Leigh McMullen leads the Advisory Services & Strategy practices for the professional services arm of one of the Big-Five firms. He has written several books that would cure any insomnia you might have, and is an avid Mac junkie.
*(and it's not owned by Apple, inc)
Lacking the network of preexisting business customers, and B2B distribution channels of it’s principal rival IBM, Apple’s success was midwife’d by a hodge-podge of independent resellers and enthusiasts.
It seems apropos, on this the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh, to celebrate one of the few that remain of this early band of crazy ones, misfits and rebels, without whom Apple Computer would be little more than a footnote.
Apparently distraught over their utter lack of market-share, all of the approximately eighteen 30-gig Zunes in the wild have apparently committed mass suicide (is their number large enough to be considered a “mass suicide” or is it simply “suicide together”? –ed).
No word on the fate of fat-harry-zune tattoo guy.
You can read more on this breaking story as it develops at Wired or Ars.
It seems that suing Apple is no longer just the sport of crazy chicks allegedly denied their dog-given right to resell iPhones at extortionist rates because Apple discounted them. Instead, we have crazy patent campers who think that 25 years after Apple pioneered the use of the GUI in personal computers, they’re entitled to license fees on a patent granted last March.
Join me in going totally off the deep end after the jump…
UPDATE: Tons of People have signed up already. It will be this afternoon before I can add anyone else. I’ll have an update on the specific prized to be awarded later this week!
For those of you who’ve been following our Greatest Mac Moments posts. We’ve not discontinued them. They weren’t generating the kind of discussion I’d hoped, so we’re moving the format to monthly, where we’ll publish 5 at a time, which ought to spur some discussion.
Also, we’d like to announce another project. Following on the heels of our ridiculously successful “Just One More Thing” timeline, we’d like to create a timeline of Apple Products, complete with Dates, times and announcement videos if we can find them.
We would like Your Help! We’re going to open this one up to CoM readers to contribute. The top contributors will be eligible for prizes like an iPhone, iPods and other cool gear!
The Timeline is Here. It’s blank right now, but we hope to have it complete by the 25th Anniversay of the Mac in January.
If you’d like to contribute, send an email to: CoMTimeLine at gmail dot com, include a valid email address and we’ll get you set up.
Thanks!
I usually steer clear of a point by point repudiation of another writer's work, but reader Handsomematt asked me to, and there is little I won't do to satisfy the desires of our readers ( are you reading this, Scarlet? ... Chrome on top of a File management system like MS-DOS (or more exactly, a highly scaled down, ultra secure Linux) IS an OS for cloud computing that could run on $200 hardware, and satisfy the needs of most consumers.
I usually steer clear of a point by point repudiation of another writer’s work, but reader Handsomematt asked me to, and there is little I won’t do to satisfy the desires of our readers (are you reading this, Scarlet?)
It all started with my piece about how Chrome is an operating system for cloud computing, and why Apple isn’t scared at all. Handsomematt (hereafter: ‘Mat’), forwarded me an article indicating that apparently I was completely full of it. What’s more, what I thought was a piece of insightful analysis disappointedly turns out to be conventional wisdom.
Nevertheless Matt, here you go, Writing on the Wall, or Premature “Googasm“, follow us after the break, and you decide.
While there has been much speculation about webkit powered Chrome and the possible implications for Apple’s Safari browser, we think the shot Google fired last week was across a different bow altogether.
Follow us after the jump where we discuss how Chrome has it’s sights set on Windows and why Apple couldn’t care less if there’s ever a Safari v4.0.
For a while Spore seemed to have gone the route of Duke Nukem’ A game often hyped, frequently shown, and never delivered, but Sunday September 7th I finally got my copy of the God of God Simulators. Follow me after the jump to see if it was worth the 3-year wait.
This week’s entry in the ‘Greatest Mac Moment’ series caused a bit of debate in our sacred halls. The contrarians questioned how a piece of software that wasn’t even originally written by Apple could possibly be one of the top 25 of Mac moments ever. Browse the opinions of our staff, and let us know your own!
