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For 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, 2005

With 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 ]