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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
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Monday, January 13, 2003
18:24 - Okay, joke's over
http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2003-01/2003_01_07_macpc.html

(top) link
Via Den Beste (though it's all over the Mac boards)-- here's a very detailed benchmark test suite done by a professional digital photographer, comparing the fastest Macs available to a couple of top-end PC laptops. He's doing all kinds of conversions and filtering and image manipulations, and the Macs find themselves dressed in shorts and t-shirts at a tuxedo party.

What's more, the author-- Rob Galbraith-- is a Mac-head. He understands all about the Mac mystique, the Megahertz Myth, and all the cultish vibes you get in a crowd with a few hundred other Mac people in line for an Apple Store opening, or with a few thousand other Mac people at a MacWorld. He's no Mac-basher. He's just honest.

Now, I've been saying for quite a while now that speed is not something that Apple can claim as a prime marketing bullet point. They've backed off significantly on the superlatives over the past year; even Jobs apparently realizes that there's not even any vapor in the tank when he stomps on the "Shorter Pipelines is Better" pedal. Hence the 970 project, which had better come to fruition sooner than later. Because we're on the edge of a meltdown here. The new PowerBooks and iLife will tide us over for maybe six months, but beyond that-- it's got to be more megahertz, or Apple gets put back in the pariah box.

What's encouraging is that there's a lot of really good discussion in forums attached to this article, with lots of very techno-savvy people discussing the ramifications of these findings. That in itself isn't what's encouraging; what's good is that so many of the posters are avowed PC people, who nonetheless get the Mac. They cite not only the coolness of the industrial design, but the genuine quality of the LCD screens, the design of the iMac, the indispensability of ColorSync (though many seem to think that similar technology must exist on Windows-- sorry, not the case), and most importantly of all: the importance of software/hardware integration and the UI design on the iApps and other software. They might be PC users tried and true, but not a one of them is derisive of Apple. They see what's good about Apple in the face of doom, rather than seeing only what's bad about Apple in the face of coolness (as is so often lamentably the case).

It's this kind of mutual respect that I think has a chance to hold things together until the 970-based machines get here. People know about the new chips; they realize they're on the way. But more importantly, they understand that Apple's strength is not simply in raw speed and power; it never has been. They understand that what Apple does bring to the table-- a vision for what user-interface should be, and for how to run a company that sacrifices market-share for the sake of deeply felt ideals-- is worth having around. To quote "otto" from the comments:
If Apple is indeed on a backslide, I have to say that it doesn´t amuse me as a pc user, because the tough competition they put up is one reason for the incredible personal computer development we have seen in these past 15 years.
Yeah. And if this is the attitude of respect that Apple's fostered in the PC community through this rather astonishing marathon comeback they've staged in the past five years since Jobs' return, then they can be proud indeed. And it may have been the right decision, too, if Jobs had seen this situation coming years ago, which he may in fact have done. It might all be part of the plan.

Imagine: You're Steve Jobs, and the year is 1998. You know that Motorola is standing on a downward slope, they're falling behind Intel, and you know that they're not going to leapfrog to the fore with no reason to make microprocessors except to power Macs. Apple makes what amount to boring beige boxes, no better outwardly than the PCs they're up against. They cost a lot more, yet their software and hardware hasn't done much that's exciting or revolutionary in years. What do you do?

First things first: You release some computers that make the world trip over their feet and fall flat on their faces. That would be the translucent ("visible") iMac and its candy-colored second-gen iterations. Sure, they aren't all that exciting inside; they even include a few controversial excisions, like the floppy drive. Instead, it's a machine that embraces the Internet and USB; it's a small, feature-lean, almost portable computer that's sexy and cute and has personality; it's no speed demon, but it can be expanded via this new hot-swappable port format, and it looks good enough to appear in every movie that wants to look techno-cool in 1999-2000. Much of the feedback is negative and derisive; but that's par for the course. (Even bad publicity is still publicity.) But still more of the feedback is positive or indirectly bandwagoning; the other manufacturers all take note and start doing translucent and candy-colored equipment, and soon it spreads to non-computer devices too, from lamps to water coolers. And most importantly: Apple is back on the map.

But that's just the first step. While the world is poking and prodding at the honeypot that is the iMac, you get to work on the lifecycle of the new G4 processor: something that you know from Day One will be Motorola's last desktop-computer microprocessor. You map out a four-year period during which you will milk the G4 for all it's worth, and then some. You realize that it will be overextended; but you know this is the price you pay when you're given the hand you're dealt, inheriting a company that never chose to jump ship to a different CPU in the early 90s. So you've got the G4; you deliberately plan out the milestones to be widely spaced and modest, and you send out all the feelers you possibly can. You forge alliances in the shadows. You make appeals and counter-offers. You keep an iron in Motorola's fire, just to keep them aware of the importance to Apple of the lifeline of the G4 that they hold in their corporate hands. And sooner or later, you know, you'll find someone who's willing to play ball. Maybe SGI. Maybe Sun. Maybe IBM. Yeah. IBM; that's the ticket.

