This is a guest editorial by Mark Reschke of Three Guys And A Podcast, a show about all things Apple. It was originally published here.
When Steve Jobs said the MacBook air was the computer of the future he wasn’t just talking about its hardware. Lacking both an optical and hard drive is nice and allows for a slim design, but that’s just the beginning.
If anyone paid close attention to Apple’s October Special Event, the OS X Lion presentation subtly showed us how the future of OS X computing would become largely Finder irrelevant for most tasks. But how exactly will this work? Enter the cloud.
Previously on Cult of Mac, I decried the growing alarmism of tech punditry regarding Apple’s as-yet-unreleased Mac App Store. GDGT’s Ryan Block citing something about the cloud or something, noted that his pet applications are probably not going to be hosted by the App Store, which therefore means that meaningful innovation in desktop software is impossible. I begged to differ.
But my greater scorn has been reserved for the subject of this post, the Gizmodo commentary “Big Brother Apple and the Death of the Program,” by Matt Buchanan. If you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s a doozy of tortuous logic, FUD, and faulty analysis well-worth your time. The following is my rebuttal to several of its most absurd assertions.
I’ve noticed an alarming trend over the five days since Steve Jobs introduced the Mac App Store at Wednesday’s Mac-focused media event. On all sides, the internet is being overrun by otherwise savvy tech pundits who have decided that Apple’s efforts to provide an easy-to-use, accessible, and intuitive marketplace for Mac software is irrelevant at best and, though you didn’t hear it from me, evil, too.
I don’t often give myself over to Fisking, but I think it only makes sense to deconstruct these pieces by responding to specific arguments within. I am, necessarily, only excerpting from each piece, so I encourage you read them in their entirety — the full context is as ridiculous as the smaller slices. Up first, Ryan Block tells us why your notebook doesn’t have any software on it.
Cult of Mac was asked by CNBC’s Street Signs to contribute our thoughts on the current market debate of whether it’s wiser to invest in Gold or Apple. Even though we don’t masquerade as financial advisors, the debate in the short-term seems fairly straightforward to us, and here are a few of the major points:
Though much of the buzz in the wake of today’s “Back to the Mac” event has been about the pair of sleek new MacBooks Air that Steve whipped out during one more thing (guilty as charged), the most revolutionary announcement was the Mac App Store. In one slide, Apple flipped the way people buy software for PCs on its head. Big ad budgets will soon be less important than a good relationship with Apple.
There’s a lot to debate about the Mac App Store (which we’ll do from now until a few years after its launch), but I want to touch on something no one is talking about yet: it makes Apple the greenest computer company on the planet.
Despite a massive lion lurking in the background of the press invite for today’s event, the big news didn’t have much to do with OS X 10.7 (now officially “Lion”); instead, the big news was about the new MacBook Air pair, the Mac App Store, FaceTime for Mac — and iLife ’11
In fact, iLife almost stole the thunder from the later “one more thing” MacBook Air announcement. And for good reason: There’re some really impressive features included in this round of what is quite possibly the best software suite to ever come standard on a manufacturer’s entire product line.
Buster Heine: The new MacBook Air has a nice wafting odor of sex coming from the design (except for the metal bezel), but the specs and pricing are a bit disappointing for me. I’m not a rich businessman on the go, so I don’t think I’m in the target demographic of the new MBAs.
From a practical standpoint, the 13-inch is irrelevant. I’m really attracted to that beautiful 11.6 inch unit with a $999 price point, but there’s no point in replacing my 13′ Macbook Pro for an underpowered machine that is a few pounds lighter.
The new Macbook Airs confuse me. They seem designed to be a secondary computer, but if I already have an iPad + keyboard, an iPhone, and a MacBook Pro, there’s no point in buying it because it can’t handle everything a MacBook Pro can, and it’s too expensive to be an amateur’s computer. If Apple can bring down the price on the new units I might be tempted, but for now I’ll be resisting the urge to buy the new Apple gear, no matter how sexy it looks.
It's going to be Mac OS X 10.7, nicknamed Lion. Naturally, we're hoping Apple licenses Leo the Lion from MGM for a new start-up screen.
There’s very little information about Apple’s next big update to OS X, 10.7 or “Lion,” which may be previewed at Steve Jobs’ special “Back To The Mac” press event on Wednesday.
People are very excited, though, and they’re letting their imaginations run away with them. Among the features that have been suggested are an App Store for the Mac, multitouch controls, and iOS apps instead of the little-used Dashboard.
It’s an interesting list, but some stuff there that just isn’t going to happen… Here’s what is going to be in 10.7:
As I noted the other day, I recently completed a near-endless trip around the world, and I used my iPad for pretty much everything while on the plane. And the more I think about it, the more it’s clear to me that I will never again go on vacation with a laptop.
