Steve Jobs And The Oh-So-Cool iMac

From the first, this has been a cornerstone idea at Apple Computers: make stuff that is cool and hip enough and it will eventually succeed. Until recently, this foolish idea permeated the hacker culture as well -- if it's neat, it's good. Initially, Apple was a welcome antidote to the elitism and cluelessness of the tech elites who designed early computers. Although that seems a long time ago, the early idea behind Apple was revolutionary -- make computing accessible to everyone, not just coders and programmers. But the recent history of software development, networked computing and the Net suggests that now just the opposite is true: being cool is nice, but it's not nearly enough. Steve Case and Bill Gates have known this for awhile. Nobody would ever label them cool, just stunningly successful.

The truly successful technologies and technology companies are utilitarian and dull -- decidedly non-hip. You will never seen a Microsoft or AOL exec talking about how cool the their companies or products are, only how useful and easy to use. They don't really care how much heavy breathing they generate in the media or among excitable teenagers and college students. Those two companies have, in fact, dominated their environments by pointedly focusing on the non-technologically adventurous middle-class and busy business executives and workers and by presenting themselves not as cool but as reliable and accessible. And for this sin they get jeered at -- all the way to the bank. Their motives may be money, greed and power, but they understand what really drives technology in America and much of the world. Steve Jobs does not.

The tech media have served as enablers and co-dependents in Steve Jobs' sometimes-brilliant marketing impulses. Last week, the volatile Jobs projected himself onto the cover of Time magazine by unveiling the oh-so-cool new iMac, a computer as entertainment/culture center, a "hub for music, pictures and movies." It's elegant and affordable, says Time, and takes up little desk space, "but will millions of PC users get it?"

Probably not.

Gates understands something Jobs and media don't. When it comes to technology, it's middle-class consumers and their tastes, needs and expectations that determine success or failure. This is a hard lesson for many hackers and programmers too, who remain bewildered that superior systems like Linux aren't on every desktop. But the middle class, for years abused and exploited by the arrogant tech industry (just think of what poor Comcast subscribers have been going through for weeks now), wants easy of use, safety, utility. Just consider at the telephone, the automobile, or for that matter, Wal-Mart. Apple has demonstrated for years, and so, to some degree, has Linux. Harry and Martha in Dubuque decide which products will enter the mainstream and last, not college kids editing movies or downloading music and DVDs, or using firewire ports to fiddle with video clips.

Apple, perenially aspiring to coolness, has always been the favorite computer of the non-hacker hip and the creative. And of many people (like me) whose entry onto the Net and Web has been made easier for the first programming language that really made sense to non-techies. Jobs' colorful, well-designed, fun and entertainment-centered iMacs and Powerbooks have been getting fabulous press for years. His idea to fuse the desktop with pop culture is, in fact, a powerful one. But it's too soon. The middle-class isn't ready for that. Most Americans don't need the 1,000 songs the iPod can store, and would rather go to the megaplex than edit movies on their computers.

So Apple accounts for only 4.5 per cent of new personal computer sales, according to Gartner Dataquest.

That's probably because Jobs hasn't addressed the central problem facing computer makers: the public doesn't trust them. Burned by years of outrageously poor tech support, increasingly expensive software, and hardware that's almost instantly outdated, middle-class consumers aren't the least bit interested in the coolest new new thing. They want computing that works like TV does -- that's easy to use, takes little space, costs relatively little money and works every time you turn it on, year after year. The public is increasingly wise to tech scams like hardware that's obsolete every 18 months and software that doesn't even last that long. Computers -- even the jazzy new iMac -- are a long way from reliability, and are profoundly mistrusted. In fact, it was only a couple of years ago that the candy-colored iMacs were the next cool thing. Now they're about as hip as Windows 98.

If you're a teenager, Web designer, film editor or visual arts major, or even a loving Grandma, it's great that the iMac allows you to create your own DVDs, organize and edit digital pictures, play CDs or convert MP3's, turn home videotapes into high-quality edited films. What's less clear is whether or not the public -- especially that critical middle-class chunk of it -- wants to do those things on a computer, or is confident about its ability to use machinery that's still more complicated and problematic than its makers seem able to admit.