Pete Mortensen: In many ways, iTunes is the most significant software program ever created by Apple. Without iTunes, there could be no iPod, and without iTunes for Windows, there could be no iPod and iPhone for Windows, which would mean far lower revenues for Apple these days. It showed people that Apple could do more than just make computers, and it opened the company’s first significant new market in years. Without iTunes, there is no third-wave Apple.
On the other hand, iTunes is only really important in retrospect. QuickTime for Windows already existed as a beachhead into the Dark Side for Apple, and MP3 software was widely available and adopted on Macs prior to the release of iTunes (ask any lovers of Audion what they think of iTunes 1 and 2 if you don’t believe me). While it’s clear that Apple had the iPod in mind as it rolled out iTunes, the digital hub strategy was more a hypothesis than a market reality in those days. Though many people credit iTunes for turning iPod into the cultural sensation that it became, I think it’s actually the converse. The iPod drove demand for iTunes. Thanks to the iPod, iTunes matured into the world’s leading jukebox program and helped drive Apple’s last seven years of growth. But for a first-generation program, it was kind of sad.
Leigh McMullen: I don’t disagree that iTunes is important enough to be one of the ‘Greatest Mac Moments’, I just disagree with its position on the list. If anything it needs to be MUCH MUCH Higher. iTunes ought to be in the top 5, and here’s why: it’s a little celebrated fact that iTunes is the most popular piece of software for Microsoft Windows. It is very likely that there are more legitimately licensed copies of iTunes out there than Windows Vista!
With its popularity, iTunes is the official ambassador of the “Mac Experience” to forlorn Windows users everywhere. It is in this capacity, that iTunes is second only to the switch to Intel processors in driving people to switch to Macintosh. Anything that is responsible for that degree of proliferation of our beloved platform has got to be more important that #21 on our list!
Craig Grannell: I think Pete and Leigh have both missed one of the most important aspects of iTunes, in that—for better or worse—it’s driven UI considerations elsewhere on Macs: Finder is, to all extents, iTunes for documents, iPhoto is iTunes for photos, and so on. Therefore, iTunes is pretty much welded to the modern Mac experience and subsequently deserves to be on the list. On the surface, iTunes is just a media manager, but it clearly has plans for world domination; so don’t be caught unawares by SoundJam’s kid, because before you know it, the thing will have taken over the world.
Sitting for my 12th straight hour in a hospital waiting for the wife to download the latest tricycle motor, my mind started to wander and the solution to Psystar’s counter suit just occurred to me: Give Away Mac OS X.
This isn’t an argument for any open-source / open-license nonsense, just that Apple ought to effectively “shelve” Mac OS X as a product folks paid for, and make Mac OS X upgrades akin to firmware updates, completely proprietary to the machine.
By offering customers free upgrades to Mac OS X (presumably your initial copy came free with your purchase of an Apple computer), Apple would completely eliminate the “consumer harm” predicate of the anti-trust suit as one can’t be a “consumer” of a product you didn’t buy.
The revenue hit would be trivial as Mac OS X isn’t a profit center for the company, and the increase in customer loyalty and positive experience would likely offset any losses. Also as an additional carrot for Windows switchers it might prove to be an irresistible temptation. I can see the ads now:
Get the world’s best operating system with free upgrades for life with the purchase of an Apple computer.
That’s all for now, back to labor and delivery”¦
In what can only be considered a turn of logic from an alternative “evil twin” universe, Hackintosh maker Psystar answered Apple’s cease and desist lawsuit of July 3th with their own alleging restraint of trade and antitrust violations.
via Computerworld
// Opinion Follows //
It’s been long anticipated that Psystar would play the “Antitrust Card” in defense of its illegal activities. The only thing is, it’s not illegal to have a monopoly. The key predicate to an antitrust suit is that the consumer must in some way be harmed by the monopolistic behavior of the defendant. Rudy Pedraza, Psystar’s president summed up their consumer harm argument by saying: “It’s not that people don’t want to use Mac OS X, but they’re not open spending an exorbitant amount of money for something that’s essentially generic hardware.”