Here are my top 10 reasons why:
10. Though heavy, iPads weigh less than any hardcover and most paperbacks. A lot of people, me included, spend a lot of time whining about how heavy the iPad is. But at 1.5 pounds, it’s a lot lighter than any edition of every single book in Oprah’s club.
9. Endless battery life makes a lack of power outlets irrelevant. Whether with my iPhone or my MacBook, I can’t count the number of times that I’ve started watching a movie on a plane only have the power give out partway through. I seriously can’t imagine how that would ever happen with an iPad. Depending on the task, I’ve gotten well over two hours of battery life after getting the 20 percent warning.
It was a month ago to the day that I ditched physical books, comics, and magazines for my iPad. A round-the-world trip for work precipitated the change. For 29 days, I would be outside the U.S., with stops in Australia, Singapore, India, and the UK. Not to mention that the India stop included three cities and four additional flights. It was not the time for a big stack of physical media, nor for a full laptop. It was time to travel light and to travel digital.
In the process, I’ve learned a lot. Some of it more boring, self-discovery kind of stuff, which I’ll save for my personal blog, if at all, but a lot of it about tablets, computers, and where entertainment itself might go.
1. The current iPad is good enough for most uses.
In spite of my promise to wait for the iPad 2, the thought of a total of 65 hours on planes quickly converted me to the quite-capable version 1.0. I really put it through its paces: web-browsing, Twitter, RSS reader, Facebook, blogging, video, gaming, and book-reading. Despite its early generation, it’s wholly adequate for most of these tasks. It is weakest, as many people have noted, for typing. If you can get it perfectly flat, as on a tray table in an airplane, it’s possible to hit a near touch-typing speed, but any other grip means going slow and making mistakes. Though some have complained about its anemic 256 MB of RAM, I found it plenty speedy for every task I threw at it. The absence of video cameras for video chat was a minor nuisance.
There is a great video of Steve Jobs giving an interview to 60 Minutes in which he states – rather boldly – that the problem with Microsoft is that they “simply have no taste.” He goes on to say that the Windows firm has “no originality” and “no culture infused into products.”
Hello readers. Look at this remote. Now at your hands. Now back to the remote. Now back to your hands.
Maybe it’s a joke. Maybe it’s a clever ruse. Maybe it’s a prototype. Maybe it’s clever CGI like they used for Gollum. I have no idea. But the picture here (sourced from Engadget) is supposedly the remote control shipping with Sony’s TVs that have Google TV integrated inside. It is, in a word, a monstrosity (my friend MG said it best, “My God, it’s full of buttons!”).
Here are all the things wrong with it, in a nutshell:
Meet Paolo Tosolini. He’s a blogger and podcaster in Italy.
And this? Well, this is Paolo’s idea for a “video jacket”.
Stuck for inspiration for something different to do with his iPad, Paolo thought of a way of wearing it at special events, for what he calls “guerilla marketing promotion activities”.
Which sounds to me like the modern equivalent of the sandwich man, wearing someone else’s advertisement while prowling the streets.
I predict that the iPad sandwich man will soon be a common sight in our cities, walking the streets with animated ads playing at front and rear.
Anyway, that gives me another idea.
My idea depends on the next iPad having a user-facing camera. You could set up two iPads just like Paolo has done: one on your back, and one your front. Send the image captured by the front camera to the rear iPad; and send the image captured by the rear camera to the front iPad: behold! You’ll have an iPad-shaped hole right through your body!
The tweet says it all: I’m back using Camino after switching to Safari when version 5 was released back in July.
Although I appreciate Safari’s speed while browsing, and the variety of extensions on offer was wonderful to see, there was one problem that drove me back to Camino: crashes and beachballs.
If you’ve not had the pleasure of reading the interviews at The Setup before, I urge you to set aside some of your precious time and go and read them today.
CNET has a great article up that details the secrets of Apple’s customer service. Erica Ogg highlights the recent findings of the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index, a sort of Michelin guide for customer service and appreciation. Apple not only earned its highest score to date in this survey, it established a monster lead over other PC makers.
The real story is how much further ahead of its peers Apple is in this [survey]. The Mac maker’s nine-point lead is now the largest lead any company has over its competition in any of the 45 categories that the ACSI study surveys–including home appliances, gas stations, autos, e-commerce, airlines, and more.
The real secret to Apple’s success is that there are no secrets.
The blog AutoSpies.com captured pictures at the Paris Motor Show of BMW’s new replacement for the old-and-busted rear-seat DVD screens: Apple iPad cradles that rotate, and support both portrait and landscape orientations. No, this isn’t just some concept. It’s the new hotness.
