Apple and CES: This is not the time for Mac users to panic, your time in the sun is around the corner

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Apple and CES: This is not the time for Mac users to panic, your time in the sun is around the corner

Date Created: 06 Jan, 2006, 09:53 PM

Early January is a truly weird discombobulating time for Mac users.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas showcases so much of Apple's competitors' gear as well as their vision, that Mac users must spend four or five days of the Convention, then days after for post-show analysis, listening to all manner of hype, promise and shut doors.

Shut doors? Yes, it's a week when Mac users are sent by their parents to Boarding School, to miss out on all that the family are doing, as if they are naughty children in need of submitting to the will of their parents and/or authority figures. In the US, think of those poor blighters packed off to the Military Academy because they refuse to conform.

So be it.

Mac users' turn in the sun will occur next week, once the hoopla of CES dies down or away.

I saw part of the Gates' Keynote which kicked off CES a day ago, and sans Powerpoint or Conan O'Brien, he made a better fist of it. He set the tone at its outset of course with the usual Jetsons' style promise of what life will be in a Microsoft world in a few years time.

Don't know about you, but the Gen X and Gen Y around us don't care about such stuff - they want to know what's happening NOW. Or when their cellphone contract expires. They don't care about Gates' vision of the future, one of connectivity and living in the Microsoft silo.

Their bosses and employers might, as they get the numbers together to contemplate the possibility of a Vista transition later in the year.

Various media and bloggers are playing up the "Apple will be closed out by competitors" routine, a variation on the beleaguered Apple theme of yore, and my advice to any worried Macophiles is: "And this too shall pass".

I visited CES this time last year, and saw all the stuff being thrown at the iPod from Creative, Samsung, Toshiba and Microsoft. The iPod is Teflon-coated when it comes to the competition who still don't get it. 2005 was the iPod's best year yet, and there is still nothing from CES that suggests the competition has learnt anything at all.

I saw row upon row of mp3 players ready to cannibalise each other, while in other areas of CES the iPod ecosystem was showing all manner of accessories including car accessories, pre-dating that which Steve Jobs discussed at the 2005 Macworld Expo which followed.

This year eyes will be on Google's chiefs who will present after this blog entry is up, and rumours too have been flying about its possible entry into the PC hardware marketplace, an event which will push yet one more lever under the lid which has for so long seemed firmly shut keeping the world locked into a Microsoft monopoly.

Here's my point: It would be easy for the new or moderately experienced Mac user to hit the panic button during and just after CES, when all we hear is rumour about what might be revealed at Macworld, against what was shown at CES, with so much of it excluding entry to the Mac user.

Hey, don't panic. So much of what happens at CES is hype and vapourware, including that associated with Microsoft. It's not about Apple beating the others at their own game, or gaining market share, both of which I would welcome and smile about.

It's about Apple steering a steady course aimed at making its vision a reality. You just know that Steve won't start by painting a future filled with Apple products and the Apple way, set to descend upon us in three or four years.

He will, if past keynotes are anything to go by, review Apple's most recent achievements in the past year, the success of the iPod, the iTMS internationally, and he'll briefly mention Apple's hardware with a view to the very near future when their internals will be Intel-powered.

And then he'll talk about the current activities of Apple, and then ~~talk about~~ show what Apple is introducing TODAY. Not later this year, not in four years, but today. He'll tell us when it's shipping, when you can order it, or when it's in the stores. He'll invite you to participate in the Apple vision today.

He'll tell us about the Intel transition and firm up dates, at least by saying if Apple is on its predicted time course, as outlined in July last year at WWDC. And perhaps he'll introduce a superthin iBook or even a smaller laptop device, full featured with OS X.

This 2006 Keynote is one of the most anticipated ever, in keeping with Apple's 30th anniversary, and the shaping up of 2006 as a watershed year digitally-speaking. Many western countries are now seeing broadband internet access exceed dial-up, and that wide always-on pipe into the home will make for incredible changes, only some of which are predictable.

When Joe and Joanne Blow and family and friends in the 'burbs get broadband, their home theatre, and streaming-video content down the telephone cable (viewable on their huge screen or small iPod), and can choose from many more sources of information, lots of people previously in positions of power, authority and influence can start to really worry.

(Hey, the selection of Jon Stewart to host the Academy Awards is one of the clearest signs yet of this change in power structure!)

Let's wait patiently until the Stevenote is over, let Wall Street do its usual "we don't understand Apple yet" (apart from Piper-Jaffray's Gene Munster) post-keynote share price cutback, and then let's see what 2006 will bring.

This will be one of the best years ever for Apple, and to be a Mac owner. If you like the Mac, you'll be very proud of being a Mac owner and sharing the Apple vision next week.