Amelio, Raskin, Gassée On What Apple Means 317
John Paczkowski writes: "SiliconValley.com is currently hosting the third in its series of online Roundtable discussions. Our topic is 'Does Apple Matter?' and as you might imagine conversation has been quite spirited. Among our guests: Jean-Louis Gassée -- chairman and CEO of Be and former head of head of product development at Apple, former Apple chairman and CEO Gil Amelio, former Macintosh project manager Jef Raskin, and Mark Gonzales, a former senior Apple product manager who worked on the company's 'Star Trek' project. You'll find the introduction to the event here and the discussion itself here."
Re:Innovation (rather off-topic) (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it any coincidence that nearly all the non-IBM platforms disappeared by '90 or so? Not really, IMHO. They may have had very different reasons for their failures, but, thanks to their inept marketing, bad management, poor decisions, etc, the IBM clones were able to seal up the market and push the surviving companies into miniscule niche markets.
Most of the non-Intel PC and workstation companies are starting to disappear now, a decade later. DEC? Dead. SGI? Nearly dead. Sun? Losing marketshare quickly to Microsoft, of all people. Cray? Dead. (No pun intended. RIP Seymour Cray). Who's left, really? Hewlett-Packard, who's now working with Intel? Motorola, who is known mostly for cell phones and embedded chips? The future doesn't look so bright to me.
I was never much of a fan of Apple or their products, but I do mourn the slow death of competition in the PC and workstation markets. The most recent Apple products do give me hope that Apple can recreate the success they acheived in the 70s. Maybe competition and innovation aren't dead, but they sure are starting to smell funny.
Apple has never really been about innovation, IMHO. They've been about dumbing down computers so that "the rest of us" can use them. That's why I personally never liked Apple much. Going to the PowerPC chip architecture was a good move, and using the NeXT architecture as a next-gen Macintosh was also a great idea. However, neither of these are innovative... just good decisions.
Innovative? No. Not since the 70s or early 80s. Potential competition to the growing conglomerates? I hope so. Nobody else is rising to the challenge, except a bunch of poorly-run Linux companies that are dying off faster than they can make up business strategies.
I feel that I know the solution to the problems we're facing today (lack of innovation, giant monopolies, slouching market, bold companies driven to niche markets) -- return to the glory days of the 80s, the epitome of open computing, choice, and competing architectures. If that means pumping Federal money into Apple, so be it.
I'd rather not be labeled a kook or a troll, but I suppose either fits.
Re:Bias? (Score:2, Insightful)
Cryptnotic
First impression (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't had time to do more than just glance at a few of the commentaries, and I'll go through it in more depth later -- but my initial impression is:
WHAT A BUNCH OF PRETENTIOUS WHINY ASS CAN'T GET THEIR OWN SHIT TOGETHER SOUR GRAPED LOSERS!
I mean, sure, criticism has its place. Just because someone makes more money than you do, or is more succesful in other ways, doesn't make them above criticism. I've been mightily critical of Apple in the past, and will continue to harp on them here and there. How much genius does it takes to see that multi-buttoned mice with mousewheels are a boon to productivity? Oh, man, and don't get me started on that stupid hockey-puck mouse that Steve just refused to discontinue, no matter how many people internal to Apple complained about it.
It's just the smell of arrogance that you get from reading a forum of "experts" on "Does Apple Matter," with the headline "expert" being Gil Amelio, the dumbass that almost finished destroying the company. He's like that idiot in every Mafia movie, than talks too much, thinks he knows too much, fucks up a lot, then he gets whacked. You maybe feel a bit sorry for him; but you know that if he hadn't been such a moron, he would have lived a lot longer.
</rant>
Sorry, I'll go chill out for a bit.
Re:Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Innovation (Score:3, Insightful)
This was a formative experience for me. It was the day when I learned that computers weren't for sitting around and typing, it was a way to say something profound.
Now, there will be kids having the same experience . Only nowadays, it will be with emacs/VI and gcc. Maybe they'll use the GIMP or Broadcast2000.
The question is not if Apple matters. It's if kids, and to a greater extent humanity matters. If a legion of kids can have the same revelation with Open Source that I did because of the CD-ROM drive, then maybe Apple will have really changed the world for the better.
Making UNIX usable for my grandma, and my future kids is an innovation that only Apple has pulled off.