The cradle debuted on the new BMW X3, but will be available for all other model series starting in the Spring.
Apple’s new social network for music fans, Ping, has had a rough start. People didn’t expect it to be a Facebook for music right away but they did expect more from Apple. After years of social media hype many people thought Apple would have learned from the mistakes others have made. While Ping might not be the best idea Apple has ever had, I think when will look back years from now we will wonder what took them so long! For those of you who have turned on Ping, here are some things Ping should have and a few tips to make your Ping experience a little better. Read more after the break.
Most of the restrictions in Apple’s new App Store guidelines make perfect sense. Who wants apps that drain the battery? There are commonsense bans on hate speech, objectionable material and gambling.
But there are two restrictions that might cause problems: rejecting apps in categories that are already crowded (fart apps), and pornography.
What do you think? Should Apple approve fart apps and porn and let us make our own choices?
Here’s iTunes 10, and the first thing you’ll notice is a sleeker, cleaner look. There are fewer lines, there’s a little more space. The application is still bloated with far too much stuff, but at least it looks a little less crowded now.
Ok, maybe the little black box won’t arrive in every single home, but unlike the 1st-gen AppleTV, the 2nd-gen announced today is going to sell like buttery hotcakes slathered in maple syrup.
Wow — that was quite a show from Steve Jobs. A brand new line up of iPods (except the Classic); a hot new AppleTV that costs just $99; and a potential Myspace killer in Ping, iTune’s social network for music.
But which announcement was the big one long term?
Will a FaceTime-enabled iPod allow Apple to route around AT&T and other wireless carriers? Or will the new, inexpensive AppleTV be the product that finally takes settop boxes mainstream, and Apple’s next big hit? Or is the new multitouch nano a glimpse at the future of multitouch personal electronics (think nifty iWatches)?
So much for the web being dead. John Mellencamp, the increasingly craggy Indiana roots rocker famed for singing about “Jack and Diane,” “Pink Houses” and having the middle name “Cougar,” has clued the world into a major news story: the Internet has destroyed the music business. Apple’s bad, too. From the Globe & Mail:
“I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb,” he said. “It’s destroyed the music business. It’s going to destroy the movie business.”
Seriously, you guys. Not content to make Lars Ulrich look like a visionary, Mellencamp went on to deliver the stunning revelation that MP3 audio is technically inferior to what you would get from a CD or LP.
He recalled listening to a Beatles song on a newly re-mastered CD and then on an iPod, and “you could barely even recognize it as the same song. You could tell it was those guys singing, but the warmth and quality of what the artist intended for us to hear was so vastly different.”
Now, I’m not one to question John Mellencamp’s ability to competently rip an album to a portable digital format, but I will say that I never heard him speak up about inferior audio quality when he was selling millions of cassette tapes per year.*
The music business has changed. Apple reinvented itself by understanding how and why it was changing almost a decade ago. And lots of artists, such as the Arcade Fire and Lady Gaga, understand well how to take advantage of those changes and carve out a successful living that’s less dependent on record labels than their own businesses. And dinosaurs like John Mellencamp have no idea how to be successful in the iTunes era.
*Not to mention, MP3s were successful because they were good enough sounding, which allowed them to spread like wildfire. Their inferior quality was a feature, not a bug. There’s a reason why lossless audio still hasn’t caught on for portable players.
Not long ago, before Apple became big and popular, your company was loved by many of us without hesitation. We still love Apple, but it’s getting harder to feel that way. Apple is clearly loosing a foothold on quality. Perhaps you are taking on too much at one time.
I’m writing this letter after experiencing a ton of problems with my new iPhone 4, including issues with Bluetooth, the proximity sensor, and yellow-tinged photos from the camera. I just took it back to the Apple Store to be replaced. Customer service is still awesome, but quality is slipping.
It’s obvious you’ve noticed quality problems too. That’s why you just appointed Jeff Williams as a Senior Vice President of Operations, and gave him the job of ensuring the highest standards in quality for Apple products. He’s got his work cut out for him. So we hope he’ll hit the ground running.
Steve, please consider the following examples of why Apple’s attempts to do too many things at once are resulting in quality failures in just about everything it does.
The Blackberry Torch misses the mark. We all know this. From its bastardized Palm Pre meets Chinese black market phone industrial design to its Android-by-way-of-Vectrex UI, the entire product is just a complete whiff as an attempt to release a modern, relevant phone for the multitouch and App Store era. Not only that, this is RIM’s third straight swing and miss for an iPhone-killer. We all know this.
But why can’t RIM manage to put forth a phone at least on a par with the Droid or the Samsung Galaxy S line? The answer’s simple, really. They’re so jealous of Apple’s success that they can’t bring themselves to find their way forward.