So that’s it, ‘the Apple’s hardware is too expensive’ argument we’ve heard time and time again, and have time and time again refuted. On a direct feature for feature comparison with Sony, HP or IBM, Apple hardware is no more expensive than the competition.
Our industry is FULL of monopolies that no one seems to disagree with, examples follow:
While I can understand that free spirited hackers take unbrage at being locked out, there is nothing inherently wrong or illegal with Apple’s strategy of controlling the whole widget. Monopoly “sounds” bad on it’s own, but in Apple’s case they’re not abusing their power.
For those of you following along at home, we’re counting down the greatest Mac Moments of the past 25 years. This week’s is sure to be controversial.
We’ve got no idea what the 25th Anniversary of the Macintosh will bring, but we certainly know what we’d like it NOT to be. The 20th Anniversary Mac was a trifecta of bad, underpowered, overpriced, And while it was a beautiful machine, it looked like it was designed Bose instead of Apple.
For more thoughts on the topic, Craig’s interview with TalkingHeadtv.com is below.
The New York Times reports that today, just down the road from Apple’s headquarters, two Georgian men will present what they claim to be incontrovertible DNA and photographic evidence of Bigfoot.
Even more startling, is that one of the gun-happy rednecks in question appears to be holding the Fabled Mac Tablet. Sasquatch’s next of kin were unable to confirm or deny that he was a beta tester for the tablet due to “NDA issues”.
First off, we don’t want to take any heat about this entry’s placement in our list. Certainly the “1984” commercial announcing the original Mac is more important than to place dead last. So don’t read anything more into this week’s entry than we wanted to begin our list where this whole adventure began: on January 22nd 1984.
Pete Mortensen:
I have to confess something here: I never had the opportunity to see the original “1984” commercial when it originally aired. I was, after all, 3 years old, and my parents, clearly thought I should go to bed before it aired on the East Coast. I did, however, seek it out in 1995, the darkest days of Apple’s history and the apex of my Mac fanaticism. I read countless summaries of the spot, clicked through very slowly loading galleries of screenshots, and finally, sometime around January of 1996, I got to see it on TV in my parents’ basement during a rather insufferable “Greatest TV Commercials of All Time!?!” special on CBS. I loved the ad, but I had built it up in my mind to an experience comparable to transfiguration. It wasn’t. That didn’t happen until “Think Different” came out, the first signal that Apple wasn’t just going to lie back and take it anymore. The birth of a new era…
Lonnie Lazar:
In 1984 I was 2nd year law student still using IBM Selectric and Smith-Corona electric typewriters. I thought spooled white-out correction tape was a great invention! By the dawn of the 90s I had a friend on the SF peninsula working for a custom PC maker and it would be over a decade after the debut of Macintosh before I used my first Apple, a Color Classic II in 1995. I remember being very impressed with the dramatic effect of Mac’s introductory commercial when I saw it live during the Super Bowl, but as a bit of a political radical and anti-Reaganite, I read more of an underlying social statement into it. It’s significance as a harbinger of change to come in the realm of the personal computer went right over my head. After all, those Selectrics were the gold standard at the time.
Leigh McMullen:
I remember the commercial vividly, we had been studying Orwell in school that fall, and so its timeliness and visual impact were stunning. That said, I was an Atari guy when the Mac launched, and to be honest the allure of a computer that lacked color graphics, or bad-assed arcade style games eluded me for quite some time. It really wasn’t until a few years later, playing the original SimCity at the Drake University computer lab, that the little beige toasters started to grow on me.
Here at Cult of Mac we’re not content just to report other people’s rumors we occasionally start our own. Hence this post’s title (The question mark makes it A-Okay, right?).
