| Friday, December 20, 2002 |
17:49 - You're not as happy as you think you are!
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(...To borrow a line from a comedian who was trying to capture Bob Dole's 1996 campaign attitude.)
Tom Lehrer, too, once had a line about a friend who "specialized in giving helpful advice to people who were happier than he was."
That's what I feel like sometimes, when explaining what it is about the Mac and about Apple that I think is worth writing as many megabytes about them that I have over the past year. I find myself in the position where for all intents and purposes I'm trying to convince people who are perfectly happy with their computers that they shouldn't be... or that there are things about their computers that they don't even realize are sucky.
I'm reminded of this every time I have to explain ColorSync to a PC person, or give reasons why Macs are so preferred in professional video editing, or graphics, or audio, or prepress. I explain the technical reasons why Windows is inherently ill-equipped for these tasks, and they don't believe me-- because how can Windows be so dominant if it's that deficient?
Well, it's because for 95% of the uses for computers, the advantages of the Mac are invisible. A school might buy Macs for their maintainability, but students-- who have PCs at home-- merely find them unfamiliar and weird. And they're usually ill-maintained, used as scanner machines or Photoshop stations, and the students come away thinking that Macs are the retarded uncle of the computer world, rather than considering why a Mac was being used for scanning and Photoshop in the first place.
There are problems Windows is trying to solve nowadays that people don't even consider "problems" most of the time, because they've figured out a way to cope with Windows' deficiencies in those areas. But what galls me so much is that Apple solved so many of those problems years ago, through lots of research and development, and that's why Macs cost more. Reward for effort. It's only fair, right? And for those industries that depend on Apple's solutions for the survival of their business model, Macs are indispensable. Mention Windows in such an environment and you'll get laughs.
Macs have things like ColorSync, WYSIWYG dpi-based monitors, FireWire (and SCSI before that), and peer-to-peer zero-configuration IP-routable file-sharing. Each of these things helped to define an industry, but there were always cheaper solutions on the Wintel side that satisfied the average, everyday consumer, even if they were sorely insufficient for those industries that depended upon those solutions being done the right way. For most of those computer users, the Mac solutions are things they've never heard of-- things they can't imagine are really that worthwhile, because they've figured out ways to cope with not having them... or because they don't have a need for a better solution that the ones they have under Windows.
PC users without ColorSync learn to deal with the fact that the colors in their images never quite match up, that one user can't send an image to another and be assured that it will appear the same on the recipient's screen as on his own. They grouse and grumble, but they accept it as "one of those computer things". They learn to tweak colors one way or another, fiddling with white-balance and temperature and doing multiple proofs until it comes out right. And that's just the way it is.
PC users with xVGA-based video cards and monitors (which includes Macs these days-- the dpi-based monitor standard has given way to the demand for higher pixel density and large resolutions) have learned to deal with images that aren't exactly the same size on screen as they would print out on paper. Point sizes on fonts have ceased to have any meaning, other than relative to other screen elements, crippling CSS. Images are rendered however the video card and monitor feel like laying them out, eschewing attempts to simulate reality. And that's just the way it is.
PC users without FireWire or SCSI have things like USB2 and IDE. And those things are fine, as long as you don't need to daisy-chain the devices together, offload the processing from the CPU into the devices, or power them through the same cable that carries the data, especially if it's a device that uses a lot of power. But for most PC users, IDE and USB are fine, because they've learned to cope with A/C adapters that take up three slots on a power strip and device channels that can only handle two drives each. That's good enough for most people. If they need more, they just get more power strips and USB hubs. And that's just the way it is.
PC users without AppleTalk get by with Windows' SMB-based file sharing, which is fine on a LAN-- but which isn't routable over IP and never has been. You can't just type in an IP address and mount someone's drive from across the country. But that's fine for most people; they use SMB to pass files around the LAN, but when they encounter the limitations of Windows' file-sharing, they turn to things like e-mail as a means to broadcast their PowerPoint presentations and Word docs. I'm sure I need not explain how ugly an idea this is, but whaddyagonna do? This is Windows. It's just the way it is.
