“Must the worlds of personal computers and of ‘post-PC’ products, such as music players and cellphones, remain as far apart as they now seem to be? I don’t think so, and in explaining why, I’d like to play peacemaker in a debate kicking around in these pages over the past few weeks,” Lee Gomes reports for The Wall Street Journal. “My colleague Walt Mossberg kicked it off two weeks ago in a column suggesting that the ‘component approach’ used to make Wintel PCs, with different companies responsible for different parts of the device, will never do for a new post-computer generation of music players or mobile phones. Users, he said, want an integrated, easy-to-use experience, like they get from Apple.”
“A few days later, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Intel’s Paul Otellini responded with an op-ed piece saying their component model is alive and well, and will do just as well in the future as it has in the past. While the Microsoft-Intel team probably hasn’t risen to Apple’s design challenge as much as the two CEOs would like us to believe, I don’t think it’s unattainable for them. The differences between the two approaches have more to do with aesthetics than manufacturing processes. What Apple has, and what Wintel badly needs, is a design tyrant like Steve Jobs,” Gomes reports. “Apple has Mr. Jobs, who functions, in the words of one vendor trying to sell to Apple, as a ‘one-man focus group,’ a person with a legendary design sense who insists on getting what he wants. That is possible on the Wintel side, despite occasional claims to the contrary. Both Microsoft and Intel have long had programs in which they certify products as complying with the technical specs of their chips or operating systems. It would take only a bit of imagination to extend that idea to an entire product and the experience of using it.”
Full article here.
Gomes gets at least one thing right: Steve Jobs is the key. Unfortunately for the Windows PC platform, there is only one Steve Jobs. And, even if you could find a reasonable facsimile of Jobs, you still are stuck with too many cooks in the kitchen. Only Apple controls the whole widget. They design both the operating system and the hardware, that’s why it works so well. A beautiful iMac can run Windows, that doesn’t ease the user’s frustration. The ugliest Mac clones of yesteryear treated the user better than the nicest-looking Windows PCs on the planet. Pretty on the outside can’t hide ugly on the inside and vice versa. The same goes for digital media players (iPod) working with music jukeboxes (iTunes) and online media services (iTunes Store).
Gomes is dreaming if he thinks Microsoft and the box assemblers would put control of all hardware and software into the hands of one quality-obsessed perfectionist. That won’t happen, of course – which may be Gomes’ underlying point: only Apple can deliver the consistent look, fit, finish and user-experience exemplified by the Mac and iPod platforms. Microsoft, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway, and all the rest simply have no chance of ever matching Apple’s integrated, easy-to-use experience.
Are you thinking about getting a Mac? Do it. You only live once, so stop wasting time.
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