| Home > News and Views > If the iPod was the musical Trojan horse, is a $500 Mac the OS X Trojan Horse? |
| If the iPod was the musical Trojan horse, is a $500 Mac the OS X Trojan Horse? | | Date Created: 04 Jan, 2005, 12:49 PM |
 I have been travelling through the US since the last week or so of December 2004, first to Fort Lauderdale and Miami, happily locating free Wi-fi most everywhere, and then to LA, Malibu, and Irvine in Orange County.
A trip to CES in Las Vegas might occur this week too. That show will certainly prime the technology news reporting media for MacWorld especially since Apple will have no presence at CES, unlike most of the other well known brands. To my mind, it's better off this way, in a parallel process, further suggesting how different Apple is in its products, marketing and philosophy. Why compete for attention with hundreds of other brands when you can have 3 days of media coverage to yourself a few days later?
Travelling around, shlepping Powebooks and iPods on planes, it was remarkable to see how many iPods were used on board, and in airport waiting areas. Abundant too were iBooks and Powerbooks, and most places we stayed there were several people hanging out using 'Books and sharing likes and dislikes in the process.
In Malibu at a campsite, we located the camp's free computer area, using a recent e-Machines box, and an ancient PowerPC with the outrigger box, running Jaguar.
The PC was down all the time - clogged with spyware and viruses. So people were forced to use the Mac even thought it was a tad slow. But there was the metaphor again - the bloody thing just did its job. We had to remind people while surfing wirelessly on the 15 and 12" Powerbooks, that this was a 6-year old Mac happily doing its job. And that the latest Macs were light years ahead in terms of speed and design.
I don't know what to do with the $500 headless iMac discussions, by the way. This one falls into the IBIWISI tray ("I'll believe it when I see it!"). It would be such a change of direction for Apple, that I would wonder what happened to all that innovative DNA Apple relies on to distinguish itself from the pack of wannabees. I also don't want to hear all the disappointed groans and "Dumb Apple's doing it again - losing the plot" naysayers we are already hearing from regarding Apple's "direction" - if/when it doesn't happen.
Already we are hearing from pundits asking if Apple is a music company, a domestic electronics company, or a computer company. Did anyone ask the same of Microsoft or Sony when they entered the gaming market? I noticed Xbox accessories in Best Buy, Irvine, check-out line yesterday - not one mention of Microsoft on the packaging.
You have to go back into Apple's DNA structure to understand that this is a company that sees itself as setting its own standards for innovation and industrial design. It has done this from Day 1. Jobs saw the Digital hub concept and turned it from an idea into a reality I am now typing on, better and earlier than most.
He still has that vision, buoyed by the unprecedented success of the iPod, and the stealthy creep of Powerbooks and iBooks into the same Open Source fraternity that has Redmond losing sleep most nights.
I don't see Apple as a PC maker. It is much much more than that. Those who predict gloom if it leaves the safe haven of computer manufacturing (Yeah, right! Ask IBM how safe it is) need to think outside the (beige) box.
This MacWorld is already setting up expectations of a change of direction for Apple. Speculation of flash iPods (cheaper iTunes Music Store access) and $500 Macs (cheaper access to OS X) suggest many people dearly want the Apple look and feel in their hands, hearts and minds.
They have little doubt now about Apple's engineering and digital hub accomplishments - they just want it more accessible for the average Joe and Joanne. Does Apple want "a computer on everyone's desk" per Bill Gates' vision of the world, or does it want to continue to make insanely great products, and eschew sugar water as the way to change the world for the better.
This Macworld will help cap the sensation I have perceived now, and felt here during my US travels, that Apple is "cool" again. Those teenagers and children who groaned at the thought of working on an Apple computer now think again, and demand - yes, demand - from their parents, an Apple product for their birthdays, holidays gifts, graduations and coming of age events.
Visiting new friends in the Agoura Hills area of California last weekend, a father showed me his 12 year old daughter's plea, placed in an envelope: a cut-out advertisement for a Creative Zen mp3 player for $199. Stapled to it was her hand-written note, which said: "Please Dad, if can't have an iPod, can I have one of these?"
We had a spirited discussion of why he should spring the extra $50 for the iPod Mini or wait until MacWorld to see what was in store, figuratively speaking. And then we spoke of the Apple way - no viruses, UNIX under the hood, no malware or spyware, and pride of ownership.
The only people using PCs I know who are proud of their machines are gamers maxing our their boxes, tweaking and tinkering, then playing online games... and owners of 17", 10lb behemoth laptops - for want of a better word. How long that pride lasts in the face of the daily ritual of cleansing their PC of crapware, I don't know.
But I am faced with a dilemma if Apple should reach down to the masses. At what cost comes any purported increase in market share? Will it necessarily translate into better products in the long terms, more R&D dollars, and of course, an increased share price?
Does Apple want to play down in this ditch, or does it - er, Steve - have the desire to totally gazump the PC market by saying "Not just do we rule the mp3 market, but we are gonna show the PC commodity market how to do it too!"
I would remain a proud proselytizer of Apple if that could be achieved, but if it was just a cheap box - I would be very disappointed.
I think the truth lies elsewhere.
As much as the iTunes Music store can be seen as a way to bring more iPod sales, and Apple back to "cool" status amongst future PC purchasers (teenagers), would an inexpensive Mac (I simply can't bring myself to use "cheap" and "Mac" as a compound word) be a means of getting OS X into more homes and businesses? If we think of it that way, such a beast (more a pussycat) makes sense. If anything is at the centre of the Apple universe out of which all things radiate, it is OS X. No matter that iPods work with Windows, think not just different, but BIG.
If the iPod was the musical Trojan horse, is an entry level/$500/ headless (i)Mac (strike out whichever guess doesn't apply), the OS X Trojan Horse? |
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