For nearly a generation now, from Jobs to the makers of instant replay TV machines, some of the best minds in the tech world -- usually the younger ones -- have been crippled and misled by the confusion between what's cool and what's going to be successful, between what's neat and what's necessary. The survivors of the Net's first generation -- brilliant plodders like Gates and Steve Case -- understand quite well that they aren't the same thing, and have, as a result, increasingly come to dominate the Net.

Comments

"ONLY 4.5%"

[mattsouthworth]

I mean, really ... 'only 4.5%' is a lot of fucking computers. 'Only 4.5%' of the automobile (or whatever) industry can make a very successful company. Most developers would be successful beyond their wildest dreams if their software were on 4.5 of computers.

For a far superior article on the difference...

[sammy baby]

...between Gates and Jobs, I refer you to Robert Cringely's terrific article released upon the creation of the new iMac: "The Best Revenge: Why the New iMacs Will Be Successful No Matter What They Look Like." While largely non-technical, it's much more interesting a read than Katz's post, which seems to go pretty wide of the mark, in my view.

Sorry I don't remember where I caught the original link. Could have even been here on /. .

Re:Ease of use

[Melantha_Bacchae]

AtaruMoroboshi wrote:

> I agree that keyboarding is one area where windows is in fact better.
> Hopefully Apple will integrate this into os 10.2...

Just because you don't know about them, doesn't mean that they aren't there. The "Mac OS 9 Bible" lists three pages of keyboard shortcuts (pages 92-94) for the Finder alone. Looking in the Apple Help for 10.1.2 (searching for "keyboard shortcuts") reveals lots of entries on keyboard shortcuts. If anything, the Mac has as many keyboard shortcuts or more than Windows!

Some of my favorites:

Cmd-z Undo
Cmd-x Cut
Cmd-c Copy
Cmd-v Paste
Cmd-a Select All
Cmd-f Find
Cmd-g Find Again
Cmd-s Save
Cmd-o Open
Cmd-w Close window
Cmd-q Quit application

In Finder Only:
Cmd-e Eject drive whose icon is highlighted (have a catcher's mit handy, some Zip drives take this too literally ;)

Apple also took Scotty to heart. Both OS 9 and OS X (at least X.1.*) have voice shortcuts known as "Speakable Items". See the Speech icon in the System Preferences in OS X, or the control panel in OS 9, for further details. And yes, you can make your own "Speakable Items" with Apple Script. ;)

Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp! ;)

Re:Total gibberish

[gig]

> Price for the Dell: $1,741 versus
> $1,799 for the iMac.
> iMac advantage: FireWire

Well, a $40 FireWire card for the Dell brings the price points within $20.

> Dell advantages:
> DDR SDRAM vs SDR SDRAM

I'm wondering if anybody notices this kind of thing once Windows is running (or should I say walking?). Windows has so many latencies and bottlenecks ... it's just hard to imagine that the user could tell the difference at all.

> 80 GB HD vs 60 GB HD

Most people will never notice, and the iMac is always, always ready to receive an external FireWire hard disk just by plugging it in, without any drivers to install. You just plug in and you instantly have more storage. You can boot from that external storage, too. No problem.

> 64MB GeForce 2MX vs 32 MB
> GeForce 2MX

The 64MB GeForce 2MX in the Dell is heavily, heavily compromised by the analog connection to the display. What the user actually sees will be faster on the iMac, with no ghosting or blur. I have both a digital and an analog flat panel here, and I can really, really see the difference when I go to the older machine with the analog connection. Why connect a digital graphics adapter to a digital display with an analog connection? Doesn't make sense today. Apple stopped doing this years ago.

> Scrollwheel mouse with 3 buttons vs 1-
> button mouse

$20 value. You could look at this from a consumer perspective and say "OS only requires one mouse button, not three". In other words, the iMac user can use one or more buttons, while the Dell user can use only two or more buttons. Mouse choice is a personal thing, though, so go ahead and get a third-party mouse and plug it into the iMac. No driver install will be neccessary, either.