Some of Apple's solutions will eventually make it to the PC world. Apple-style monitor-control software, common on Mac monitors since 1991 or so, is appearing from many third-party companies these days. Windows may one day implement a kind of file-sharing that does everything AppleTalk does. But other solutions, like ColorSync, are unlikely ever to reach the PC world-- not to their full extent and potential-- precisely because of the open nature of the Wintel architecture, the democratization that made Windows so successful against the Mac on the strength of price. When every company has its own idea of how monitors should work, a technology like ColorSync is... shall we say, implausible.
Most people remain blissfully ignorant of just why it is that Apple exists. Because they'll never benefit directly from the solutions Apple has implemented over the years, not being in the industries that demand the "real deal", all they know about Apple is that it's just "some weird computer company that makes expensive machines that don't run Windows". They have no idea why Mac people are so ferociously adamant that Apple not be given short shrift or belittled by sneering wags who would rather see a homogeneously Windows-based world than learn why it is that some industries still insist upon Macs. It's simpler to assume that the graphics world is inhabited by rich snobby art people who are seduced by translucent plastic, right? It can't be that they know something that the hecklers don't.
Because a rant like this is never complete without a metaphor-- it's as though Ferraris or Lamborghinis are being criticized for having insufficient trunk space or seating room or hauling capacity. Of course they suck in those areas. But for the purposes Ferraris or Lamborghinis are targeted towards, there is no substituting them with Fords or Chevys. (And in any case, Macs are a lot more well-rounded than Ferraris. ...I didn't say it was a good metaphor.)
What irks me beyond belief, however, is that eventually the defenders are going to be overwhelmed. There are just too few of them left, and even if everyone in the trenches who understands the issues remains firm in their resolve, there will always be clueless supervisors reading eWeek and Network World and .NET Propagandist Weekly who look around, startled, and realize how much money I could save the company if only we got cheap PCs instead of these stupid Macs. Macs are just slow, incompatible computers with more style than substance, right? And out go the Macs, and if necessary the people who relinquish them only over their own dead bodies; such people are livin' in the past. Windows Is The Future!
And then these supervisors wonder why they can't do certain things the same way anymore, and why there doesn't seem to be a good solution for IP-routable file-sharing or standardized color-matching-- why so much more of the business is based on kludges and assumptions and guesswork, instead of the technology just working and handling all that computer-related crap for people.
We in the trenches see this happening every day. We see Macs dwindle from business, thrust out by standardization in IT (in the name of reduced support costs, not that Macs cause nearly the same number of long-term headaches as computers with Registries do) or by starry-eyed supervisors intent in saving a buck and impressed by the Dell they got for their daughter and how fast it ripped that CD. Out with the old! In with the new! So long, stupid old Macs! Hello, the bright future of Windows!
Now, I really have no problem with people buying PCs because of lower price or higher speed or greater software compatibility. Those are all fine things.
But for me, conscientious design is a real, honest-to-God feature, as are fit-and-finish and corporate integrity and a demonstrated penchant for pandering to consumers' needs.
But even more important to me is that Macs not be dismissed from the niches where they are the only viable solution, just because of some edict from some suit who thinks he's doing his company a favor. I want people to be aware of what makes Macs special, what makes them desirable to the pros who use them. I want to make sure people understand what it is they're mocking before they mock it. Because if they knew, really knew how Windows was lacking and how much better it can be done, they probably wouldn't be quite so dismissive. They might even realize why it is that a company like Apple, which by rights and by all the evidence they can see should have died long ago, is still chugging right along, hanging on to that 5% of the market, and running prime-time TV ads and covering Silicon Valley with billboards.
They're not dying; and that fact is attributable to the many people who do still understand what it was Apple was trying to accomplish, and what they're still doggedly pursuing. They're willing to pay the extra dollar to support uncompromising development of real, top-drawer solutions, even if they themselves won't use them. I don't consciously use ColorSync myself; but Apple gets my dollar because they went the extra mile to create it. That's the kind of company that we need in this world.
Because if Apple were gone, even people who'd never used a Mac in their lives would lack from their lives the things made possible by the people who do.
UPDATE: Robert Lloyd mails to tell me that Windows can do direct IP-based file-sharing now. Well, that's good-- I figured they'd get to it eventually.
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