Re:Bias? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but you can have a roundtable of people that are/were Apple fans, and are able to see the issues clearly.
Jean-Louis Gassee quit Apple, then became a big critic when they refused to buy Be.
Exactly where did you get the idea that he's become "a big critic"? If you'd actually read his two posts at the roundtable, you might be surprised that he still sounds like a fan...
It's clear that he dislikes Steve Jobs. It's even clearer that JLG is smart and able to assess any situation with a seemingly unbiased viewpoint.
Here's a guy that was competing with Apple, that probably now regrets not selling to them for $125 million when he could, that must eat humble pie when discussed alongside Steve Jobs. And yet, he's discussing Apple in a nice way at a roundtable specifically about Apple.
Would Steve Jobs be able to do the same thing if the roles were reversed?
Does Apple matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
OK.. (Score:1, Insightful)
ooooh, big media wants banner clicks (Score:3, Insightful)
All I have to say is; next time you set up a Windows or Linux box, and you're a few days into it, know that you could have done this all in 15 minutes on a mac.
I love the fact that grep, openssh, perl and apache are standard with the current macos, and I don't have to spend any time cursing xfree getting it to work for me. Apple is or at least will be the known universe's largest distributor of UNIX.
Penguin and VA will never get in the hands of a 5 year old kid. But starting in september, some of those kids will go to school and notice, emacs, VI, gcc, apache and gnu/bsd in their classroom.
If you want to raise a nation of hacker kids; kids who find their own uses for technology, then you realize that Apple matters.
And even if you don't buy into that, you might dig the peace of mind gained by not being forced to give your personal info to passport.
When Apple does something, people talk (Score:5, Insightful)
I submit that those details are secondary to this question.
What really matters, if we're actually talking about Whether Apple Matters, is that Apple as a company has certainly pushed the personal computer's adoptation by society.
1) The personal computer - a computer that you could go to a story and buy, that you didn't have to solder together yourself, that let you do fun stuff like play games and write letters and even program. Sure, Apple didn't make the first personal computer, but let's not forget how important the first Apples were in popularizing home computers. The first time I ever thought a computer was "cool" was playing four-player Asteroids on my friend's Apple IIe.
2) The GUI - yes, this is a hot-button topic. Did PARC create it or was it Apple, or even the Martians? Again, who cares. Apple popularized the desktop metaphor and allowed consumers (yes, those people who go to stores and spend money and don't work at universities or research labs) to buy a computer that used a GUI. I recall many a conversation with my DOS-using friends back in the pre-Windows days: "That graphical interface sucks! I'll NEVER use something like that. You have no real CONTROL over what you're doing. What a useless TOY that Mac is!" Of course, the world has gone GUI. Even die-hard UNIX/Linux folks are getting into the act, crowing from the rooftops about the superiority of Gnome. I'd be willing to be that without Apple, there would be no Gnome and no KDE.
3) Making computer hardware and an OS that work together in a way that turns people into Mac Evangelists - laugh if you will, but it's interesting to note why people evangelize different OSes. In my experience, while Windows zealots go on and on about how many zillion different first-person shooters there are for Windows and how you can't go wrong with Windows because it's ubiquitous, Linux users preach the elegance of the kernel, the efficiency of the UNIX approach with small, sharp tools and transparent underpinnings.
Mac users are as often as not people who now love computers (their Macs), even though they'd never loved or even enjoyed using a computer before that. With their Macs, they can actually get things done - things that had eluded them for whatever reason on more intimidating systems like DOS and Windows.
4) Desktop publishing. 'Nuff said there.
If not for Apple constantly pushing (not always succeeding, but at least trying) to make the user experience actually usable by people who aren't interested in learning about the inner workings of their computers, I really doubt that personal computing would be anything like what it is today. Would Microsoft (not to mention UNIX hackers) have seen the worth of a GUI without the competition from Apple? Would Compaq and other competitors be making hardware with the ports clearly labeled, with easy to use instructions and easy access to the innards? Perhaps, but my guess is that the Mac towers helped to push them along.
So that gets us to now. As to whether Apple Really Matters in the Future, we may be surprised yet again. Apple has been on the verge of extinction for years - since before the Mac, really. I can't count the number of somber articles I've ready during that time, delineating the reasons why Apple is irrelevant. Yet somehow, they've managed to survive. In fact, they're looking pretty solid right now.
