“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.
Advertisements:
• Introducing the super-fast, blogging, podcasting, do-everything-out-of-the-box MacBook. Starting at just $1099
• Get the new iMac with Intel Core Duo for as low as $31 A MONTH with Free shipping!
• Get the MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo for as low as $47 A MONTH with Free Shipping!
• Apple’s new Mac mini. Intel Core, up to 4 times faster. Starting at just $599. Free shipping.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
Apple’s legendary design powered by The Steve Inside® is only part of the story of Apple’s success. Here are a couple other key contributors:
a. The existence of M$: without a stinking cesspool, how would one know they’re clean?
b. Darwin: Mac OS X’s plumbing, based on FreeBSD Unix, is solid and Open Source. Collaboration and peer review keeps it solid and very functional. Winblows is closed, proprietary and sucks. Further, Apple gets to put their effort into the UI: Core Image, etc.
c. Less market share: That’s right, having far less market share than Windblows helps Apple to by giving it the freedom to be innovative without worrying about backwards compatibility to crap. If M$ really made a new, (gasp) innovative OS, they would have to sever the ties to the Windblows past – eliminating the “market share” advantage.
d. There’s more, but I’m tired of thinking. So I’m going to go play Doom on my peecee
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” />
Gomes: “It would take only a bit of imagination . . . “
Yaah, right. That little “bit” of imaginatioon that they’re lacking is about as huge as the chromosomal differences between humans and chimpanzees: Sure, they’re “98%” there, but that little “bit” of 2% extra to being human is HUGE!
Actually, now that I tihnk about it, after studying the Ballmer species in its native habitat, maybe, just maybe, they’re closer than we think at Microsoft.
TO CHIMPS!!!
Result: They’ll NEVER catch Apple.
Even the folks at the WSJ don’t fundamentally get it. Apple’s been on a roll for quite some time now, and it’s not gimmickry that keeps them going. It’s not something easy, or else that easy thing would have been tried and done by now. Don’t they think that M$ wants to get Vista out the door? Don’t they think that Creative wants to beat the iPod? Don’t they think that Dell wants to keep increasing profits? Well, if it were easy to fix these trends, that would have been tried by now. One of the things these companies are all missing is passion and another is ingenuity. That is why small businesses succeed and why large ones collapse under their own bureaucratic weight.
Let’s not forget who invented the beige box in the first place….
MDN used to take the trouble to spell out “iTunes Music Store”. Lately they’ve dropped the ‘music’ part, and hopefully so will Apple.
“Let’s not forget who invented the beige box in the first place….”
That is true, but it was a sign of the times. That term is used now in
reference to a portion of the market that has stagnated in many ways.
Yup that’s where they get there story wrong alright. PC’s and Mac’s are built the same but Apple has the advantage of integrating the software and the hardware to work as one. PC vendors and Microsoft can’t do this, ever. That’s where an inovative person would be as useful as Steve Balmer has been.
Motorola suggested Apple call it the ITNZ MZC STR. Steve said, “Um, no.”
While Apple do design a lick-worthy box, at the end of the day, it is just still a box.
I work in the PeeCee industry and the reason I use a Mac at home is the lack of work in maintaining it, the ‘just-works’ nature, coz its something different to the OS’s I have to deal with at work, and finally (as well as mainly) because of the OS and applications that run on the OS.
Frankly, the Apple hardware, to me, is the most limiting and annoying part of the equation. They lack the flexibility and upgradability I am used to in the PeeCee world. I use Mac’s in spite of the hardware, not because of it!!
My PC’s are all like Granddads Axe, 3 heads and 5 handles later. I dont buy a new PC, I buy with an eye to best price/performance ratio at the time and then upgrade bits as needed. GPU’s are my most upgraded item in my PC’s, with the processor/ram after that, new HDD’s as required, and the display last. This usually occurs over about a 3-4 year cycle.
To achieve a modicom of that flexibility (and run the highend apps like Aperture / Motion at all) you either buy a iMac and accept you will replace EVERYTHING in 2 years, or else you have to have buy a tower Mac at a crippling inital price. Then to upgrade GPU’s is an exercise in frustration, with little choice (just ask dualcore G5 owners with GF6600’s) and costs of at least 1/3rd more than a comparable PC GPU.
Frack you.
MacMania said:
“a. The existence of M$: without a stinking cesspool, how would one know they’re clean?”
Easy. I fell in love with System 6, especially the bundled HyperCard, well before I used a Windows machine. Quality and ease-of-use stand on their own two feet. They don’t need a prop.
Steve Jobs will never be gone. When he dies, he will be placed alongside the cryogenically-protected body of Walt Disney, for future defrosting – and for the future glory of Apple and the Disney Company.
i think apple should use modular pc hardware..
and make it easy to upgrade
and launche a store in dubai