Jan
03
Maccast Members 109 – Apple Cooling Off in 2012
Written by: Adam Christianson
Categories: Maccast Members, Podcast
A podcast about all things Macintosh. For Mac geeks, by Mac geeks. Episode 109. It’s a new year and, as historically happens, analysts and pundits are making predictions. Brian Deagon at Investor’s Business Daily says that Apple will will lose its cool factor this year. Not surprisingly I disagree and in this episode I share why and make some perictions of my own.
Maccast Members
The audio for this episode is available to Maccast Members. Sign-up or log in by visiting the Maccast Member site.
cool? when was Apple ever cool?
according the old guard press Apple has been dead, dying or about to die since it first opened the doors. they have never been kind. the computers were tolerated in a business because some part of them were needed to get a job done that couldn’t get done any other way. it seems odd that nearly every magazine used Macs in some kind of way until Windows 95 made it more tolerable to do layout, color correction and other prepress work. kinda cool as long as it made the presses run. sure.
remember when the floppy got axed. Henry Norr (one of the best Mac news guys ever) dedicated 4 column inches of his review of the iMac for MacWeek about what a terrible mistake this was going to be. totally uncool was the word.
when the iPod came out 10 years ago it was declared a instant dud because it was expensive and only worked on a Mac. totally uncool said everyone on SlashDot.
Macintosh never worked well with an Exchange server. and Office for Mac or Windows have had interoperability issues since forever. but that’s not Apple’s fault. but it does make working with them uncool according to IT nerds that have to deal with the screams of the lusers.
and look at all the cool technology that has been killed along the way. why before it even got out of the box Mac BASIC had been knifed to make people happy. but let’s make a list just to be sure: HyperCard, Dylan, AppleTalk (the protocol), printers, small displays, and I could go on and on. what is next? FireWire and optical media. venders and retailers are left with unsellable inventory again and again and it’s really uncool that there is that wake of trash.
Final Cut Pro X is either the best thing ever or you wondered why you didn’t jump to Adobe or Avid long ago. it’s a 1.o product and you’d be crazy not to look at other technology. my feeling is that this move of alienation of a user base was intentional. they are a demanding lot. but the way it was done was totally uncool.
Apple has been a uncool to it’s partners. we won’t ever really know how much money IBM/Motorola lost over Apple switching to Intel. billions were invested in getting fabrication and assembly to make zillions of CPUs. after Apple left there wasn’t a customer. at least 4 companies got left holding the bag making developer tools. not to mention forcing every single Mac developer to rewrite thousands of lines of code to make it work on Intel based Macs. sure, some of it was simple. but look at how long it took Adobe to finish it’s migration.
the number of features that Apple has appropriated from 3rd party developers is countless. one day you might be making a working wage selling a tool only to find it as a feature in the next OS. small developer beware. don’t count on long term revenue stream. especially if what you made is cool.
if Apple was ever cool it’s news to me. this is a company that you should be very wary in your dealings if you are trying to make a living around them.
but from a user perspective. sure. it’s cool. Apple is cool. just be sure you have AppleCare on Mac.