The Apple of my i

So, this is blog 100.

Wow.

100 posts since I started the blog back in July 2005. It's odd to think that back then it was the immediate aftermath of the 7 July bomb attacks on London which I very nearly got caught up in. You can see that neither my spelling nor my proof-reading have improved much since then. What is also slightly odd is that of the 100 posts, only 19 of them were before my hiatus until I restarted my posting in May this year. It must be something about the summer months.

Anyway, this was going to be a brief review of my posts over the period; however I decided to change my mind.

Last night Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers died. My Facebook feed and Twitter have gone bonkers with people I know pouring in tributes as if they knew the man, which they don't. But that is part of the Cult of Apple.

I don't say that as though they are disingenuous with their comments at all; it's just that people need a bit of perspective about these things. Yes, it is a very great loss to his family; and yes it is a very great loss to his business and let me not ever try to detract from that. But is it a very great loss to the man on the street? It is a point very wisely considered by by David Mitchell in the Guardian. And although the ever-so-slightly bad taste jokes have already started wizzing around the internet, any word raised which could remotely be considered to in some slight way question the absolutely unsullied reputation is tarred with the same brush and trolled and rubbished as though we are not allowed to even raise a question. And that is plain wrong. If anything it actually immediately invalidates that individual as they are trying to silence a slightly contrasting point of view. Life isn't all black and white, even at Apple.

So, what did Jobs, or more particularly Apple Inc. (as Apple Computers Inc. later became) actually do? How innovative or revolutionary were they, or did they become?

Let me set out my locus standi already - I am not and never have been an Apple customer. My greatest interaction with Apple was when an ex of mine had an Apple laptop and asked me for assistance and I was useless. I do this from the view of a bystander.

So, were they innovative? Were they revolutionary? Well, at the beginning - maybe. What Apple did was kick-start the personal computer revolution. Well, they tried. As with almost anything to which Apple turned its core, there were already PCs on the market. And popular, profitable ones too. The problem was with the P. They weren't really Personal to the consumer. They were still rather targetted at the geek. And this is where Apple did innovate and revolutionise. They did two things.

Firstly, they made the computer very quick and easy to set-up. The Apple II released in 1977 was an all-in-one solution. You had the box which contained the keyboard, the processor and the monitor. There were few wires to confuse yourself with. And bearing in mind at this time, for the average consumer, the most complicated thing they had touched was the television which still worked by turning a dial to the correct frequency.

And secondly, they made the software interface much more user-friendly. Rather than the standard of the time which was a very black screen with a single line of green text prompting you to type something (and heaven forbid if you typed in some code incorrectly!) they pioneered the window. You could see a file as an identifyable document. The display of itself worked as though a desk scattered with bits of paper. Rather than the carot being where the computer was, and having to input what you needed, you got to point at what you wanted, pick it up and move it to where you actually wanted it.

And there the innovation and revolution ends.

A contentious argument, yes. And definitely one to inflame the Apple die-hards. But it is one that is not without substance. Thereafter Apple actually did very little that was 'new'. In fact, what it has done has been incredibly prescriptive or even proscriptive. And actually quite aggressive. Apple these days is credited with four main lines: iPod, iPad, iPhone and iMac (whether standalone computer or Macbook Air or such like). But there was nothing revolutionary about these.

In all of the cases generic devices had been around for a while beforehand. The first MP3 player was released in 1997, a good four years before the first iPod. Apple saw that the digital revolution was taking off, and just made it cool. They had already established themselves as the 'cool' player in the industry to rival the staid, sturdy, reliable, dependable but very very grey IBM-type PC a few years prior with the very cool, very funky iMac - available in a range of bright colours to very distinctly establish that it was not grey. And having targetted artists and designers by specifically focusing their software offering towards that sector, they were definitely the cool guys that produced pretty pictures and fantastic graphics, rather than reems and reems of very useful but ultimately uninspiring data, probably printed out on green and white line paper with perforations.

But so it was that the iPod was born to an already adulating market sector. And if the designers were buying these things, they were cool. If you spoke to the guy in the data-room and asked him what his most exciting purchase had been he would have brandished a very bland bit of hardware at you with lots of things and bits attached, which had some name or description which was a long string of jumbled assortment of letters and numbers, with a list of stats and specs which made no sense to anyone. You could see why this device in its very very lovely shiny white, with its four buttons and a clicky wheel which did exactly what it said on the tin, quickly, easily and funkily flew off the shelves.