To be clear, we have no specific information that suggests this might be true. No rough voiced informant leaking this news to us from the bowels of some dungeon in Cupertino. No circumstantial evidence (like a Chiat/Day media buy) dug up through hard-nosed investigative reporting.
Nothing, Nada, Zip, Zilch, Zune.*
Yet here’s the post anyway, what gives?
First, I’m making up this rumor because I really, really want it to be true. Not only does it have a certain symmetry to it that OCD dictators like Steve would gravitate to, but it would be the perfect forum to unleash something truly game-changing on us. Something that would upset an entire industry, something as profoundly impacting as the original Macintosh.
Secondly, because it is exactly 25 weeks until Superbowl Sunday, and while this year’s Superbowl doesn’t fall on the same date as the airing of the original “1984 commercial”, it marks a symbolic milestone for that Anniversary. To that end we’re going to use the next 25 weeks to count down the Greatest Moments in Mac History. Culminating (I hope) in an announcement from Cupertino that will change everything forever, just like the last one 25 years ago.
(*Thanks to Rip Ragged for letting me borrow that line).
It’s no news that The Secret Diary of Fake Steve Jobs is off-line after what has to be one of the most entertaining runs in recent memory. That said those of you longing for just one more dose of dry wit and satire FSJ-style need wait no longer.
Dan Lyons, the creative genius behind FSJ has opened another blog — this time in his own name. Personally, I find it even funnier now that doesn’t have to voice his satire through the mask of FSJ and can just be himself.
Dan’s new blog can be found at: https://realdanlyons.com/blog/
Wall Street’s reaction to Apple’s traditionally conservative guidance by the brain trust that drives the US equities markets has further convinced me that most of these jokers (and our economy) would be better off if they all just played roulette. Taken with the bitter pill that better than 80% of fund managers out there can’t manage to beat the S&P 500, and it’s no small wonder that the investment banks are falling out like teenage girls at a boy-band concert.
Apple’s business strategies are as foreign to Wall Street as fiscal accountability, but there is no denying Apple’s success.
Hit the jump, and I’ll explain the top five reasons why Apple is not just the best consumer products company, but one of the best run companies out there period.
Recent questions regarding Steve’s health have renewed calls for a succession plan at Apple. While I hardly give two shakes over the “Industry Concerns” cited in the recent New York Post article, I would go a little further and suggest that what Apple needs is not a ‘Succession Plan‘, but a new CEO.
As startling a statement to make as that is, hold the flames for just a few more moments, follow me after the jump to find out why.
It’s been Apple against the world for so long that we’re kind’a just used it being that way. However, when we compare Apple against her chief rivals, as well as against some entire industries, a different picture emerges.
Looking at our favorite company in this light maybe helps us understand parts of Apple’s strategy that seem confusing if not just downright bizarre. Follow us after the jump and we’ll discuss why, when we talk about Apple vs Microsoft, Dell or the entertainment industry at large, this ain’t a David versus Goliath matchup anymore.
Pete’s post yesterday, “Hello: Macs Are About to Get Interesting Again“, was pure Mortensen: articulate, insightful, well researched, and on the topic of Apple needing to change designs, dead wrong.
While the Macbook / Pro line as well as the MacPro’s are essentially indistinguishable from their predecessors, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a design philosophy that has powered BMW and Mercedes for a good long while. To that end, other than adding bling to satisfy a generation of new money rappers, Rolex has never fundamentally changed the design of the Datejust, Daytona, or Day/Date (aka President) watches.
The point: A classic is a classic.
Watch a television program. The majority of the time they show someone working on a laptop, it’s a Macbook Pro. Sure, it might have a Pear or an Orange on the back, and sometimes a nasty sticker of some sorts, but it’s identifiably a MBPro.