> 1 yr phone support vs 90 day phone
> support

The included phone support on the iMac is paltry, but for $300, you can get an AppleCare plan that gives you free phone support for 3 years, as well as a full warranty for 3 years. They basically take care of you like they were your IT department. And if you call up and you don't know square one about computers, they don't treat you like an idiot. They don't ask you to get inside the thing and test stuff.

iMac advantages you didn't mention are:

easier to set up
UNIX compatibility
much, much smaller size
higher-quality display
digital connection between graphics adapter and display
built-in 802.11 antennae for the best range
56k modem is a real modem, not WinModem, so you can install Linux and still use your modem
iMac can mirror its display on an external VGA display, or a TV
easy to use, high-quality software included for making DVD Video discs (iDVD 2)
OS level support for writing data DVD's and CD's as easy as floppy disks used to be (just drag and drop stuff onto the disc in Finder)
no need for anti-virus software and update subscriptions
easy to use digital photo management software with advanced photo printing features for best results with your own printer, and easy ordering of Kodak prints and photo books
iMacs music management software is fully MP3 (no WMA), and is fully featured and not crippled at all
no need to get a Microsoft Passport, or even interact with Microsoft at all
included UNIX software like Apache, emacs, vi, etc.
included office suite (AppleWorks) with MS Office compatibility, and very, very, very easy to use
can boot from any attached storage, including CD's, FireWire disks, iPod, SCSI disks, whatever
boot in Target Disk Mode, and the iMac acts as a FireWire disk you can plug into another computer in order to access the internal drive at high speeds (excellent for service and support people)
iMovie is the best consumer video-editing software, and it's included in the iMac's price.
low-latency audio is possible with even the internal audio on the iMac, and a $35 USB audio adapter can give you low-latency 24-bit stereo audio just by plugging it in and using it (again, no drivers or software to install) ... by contrast, you have to use ASIO (lots of software to configure) and PCI (internal card to add, have to open the box) to get even medium-latency audio in Windows
overall, the Mac and UNIX software platforms offer much higher quality than Windows software ... Apache and Final Cut Pro are best of breed and don't run on Windows
better design, better "fit and finish"
easy open RAM door, so the end user can install RAM without even risking losing a screw
higher RAM capacity
more standards support (even the Mac's "BIOS", called Open Firmware, is an IEEE standard ... it's also used by Sun)
graphical boot loader built into the Firmware, so you don't have to play boot loader tricks to run multiple operating systems (in fact, it identifies attached Linux volumes with a cool Penguin icon by default)
the hard drive in the iMac is the loudest component
iMac wakes from sleep almost instantly and doesn't need to be rebooted or switched off thanks to Mac OS X and Apple's deep sleep modes
Mac OS X is a full multi-user UNIX compatible OS; the Dell's Windows XP Home runs everything as root

I could go on about this for a long time, because I've put in a lot of time on both Mac and Windows systems. Mac OS X itself is outrageously better than Windows. I mean, forget the hardware, forget the RAM and the HD and whatever else ... you're just treated much, much better in Mac OS X ... things don't pop up and market to you, simple stuff is simple, not so complex that you need a "wizard" to get it done ... there is no hardware tree to constantly troubleshoot, no drivers to mess with, no forced registration, and the core is OPEN, which means that there won't be any "content protection" coming to Mac OS X anytime soon. You can boot it into single-user mode, you can login to a plain console, you can run 50 translucent terminal windows over your mainstream software. You have a clean, well-organized file system with application bundles, that turn an application's folder with 800 files in it into one icon that you can move or rename and the app doesn't break.

Honestly, to someone who has used both, your Dell vs iMac argument looks WEAK. Very, very weak. You're treated better at every turn with the Mac. While the rest of the industry has increased the numbers in their specs over the past few years, Apple has been very busy actually improving the personal computer. It's been adding up for years now and the new iMac plus a mature Mac OS X is the breakout for all this stuff that they've been pretty quiet about until now. Try one out at an Apple Store ... talk to users. You'll be surprised at what you're missing.