The concept of the personal computer as the hub of a digital lifestyle is, again, not a new concept to the geek readers of Slashdot. But to the general public, it is a novel idea. Apple has adroitly positioned themselves to take advantage of the covergence of several technologies.
They're making desktop video a consumer reality. Again, they didn't invent it, but they're making it so easy to use and clearly orienting their products around this core function, that desktop video could take off the way desktop publishing did in the 1980s.
They've brought UNIX to the masses. Apple is already the largest-volume UNIX supplier in the world. The "not invented here" syndrome that crippled Apple in the 80s and 90s has been rolled back quite a bit under the second Jobs tenure. Put another way, although the Mac hardware is proprietary, the OS itself plays well with others far better than Microsoft OSes.
Finally, Apple isn't afraid to think creatively about the personal computer. They're not afraid to take chances. Some of their big gambles, like the celebrated failures of the Newton and the Cube, have made them look foolish. Think of Apple as you would a person - does any person who never takes chances ever *really* get ahead in life? Does that person ever inspire others, or get people excited? Like Apple or not, when they push their latest hardware or OS, people talk. People argue, people re-examine what's good in personal computing and what isn't.
Is Apple relevant? Yes.
Re:Innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
When the Macintosh came out, it was basically a low-cost, stripped down version of desktop workstations at the time. Desktop workstations had good graphics, built-in Ethernet networking, lots of memory, and a large screen.
CD drives, USB, Firewire, and other technologies were developed for the PC or consumer market. Yes, Apple could deliver them a little earlier, but only because their machines were already premium priced.
In terms of laptops and handhelds, Apple was late to the party. The laptop form factor was most clearly described by Alan Kay with his Dynabook, more than a decade before Apple did anything. The TRS-80 Model 100 was much more portable than even today's Apple laptops. Handhelds predate the Newton by many years as well, and they were going to happen with or without Apple.
I think if you examine it closely, Apple has invented and innovated very little. What they do have is style, better taste than Microsoft, and a customer base that is willing to pay a premium price for the latest, slickest hardware (within limits). But I don't think that makes Apple an essential part of the computer industry.
Summary (Score:2, Insightful)
Does Apple Matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Our topic is 'Does Apple Matter?'
Of course it does! Without them to take the lead on everything, we'd still be stuffing 5.25" diskettes onto beige machines without GUIs.
They're the computer industry's metronome. No one wants to admit it, but every other company follows.
I sometimes suspect that 50% of their machines get sold to cults. The other 50% of their machines, of course, are sold to - and reverse engineered by - every other PC manufacturer and software developer.
Now that OS X is a *NIX derivative, an Apple is suddenly as viable as Linux on a PC. Moreso, in fact, since the hardware architecture is so much better and they get so much more bang for a MHz than does an x86.
Not to mention, the cases are so cool.
Your Monopoly (Score:1, Insightful)
NT4 never networked worth a damn either.
Neither did 2000. Hell, it won't even allow
100mbits full duplex, when I can pop in a Linux
HD, and it goes 100mbits full, or I can put a G4 on the wire, and it goes 100mbits full.
I plan on buying a G4 with OSX this month.
Monopoly products don't work worth a flying
fuck.
Jef Raskin (Score:5, Insightful)
He says that apple doesn't innovate at all anymore. While that is true from one point of view, it's quite false from another.
So Apple didn't invent USB. Who cares? Without Apple, it would have never caught on. Even the GUI was pioneered at Xerox PARC. Just because you didn't come up with an origonal idea doesn't mean you didn't play an extremely important role. If the technology is never adopted, it's greatness doesn't mean anything.
Apple has proven itself pretty damn good at taking someone else's technology, and making it popular, and you can't discount the importance of that.
Raskin talks about how Apple also isn't innovating with GUIs anymore. He says that X is just another 'WinMac GUI,' and he's right. He says that Apple needs to adopt a totally different strategy and use the mac as a cash cow while this new innovation catches on.
He says "What I would build wouldn't be a traditional OS, it wouldn't have a traditional GUI, but it would run on Macs, it would run on Wintel boxes, and we'd license it so as to make money from our competitors."
Of course, no mention what it would be. I don't think he really has a clue what this next 'super innovation' (like the mac was in '84) should be, but he blames Apple for not coming up with it yet.
Of course, I've never read The Humane Interface, so maybe this little issue is explained there...