SoapBox: Kathy's Ramblings on the Eve of a Big Announcement
Web Exclusive by Kathy Tafel
I finished Jim Carlton's book about Apple last night (thanks for lending it to me, Mark). "Apple: The Tale of Intrigue and Blunders with a Really Long Title," was written by a reporter using a Macintosh - Jim Carlton. Presumably, Mr. Carlton had a reason for purchasing this Mac. At one point, he must have liked the Mac OS well enough to plunk down the several thousand dollars a Mac costs. But you'd never know that from the negative tone taken throughout the 400+ pages. It seems that the author couldn't make any statements that didn't jibe with his thesis that Apple never did anything right after ousting Steve Jobs.
If that's the case, why did Mr. Carlton buy a Mac in the first place? I couldn't help but feel that Carlton, like many a Mac addict, fell in love with the idea of Apple, the myth of Macintosh: A company that is a technological innovator building machines for the rest of us. And, like most of us, he couldn't understand why a company that had such a great lead managed to squander it by resting on its laurels.
So he dug, and he dug deep. He found that a whole decade of mismanagement left Apple bankrupt of ideas, people, and most of all, money. He found so many missed opportunities and got disillusioned. Only someone who once loved Apple's technology could write with such disgust. And the tale for the last five years has been, admittedly, dismal from a business perspective.
But there were successes, such as the transition to PowerPC , that Carlton doesn't give enough credit. Any other company that made as many blunders as Carlton recounts would have been out of business five years ago. But Apple has been able to milk its user base for years because we love the machine. Apple has been propped up as much as by our need to have it exist as anything else.
While Carlton believes that Apple won't survive and needs to be purchased to have any relevance, I think our faith is about to be rewarded. The prodigal father has returned to the company he founded, and is fixing many of the problems we Mac addicts have been moaning about for years.
For the first time since John Sculley left the company, Mac users have a reason to feel good about being an Apple owner. The new "Think Different" campaign rewards us as geniuses, rebels, troublemakers, misfits - special. While Carlton derided Sculley for being absent so much with press tours, his appearances everywhere - including Clinton's inauguration - made me proud to be a Mac user. And I am happy now because I do like to think of myself as somebody who thinks different.
For years, people have wondered why Apple allowed salespeople at computer superstores to badmouth Macintoshes to their customers. Now perennial Mac basher CompUSA will be creating Apple "stores within a store," and staffing them with Apple-trained salespeople. This concept has been batted around for years. Some may say too little, too late. But I say better late than never.
Steve Jobs knows how to say no - and when to say yes. The company has to focus, and he cut many projects that Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio couldn't bear to part with. None of those three seemed able to say no, or get the company moving towards a common goal. But he's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Jobs can recognize winning technology when he sees it. AppleScript, long a favorite of both your online editor and myself, is an amazing technology that Apple ignored for years. It allows a Mac user to integrate programs in ways developers never imagined. And we Mac addicts do that because we are geniuses, misfits, and troublemakers. We don't need a corporate IS department to write a custom solution. We can do that ourselves with AppleScript.
Jobs also supports games, and even went as far as saying "we love games" in a recent press release announcing a "buy two, get one free" deal from Mac entertainment vendors. For some reason, Apple didn't know why it lost the consumer market. Duh, it needed more games. This year there are more high quality games than ever before, and Jobs, along with top level executives, are actually mentioning them. Say it with me: games, games, games. That wasn't so hard, now was it?
This whole piece was written on another Apple success that Carlton neglected to mention: the eMate. In his eyes, the Newton division should have been put out of its misery years ago. But then we wouldn't have this little emerald gem that's selling like hotcakes. The eMate is the first Apple product I've used that has the same out-of-the-box experience as my first Mac, the SE. As with the SE, working on an eMate is a new computer experience. You have to be trained to a new way of working - with a pen, instead of a mouse. And the eMate has just about the same capabilities as that old SE: the screen is black and white, it functions wonderfully as a word processor. Unlike the SE, it's mobile, rugged, green, cute, and can do Internet stuff. Now if only it had a built-in cellphone/pager :-)
Next Monday, Steve Jobs will announce new products and a new way of doing business. Do we know what's going to happen? No. Steve Jobs has zipped the lips of everybody involved, and that's a good thing. What Apple needs right now is magic, and rumors kill mystique. If a rumor tells you what's going to happen, you become jaded. If the company doesn't do what the rumor said it was going to do, you wonder why. Next Monday, we'll know exactly what Apple's doing and we'll again be enchanted by Steve Jobs.
Me, I'm looking forward to buying my third Mac at Christmas this year.
Kathy Tafel, Associate Editor
ktafel@macaddict.com