And again with the iPhone - touchscreen phones were already out there. All that Apple did was take them and sell the to the iFans. And it really didn't take much. All you need to do is look to the reaction there was yesterday when Apple, at its pretty-much annual ceremony didn't release a brand new iPhone5; but merely a slightly reworked iPhone4S. They will buy anything that has an Apple on it. And not just that, they will adopt it, devour it, love it. The biggest advert Apple has is the iFans. They ignore the glitches, the faults, the failings and the espouse better than any paid apostle the wonder that is Apple.

And, let's be clear, the 'cool' is not Jobs. The 'cool' is Jonathan Ive - a British designer who has been responsible for the iMac, the iPod and pretty much anything i.

In fact, it is a wonder that Apple - under Jobs leadership - has actually gotten anywhere. Only once he had absolute control of the company did the bickering and infighting (well, insurgency from Jobs really) stop. Is he a phenomenal business man? Well, lest I argue against a man who built up the second most valuable company in the world at a mere $400bn or so, the vast majority of what he does actually goes against the grain of successful business.

Apple does do somethings very, very well. Obviously he simplified things to make them consumable. The iPhone with its very simple menu and icons, not confusing you with many many screens and options, just a simple flick through. And then they tie you in and drain you of your cash through iTunes - making sure that you either can't purchase your music/video/app/content from anyone else (or, as a provider you must provide it - in some circumstances only through Apple) or if you can, it is so much more complicated that you might as well buy it from Apple. With them taking a 30% cut for their efforts.

And that is how they make a lot of money - they are very aggressive as to how they charge the content provider. Yes, they charge the end user; but not in a nasty way. If they did it in a nasty way then the users would quickly flee. They need the users so that the developers come. And then they can almost extort money out of the developers in a surprisingly aggressive manner.

And the complete package. This goes back to the very heart of Apple back in 1977. You got everything in the box. They have always bundled the hardware and the software; which - in business terms at least - is a very diversified (and not necessarily in a good way) way of operating. Usually, one company concentrates very much on creating hardware; whilst another develops software. Yes, the two work very synergetically together - the software developer finds ways to utilise the full capacity of the hardware; and in return makes demands of the hardware developer as to what new functionality or innovation it needs to progress its software. But it is rare that the brains and the brawn mix.

But that is where Apple has you. You may very well love their very user-friendly interface, but you only get that if you buy the box. You may love the slick lines, stylish colours of the product; but you get lumped with the operating system whether you like it or not. And believe me, there are a lot of people who do not. At the start, if you bought the very very cool iPod, you had to use iTunes. There was no way around it.

And you are very limited with choice too. If you go out and buy a PC, you get to choose. Do you want 512Mb RAM? Or 1 GB? or 2GB? Or 8GB? Which one of the 80 or so different processors do you want? What size hard-drive? Or do you want two hard-drives? Or ten? Do you want your software optimised for video? Or for gaming? Or for browsing? How big do you want your screen? But with Apple, it often literally is a choice between black or white. With their latest release of phone you have six options: three different size hard drives; and the phone is either in black or white. If you look for the latest Android phones there are dozens and dozens and dozens of them.

When it came to the box on the table, Apple had very limited success. It still does. In terms of operating systems, it holds a measly 8% market share. And you can guarantee that number comes from a) the people who have to use it for graphic design or such like; and b) the people who bought a MacBook because they already own pretty much everything else Apple and it just works easier together. In terms of desktops they have very little. But this is because you can't take your desktop out and show everyone how cool it is. And unless you are using the very specifically created programs for graphic design, modelling or such like, you realise as an operating system just how restrictive it actually is: again, the aggressiveness of Apple and its (anti)business model mean that developers only get access at a price.

So, really, what Apple has done is force others to innovate. These days we do far more on the internet - even functions usually highly demanding of power or memory such as gaming - very much because of format compatibility. Rather than spend twice the time and twice the money to create two different versions of exactly the same program; program developers themselves became creative, innovating to put these things online and then - rather than the rafts and rafts of different programs and formats - they user only needed one program, the brower, and everything else would be compatible with that browser regardless of whether you were Mac or PC. And they have again revolted against the perceived norm with apps. On facing increasingly higher charges from Apple, and increasingly restrictive practices as to how they charge for in-app content; the developers have instead opted for HMTL5 apps; so that you are not buying the content through the app but simply through the content-provider's website. So maybe we should be thankful for Apple for that - not themselves thinking differently, but forcing ourselves to think differently

And to think when I started my blog back in 2005 they were just releasing the iBook and the iMac...