For years I've really liked Apple Computers, mainly because they are something quite different, both inside and out.
I first toyed with an Apple II E in 1980, a friend of mine had one. It was amazing, a slanted box with an integrated keyboard and a nice green CRT on top. It booted and ran programs from a single 5¼ Floppy disk. The programs offered no graphics and were more productive than fun, with "Tic Tac Toe" being the only form of entertainment it offered.
In 1985 another friend got an Apple Macintosh on a "Test Drive" scheme, this was a different animal all together. It had an integrated 256 shade gray scale display, a 3½ Floppy drive, a mouse and a graphical user interface aka "GUI". It was astonishing! Like its predecessor it booted from the Floppy disk, had a MacOS GUI and a basic word processing package as well as paint package that allowed one to create digital art. My friend actually bought the Macintosh.
In 1987 I started my career in the IT industry. Although I was in the Mainframe environment I watched the "IBM PC XT" flourish, followed by the 286 16 Bit "AT"; then came the 32 Bit 386 and 486 processors.
The old PCs came with MS DOS, it worked well and they were very productive with the available software at the time like Lotus 1-2-3, Wordperfect and Harvard Graphics.
The PC soon replaced the "dumb terminals" we used to access our mainframes thanks to terminal emulators, TCP-IP, IPX/SPX and of course, Ethernet. We were networking and collaborating over copper wires.
Microsoft released Windows 3.0 and 3.1 and the pointing device we now know as a mouse became a standard item when ordering a PC
More importantly the PC introduced us to games! Yes, we could retire the old Atari and Sega consoles as PCs were fast becoming the gaming platform to have! Some of the pioneering games I recall were Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, Space Quest, Tetris and F119 Stealth Fighter. Microsoft's amazingly realistic Flight Simulator 3.0 was also doing its rounds at that time, circa 1989.
As Microsoft Windows 3.x, colour graphics adapters & displays became the standard and the Ad Lib sound card making its appearance, the gaming community brought us Wolfenstien 3D and followed this up with the epic Doom First Player Shooters or "FPS" games.
All of a sudden you could cooperate with or play against your buddies in a digital blood fest!
We then entered the era of the Pentium processor and the CD-ROM which made the PC more attractive to the household. The PC was now appearing on almost every desk and had replaced the typewriter in the corporate world. Slowly but surely the PC was now becoming a common site in the home environment.
Processors were becoming faster and more feature rich with technologies like Intel's MMX and AMD's 3DNow! technologies designed to enhance the gaming and multimedia experience as a whole.
Graphics adapters were becoming more powerful and hard disks were doubling their capacity every 6-12 months.
The DVD ROM secured the PCs crown in being the king of entertainment, we could now watch movies and play interactive 3D games at flicker free frame rates!
Microsoft Windows and Intel processors became (and still remain) the standard in Personal Computing. Those of us who worked in the industry called this "Wintel" technology, and the synergy of x86 and Windows worked very well.
Of course Windows 95 was released and we moved onto Windows NT, 98, Windows 2000 and so forth..
Needless to say, the Internet had a massive influence on the emergence of the PC in the home space. With the introduction of dial up and then ADSL connectivity in most Westernised nations, the home users were now connected to what we then called the "Information Super Highway"
So, what had become of Apple? No one knew and most just didn't care! In 1998 Apple had adopted the IBM PowerPC based iMac G3 which was a strange looking, almost TV like, all in one design, whereas the PC's chassis, or case and monitor were very separate items.
Apple Mac desktops ticked along in the educational arena whilst in the corporate world the iMac was the workhorse used in advertising agencies and print shops running Adobe Premier and other graphic and video editing suites.
All work and no play made Apple products very dull indeed, although they did have a fairly decent following in the North American consumer markets, perhaps by those who grew up with the Apple II and Macintosh series systems?
In 1998 Diamond Multimedia Systems released the Diamond Rio PMP300 MP3 Player. Although the Rio was not the first MP3 player on the market, but the first to be launched by a high profile PC component manufacturer with a media campaign to highlight the product.
The Rio used 32MB of built in Flash memory and could actually use removable Smart Media Cards.
Diamond pioneered the online music revolution with RioPort commercial downloads with backing from all the major record labels.
In 1998 Diamond Multimedia became entangled in a litigious dispute with the RIAA, fortunately the dispute was ruled in the manufacturer's favour and the grassroots MP3 player was back on the market.
Sadly this pioneering product was short lived as Diamond Multimedia were bought out and the new owners didn't quite foresee the long term impact that digital music would have on the marketplace.
At the same time the PC was slowly being transformed into into the home hi-fi, gone were the days of placing vinyl on the turntable and recording your music play lists to hissy 60 or 90 minute tapes for your Sony Walkman. The PC with its optical drive and MP3 connectivity was soon to become the choice for personal music.
A few other manufacturers tried their hand at MP3 players but the MP3 technology seemed destined to live on the Wintel PC as home users digitized their music collections onto hard disk and used their beloved PC to manage and play music.