The iMac's appeal will wear thin, though, you realize; and so you whip the cover off a much bigger project, one that's designed to restore not so much Apple's presence as the savvy public's respect for Apple: OS X. You know that most people think Macs are toys, and the iMacs didn't help that any. You've played the iMac card, and it did its job. But now your task is to prove that Apple really can set its mind to something that will make everybody from Redmond to Slashdot blink audibly a few times and start to keep a few cycles available each day to pay attention to what Apple's doing.

Out comes OS X, and it's a rocky start in many ways-- but a resounding success in many others. It takes a while to shake off the fetters of the old system, but eventually it happens. And by the time that's done-- only a year or two-- assuming you put all your resources where they need to go, and make all the right decisions with this new OS, you've got yourself a ready-made audience in the computing public: people who respect a well-made UNIX, people who will forgive a company its past role as a doddering also-ran if it actually manages to pull off the impossible: a sneaky stealth end-run that puts a real, live, non-crippled, honest-to-God UNIX on the desks of millions of everyday men and women. To the mind of the idealistic UNIX geek, Apple's balls in slipping UNIX in under the door, there to self-inflate like a punch-clown, are basketball-sized. And that's something they respect. It's a piece of political maneuvering that appeals to anybody who has harbored a secret desire not to see Windows ruling every computer on the planet, and to anybody who has wished to see UNIX get a foothold in corporate America and the chance it deserves to compete against Microsoft in a fair fight. And this isn't just rhetoric, either, or the repackaging of ready-made technology; not just anybody can do this, after all. It takes a company like Apple to turn UNIX into an OS for the masses. It takes years of work, thousands of mythical man-months, and every drop of the intensity with which Apple's visionaries adhere to their ideals about computing in order to pull this off. And pull it off you can.

But that's not all you have to do. You have to make OS X into something that attracts people in a way that Windows doesn't. You need to find an angle, something you can do with your whole-widget engineering approach that Wintel PC makers can't. You need to appeal to a certain kind of "lifestyle", something that will present a genuine value to people browsing casually through malls. Something that nobody's really been able to do before; something that you're in a unique position to tackle. How about, say, for instance... digital media? You've got this FireWire thing kicking around; that can do for high-speed media transfer what USB did for peripherals. You've got Unique File IDs and a robust meta-data-rich filesystem; use that to create a new breed of applications that let people interact with their media without the need for non-intuitive metaphors. Launch Internet services that encourage people to use these new applications to create digital media of their own, and share it with the world. Make an MP3 player that takes advantage of all these things and is cool enough to become an icon in its own right; make it available to Windows users if it gains enough mindshare. Empower people. Give them what they want. Give them more than what they want. Make things possible. Make them want more from their computers. And deliver that too.

Again, all this is still smoke and mirrors. You know the G4 is still sluggish; it's getting passed by on the inside track, first on the merit of raw numbers with their semi-meaningful implications, and then on the merit of actual real-world benchmarks that can't be disputed. But by the time that second black flag gets thrown, you'll have re-established yourself. You'll be a real, valuable brand. You'll be a cool company. You'll be a desirable commodity. You'll be something that people want in order to be seen with it. And if you've got that, you've got the public's forgiveness for that bitterly crucial six-month-to-a-year window during which you have to develop the new hardware platform with which you will save your company's butt.

Now, granted-- that's all in the future. This is 1998, remember? Maybe none of this will ever come about. But you've got to proceed on the gamble that it will, and you have to play on the strengths of your company-- the things it does best-- to develop that goodwill for when you need a cushion of time in order to do the things your company does less well. Want to rehabilitate a run-down section of a city? First gentrify a neighborhood, then another. Get people coming back. Get some funding. Get some face-time. Get some "turnaround" headlines. And then, when you've built up some brownie points, cash 'em in on the dirty work: the real cleanup. The industry. The environmental disasters. The human misery. Those aren't sexy projects that you can undertake when you don't have the people's goodwill behind you; but if you parlay your PR properly, you can do a lot of it on credit after all.

This is all speculation. Maybe it has nothing to do with what's been going on in Jobs' head for the past five years. Maybe he's been sitting in his immaculate office, playing with those little dangly-steel-balls-in-a-row things and thinking the world is beating a path to his door, and wondering why he sees so few mentions of Apple in the Mercury News. But somehow what I've seen lately is a little more encouraging than that.

I think Apple does have a plan. They've pulled off so much cool stuff over the past few years that I simply can't believe it not to be the case. A company with no plan and no direction doesn't make iApps and iPods and 17-inch laptops; it doesn't explicitly set out to piss off Microsoft and Adobe with competitor products; it doesn't push itself beyond the extra mile each time it releases something new. There's a method under all this madness. And I'm not at all prepared to believe that CPU speed is not part of the long-term master plan.

Time will tell, indeed. But it just had better not be much time.

UPDATE: Den Beste has some appropriately depressing facts and figures. I still say they don't tell the whole story, but then, neither does a lit candle outside Infinite Loop.


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© Brian Tiemann