December 26, 2004Christmas swagSo I won't bore you with some of the more pedestrian things I got for Christmas, but the following are either interesting or site-related.Dimension One Nautilus Spa Trip to western Ireland (Late March) Two cases of Oak Knoll Pino Gris Plantronics CT12 2.4 GHz cordless headset telephone Books: The Cult of Mac Digital Retro Slam-Dunking Wal-Mart Half-Life 2 : Prima Official Game Guide Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar The Making of Doom III: The Official Guide Video games: Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault (PC) Mario 64 DS (Nintendo DS) Jakks TV Games Namco Games (Pac-Mac, Dig Dug, Galaxian, Rally-X, and Bosconian) DVD: Freddie vs. Jason And then today, of course, the New York Jets gave me another Christmas present when they got smoked by the New England Patriots, 23-7 (with their only score happening in garbage time), giving the Pats a Bye during the first round of the playoffs. Good stuff. [ Posted at 7:31 PM | Permalink ]
|
|
Nexus Home | Nexus Archives | Email Paul
|