In 2001 Apple released the iPod, this contained an internal hard disk and came with iTunes suite that enabled PC and Mac users to digitize, manage and upload their music via the USB port that almost every modern PC supported
The iPod was quite innovative, the simple menu and "Click Wheel" navigation made it easy to operate as well as the convenience of the iPod's internal battery being charged by the USB based connection. Suddenly personal stereo was changing and Apple were at the helm! The iPod ticked all the right boxes with the music loving consumer and put the Cupertino based company back on the map. In fact I wonder if the majority of early iPod owners were actually aware that Apple made desktop and portable systems at all?
Going back to the Wintel PC, its Achilles Heel was most certainly the initial ergonomic design. A bulky square box in either beige or black with a rather dull looking front panel adorned with a green LED to let you know it was on and red flashing LED to let you know that the hard disk was working.
There was the occasional black and silver chassis, but the shapes always remained fairly brick like. The more powerful the PC, the more internal fans were needed to cool it, so there was often a lot of acoustic noise from the high end PCs. There were those that tried their best to beautify their beloved PCs with modded cases that comprised of perspex and alloy, with water cooling to keep them cool and quiet, but inside they'd all contain the same industry standard components which made upgrading the PC a very simple and cost effective task. Sadly the PC still had it's square and brick shaped chassis and case with the size of the case varying, depending on just how much owners wanted to cram into them.
Apple's Mac family of desktops and workstations were quite different in design as they were never made to be opened and have their innards toyed with, they were made to work. A prime example of Apple's brave design approach had to be the 2002 iMac G4 and the iMac G4 advertising campaign showed it was something quite unique indeed. A half moon shaped chassis with a very articulate built in monitor stand.
The Mac Pro workstations were clad in beautifully polished aluminium housings and looked very good when placed upon on or under a desk either in the office or at home. The Mac Pro systems were serious workhorses and were aimed at the media and research markets. They came in multiprocessor versions with the option of gigabytes of RAM. They were like jewelry, shiny and very expensive.
Various generations of PowerPC based iMacs and Mac Pro systems were produced, but they mainly went unnoticed to the home computer enthusiasts who were besotted with their Wintel based PCs.
In 2001 Apple released OSX, codenamed "Cheetah". It was an amazing evolution from its MacOS predecessor and later releases of OSX for Macs have since followed. The OSX interface looked great and it worked very well, but the lack of a right mouse button deterred the Windows generation from ever really getting along with a Mac.
Again these PowerPC based systems were mainly confined to the media and educational institutions, although the new OSX was fast gaining a foothold in the medical and scientific establishments too due to its stability and true 64Bit UNIX based multithread capabilities
In 2003 Apple opened the floodgates of legal online music purchasing with the iTunes Store. Sure they were not the first company to embark on this route, but Apple made it easy to use. The record companies were queuing up to get their current and back catalogs released on the iTunes Store. Even at $0.99 per song there was some serious money to be made
To make it even easier, the iTunes Store was accessed through the iTunes software suite, so now music lovers could download, rip, upload, update and manage their music collection on a unified software suite. This convenience was a key part of the success story.
In 2005 Apple released the Mac Mini which was a small footprint Mac that did not ship with a mouse, monitor or keyboard. It was aimed at the home market and could share your desktop PC's mouse, keyboard and Monitor by means of a KVM (Keyboard, Video Mouse) switch
Aimed at the consumer market, the Mac Mini's low cost and small footprint made it easy to place alongside your desktop PC. The concept worked well because when some owners had (malware or virus) issues with their PCs, they'd switch over to the Mac Mini which they then discovered could do everything that their PC could do and a lot more thanks to the in built Home Theater that would kick in at the push of the button on the supplied remote.
In 2006 Apple released its first Intel based products based on Intel Core2 processors. The shift from the IBM developed PowerPC chip to the "PC centric" x86 processor architecture horrified the Apple purists who saw this as a very bad choice. The migration was the most logical path for Apple due to IBM's lackluster approach to developing the tried and trusted PowerPC processor range. The new Intel processors were faster, consumed less power and ran cooler.
The new x86 based OSX was codenamed "Leopard" and due to this paradigm shift, Apple's new x86 products could also run Microsoft Windows thanks to the introduction of Boot Camp which allowed Apple owners to boot into OSX, Windows or LINUX. Obviously the clear winner here was the consumer. Again the Apple purists were mortified by the mere fact a Mac could boot a Microsoft Operating System.
Note: LINUX Distributions were also available for the PowerPC based Macs.
In 2006 there were rumours that Apple were going to release a mobile phone. The IT periodicals and electronic media was abuzz with speculation about it's design and features and there was even skepticism about whether Apple would enter the mobile communications market at all.
This was a bold step for Apple as they'd never embarked on anything of this nature, after all the mobile phone market was well established and dominated by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Blackberry and many others.
Apple designed this product in collaboration with AT&T and no help or technology from the well established mobile handset manufacturers.