When a product’s design is raised in the cultural consciousness to be synonymous with the artifact it’s portraying (eg MBPro = Laptop), it becomes the archetype for that artifact. It means that whenever a consumer goes laptop shopping, their mental image for a laptop is of a Apple Macbook Pro, and any other purchasing decision they make will be an explicit compromise from the archetype. This is not just a crazy theory of Leigh’s, Apple’s sales figures in the high-end laptop space prove this out.
Apple has attained this rarified place in the minds of consumers, with both the iPod and Macbook Pro lines. That is the very LAST time to fundamentally change a design.
Back on May 11, I promised to try and live without Microsoft Office in a “corporate setting” for 30 days. It’s been seven weeks in my iWork vs. Microsoft Office challenge now. And I’m none too happy to report that a copy of MS Office must go with me to the desert island.
However, in an interesting twist, it turns out I can’t live without iWork either. Follow me after the jump to discuss what worked and what — surprisingly — didn’t.
Ford & Lincoln / Mercury cars are now shipping with a voice activated technology they call “SYNC”, which proudly proclaims “Powered by Microsoft” on all the adds they’re running. My first thought was: ‘Now what the heck would anyone willingly admit that?‘
My second thought was: ‘Why isn’t Apple just OWNING this space?‘ Click through, and we’ll chat about this after the jump.
I’m a fan of both Firefox and Safari and regularly use both on my Macs. I like Firefox because it lacks some of Safari’s “Squirrely-ness” with some websites –particularly those using scripting, and I like Safari for private browsing, and because it is so fast. So after a day of use, am I prepared to drop Safari forever for the Fox? Click through, and lets discuss.
AT&T announced to its shareholders that it’s iPhone agreement with Apple underwent some substantial changes with the release of the iPhone 3G. AT&T’s press release reads:
“The new agreement between Apple and AT&T eliminates the revenue-sharing model under which AT&T shared a portion of monthly service revenue with Apple. Under the revised agreement, which is consistent with traditional equipment manufacturer-carrier arrangements, there is no revenue sharing and both iPhone 3G models will be offered at attractive prices to broaden the market potential and accelerate subscriber volumes.”
Now of course this substantive change in agreement between Apple and AT&T has the net all a twitter with the possibility that Apple will begin marketing the iPhone 3G on other networks. Even AT&T’s statement that their relationship with Apple is now “consistent with traditional equipment manufacturer-carrier arrangements…” would seem to imply that Apple’s side of the arrangement is also “typical”, meaning that after a predetermined period of exclusivity, they can market their handsets to other carriers.
There are articles at CNET and MacWorld that arrive at this conclusion, and speculate that Apple soon will market the iPhone 3G on other carriers in the US.
The only difficultly is, that it ain’t gonna happen, not right now or anytime we’d call “soon”.
That’s because there’s only one other national GSM carrier and T-Mobile’s 3G network is Voice Only.
That tends to suggest that there isn’t what we call a “Business Opportunity” for iPhone 3G on T-Mobile’s network right now. Of course original iPhones running software 2.0 would be great to have, except Apple seems to have stopped making them.
(note: there are technical details in the comments that are too boring to include in the post)
Update: Reader imajoebob has got a really funny response in the comments. Worth a read.
Trying to write this post on a Blackberry has taught me something, this thing’s web browser stinks. Now that the 3G iPhones will be on-sale in July, I’m gonna hafta break-down and get one. That said, only one-question remains: How to hide the purchase from my wife?
After the break, we’ll talk through my strategy, in the hopes that a fellow husband in a similar pickle might benefit from my experience, or maybe even able to help me devise a better strategy.
With WWDC on the horizon, and keynote fever ramping up, we thought it might be nice to take a stroll down memory lane. The “One More Thing” timeline below covers every Stevenote we could find, focusing on the “Just One More Thing…” product announcement, with video clips for most of them.
Of course if we got anything wrong, or if you have additions, or clips we don’t have, please let us know in the comments, and we’ll get them added — Enjoy!