The Apple A4 ARM powered and IOS driven iPhone hit the American market in 2007. It was a 2G device and Apple's reasoning for not supporting 3G was the issue of the iPhone's battery life which would be greatly reduced with 3G support.
The iTunes Store allowed iPhone owners to upload "Apps" via Apple's "App Store". Developers took to the App Store like ducks to water, but Apple vetted all the Apps that were available for download through their App Store. Another great feature was that the iPhone sported true iPod capabilities, alas the iPhone was also a pukka MP3 player with play list support and the option of the lovely album Cover Flow interface.
Another crossover product using the new IOS platform was the iPod Touch which Apple released in 2007, essentially an iPhone without the phone feature, but more importantly an iPod with Wireless LAN support, email and Apps. Apple's new iPod Touch was so much more than just an MP3 player..
The "iPhone classic" was soon replaced by the iPhone 3G, with... yes, you guessed it right, 3G support, an improved display size and resolution. This was superseded by the iPhone 3GS with true multitasking and video capability. The rest is history, but not without controversy.
The "Antennagate" fiasco on the iPhone 4 was exploited by the printed and electronic media and also gave the anti-Apple establishment ammunition to belittle Steve Jobs, the iPhone and the company.
Apple's public fall out with Adobe over the security issues in Flash and their early commitment to HTML 5 as a viable alternative to Flash also had the Prophets of Doom chanting the end of the iPhone. It's quite obvious that the IOS based Apple products have gotten along just fine without Adobe Flash and the Apple customers don't seem to be too hard done by the parting of ways either.
In 2006 Microsoft also released their Zune Media Player as a direct competitor to the iPod and Creative Laboratories' Zen media players.
Microsoft were really hoping to break Apple's domination of the portable media market, the gentlemen in Redmond spent tens of millions of dollars on an aggressive marketing campaign across North America, including roadshows at College campuses to entice the younger generation into Microsoft's "DRM Friendly" Media Player
Sadly for Microsoft the Zune was just not as popular as the iPod or Zen media players despite all the money and media hype thrown at the product.
In 2010 Apple released the iPad. This appliance wasn't intended as a laptop replacement but rather as a crossover device for those who want the combination of portability with a decent resolution touch screen. I recall some of the Forum discussions on how the iPad would fail before it even made it on to the shelves.
It has been a success story and has excelled where the bulky and finicky "Tablet PCs" failed.
In fact the iPad has rekindled (no pun intended) the Tablet market with many established manufacturers now releasing Android based tablets and some embarking on developing their own Tablet based OSes to compete with IOS and Android.
It seems as if the silent partner of yesteryear has reemerged as a pioneering force in personal computing, portable music and mobile communications. Yes, Microsoft Windows will always be the market leader in volume and functionality but even Windows 7's interface subtly resembles OSX 10.6 in many ways.
Take a closer look at many of the new generation Smart Phones, undeniably they also mimic the look and feel of the iPhone's IOS interface, especially those running Android
Of course LINUX will tick along eternally, supported by those who prefer the convenience of a PC without the clutter and cost of Windows.
Love or hate Apple, but they've pulled off some impressive feats over the past decade.
This corporation can be fairly autocratic, but this works for them and most of their customers.
The Apple product range has also sprung many other design and manufacturing companies who make products to compliment the Apple product set, everything from iPod compatible car stereo systems and alarm clocks to headphones and protective cases that all bear the "Designed for iPod" logo.
Sadly Apple products are expensive, but in my opinion they are beautifully made, very functional and worth the money they command.
Apple has turned around in the past decade, go back five or six years and no one really bothered about Apple products outside of the iPod.
Today the company has a much higher profile almost to the point of being in one's face with the Apple Stores, billboards and media advertising. This has also made them a target by those who don't like Apple as a corporation or their products.
I recall Microsoft taking the same sort of flak when Bill Gates was at the helm of the company, irrespective of his charitable and humanitarian nature.
Now that Steve Jobs has taken medical leave many investors are worried about the future of the company. Steve Jobs is only the head of the company, however my core admiration is for the designers at Apple and not Steve Jobs himself.
I admire the engineering foresight that goes into designing the iPod Nano which is the size of a book of matches, has 16GB of memory, a colour touch screen, FM tuner and hours of battery life.
The team that designed the Unibody MacBook Pro with a chassis machined from a solid billet of aluminium and the new iMac with its minimalist design, sleek, elegant and functional.
In my eyes the design engineers are the real geniuses at Apple Inc.
Of course some will see me as an "Apple Fanboi" and who knows? Perhaps I am..
This Blog entry wasn't intended to put Apple on a pedestal, they have their strengths and weaknesses like all manufacturers and products out there but do take a slightly different approach to things by thinking out of the box.
While we're all spoiled for choice when it comes to gadgets and admittedly I do have a few Apple products, but then again I have plenty of non-Apple products too. But not a day goes by that I don't use at least one of my Apple branded products, whether it be a phone, MP3 player or the desktop system I am writing this crap on..
/Ends
