billpalmer.net

Apple can take its idiot box and stick it where the sun don't shine

For the love of God, it doesn't even come with a keyboard or mouse. You have just got to be kidding me. This just might turn out to be the darkest day in Macintosh history. And yeah, I'm as aware as anyone just what a bloody history it's been. But this, I think, might top all of it.

Let me get one thing out of the way right off the bat. A bad idea deserves to be exposed for what it is, and that's exactly what I've been doing for the past week. Those who spend years spreading around a bad idea deserve to be called out for it, so no apologies for anyone who needed to be put in their place in the process. And most of all, a company that bets its future on a bad idea deserves to slammed in the manner that I'm about to do now:

This Mini Mac, or whatever they're calling it, isn't just stupid. it's groundbreakingly stupid. And it's far worse than anything we read about in the rumors. It's far worse than I ever could have imagined. Apple's gone and invented barriers to Switching that weren't even previously on the radar. This Mac Mini clunker comes with not one, not two, but three components missing, any of which whose absence renders the whole thing unusable. It's not just missing a monitor, it doesn't even have a keyboard or mouse. This isn't just about selling a car with no engine in it, this lemon doesn't have tires or a windshield, either.

Let me paint a picture for you. A potential low-end Switcher, who only knows Apple as the iPod maker, and who has little familiarity with the Macintosh, wanders into an Apple Store at the local shopping mall. After he gets done playing with the iPods in the front of the store, he spots a computer with a $499 price tag and makes a bee line for it. Nice little machine there, except whoops, that $499 price doesn't include a monitor. Since he's on the low end, his existing PC is three or four years old, and his aging piece of junk 15 inch CRT monitor is just about to die, so he wants to do what nearly all low end computer buyers do when they buy a computer: buy a new low-end monitor to go with it. So he asks the Apple Store salesperson where the monitors are, and the salesperson cheerfully points him in the direction of Apple's least expensive monitor, the 20 inch Cinema Display, which costs a mere $999.

After he manages to wipe the look of astonishment off his face, our potential Switcher asks if there are any other monitors in the store that are, you know, priced appropriately. And by "priced appropriately" he's of course referring to a 17 inch CRT to go along with his bare bones $499 Mac Mini. But the salesperson cheerfully replies that no, he'll just have to use his existing monitor from his old PC. He says that he doesn't really want to do that, and then out of the corner of his eye he notices the eMac, which has now been placed on a shelf near the back of the store with caution tape placed around it. He says "hey wait a minute, that one has a monitor," and he heads over to it, only to find that it costs an absurd $300 more than the Mac Mini.

He asks the salesperson how on earth the price gets jacked up $300 merely for the inclusion of a low-end monitor. The salesperson can't explain it, since there is no explanation for it, but does point out that the eMac comes with a keyboard and mouse. And it's only at that point that our potential Switcher realizes that the supposedly $499 Mac Mini doesn't come with even the basic tools required to turn it on and set it up, let alone get any use out of it. The salesperson suggests that he use the keyboard and mouse from his old PC, until he recalls that, as with most low-end PCs, his existing keyboard and mouse come with PS/2 connectors, not USB. So that's not exactly going to work.

At that point the salesperson says that an Apple keyboard and mouse can be added on to the Mini Mac for an additional $58, but by now the potential Switcher has just about had it. "You mean to tell me that you're pretending to sell a computer for $499, but I have to pay extra if I want some luxuries such as a keyboard and mouse? And even if I do shell out for the keyboard and mouse, I still have to come up with a monitor for this thing, and the cheapest monitor you've got here costs a thousand bucks? And if I want to buy a computer that comes with keyboard, monitor, and mouse, then I have to pay an extra $300? What kind of a rip off joint is this place?" And then he storms out of the store, cursing the Apple brand name and wondering why anyone would ever buy a computer from such a fraudulent company.

Think it's not gonna happen? Alright, you tell me how the above story has a different ending. In fact, imagine the above story happening, except that the guy isn't savvy enough to know that his existing keyboard and mouse aren't going to work with the Mac Mini. Let's say he even grudgingly accepts the notion that he'll have to keep using his old crap monitor because Apple sure won't sell him one at a reasonable price, and he goes ahead and buys the Mac Mini. Just wait til he gets home and finds out that his keyboard and mouse won't work with it, returns to the store howling mad, and the salesperson tries to hit him up for an extra $58. That'll be when he goes home, packs up the Mac Mini, returns it for a refund, buys a new Windows PC (with bundled monitor) from the Dell kiosk as he's leaving the mall, and then spends the next month telling anyone who will listen what a rip off Apple's computers are.

Oh, I could give you even more scenarios that would be even more ugly. But there's no need for me to do so, because you'll be reading about them left and right, all over the internet, once this epic blunder begins to unfold. I suppose when this lemon flops, some folks will even try to blame me for it. Just try to imagine the irony of me being the one who could see this as a lemon, and then me being the one who gets blamed for its demise.

But this isn't simply about a product flopping. Because the iPod shuffle could flop, and it really wouldn't hurt Apple in the long-term. Same thing if the iPod mini had flopped last year. Even the Cube didn't hurt Apple all that much, aside from the public embarrassment. And you want to know why? Because they all started off as sideshows. They were all initially positioned as independent things, off on their own, sufficiently differentiated from Apple's existing successful products, that they were able to simply succeed or flop on their own. Hey, nothing risked, nothing gained.

This thing, though, is a train wreck right in the middle of Apple's desktop lineup. Was it just me, or did I hear Steve Jobs say this morning that the G5 iMac is currently Apple's best-selling computer? Well, you can scratch that off the list, because the Mac Mini completely illegitimizes the iMac. Think about Apple's new desktop lineup from top to bottom. At the low end (Mac Mini), you're responsible for bringing your own monitor. In the mid-range (iMac), the monitor is built into the computer. And on the high end, you're once again responsible for bringing your own monitor. You don't have to play a game of "Which one of these doesn't belong?" in order to see just how ridiculous this is. Anyone who tries to look at Apple's desktop line from top to bottom before buying is going to be confounded to the point of not knowing what to buy. Because none of it makes sense anymore, you see. It's just a random hodgepodge of machinery that makes no sense from top to bottom or from bottom to top, with prices that make no sense when compared to each other, and no one can come up with any explanation for why the monitor things keeps changing back and forth as you go up the line. Consistency is out the window. The desktop lineup used to be so easily explainable and understandable, and now it's just inexcusable.

Beyond causing potential Switchers to throw their hands up in the air at the nonsense and leave the store, let me tell you what long-standing well-established qualities Apple has potentially destroyed today:

Honest pricing: It used to be that you could tell someone that they could buy a Mac and unless they had specific extra needs, with the exception of sales tax they could literally walk out of the store without spending one penny beyond what was on the price tag. But not anymore. As of today, some models have honest pricing, which only makes them look overpriced in comparison to the models that have phony pricing, which only makes the whole company look fraudulent. No longer can you buy a Macintosh and trust that it'll only cost what the price tag says. And no longer can you tell others that it's the case, either, because it ain't.

Perceived compatibility: There aren't more than a handful of PC users out there who understand what the word "compatibility" means in relationship to the Mac-PC thing. Most people mistakenly think the compatibility is a yes-or-no answer, that it's either on or off like a light switch. The truth, of course, is that compatibility has many layers, usually relates to applications and not platforms, is always complicated, is never fun, and very rarely does it actually have anything to do with any Mac vs. PC issue. But thanks to the iPod, the Windows-using public has warmed up to the notion that Apple products are in fact "compatible" enough. Since the iPod works well in a Windows world, Apple's computers must do the same, right?

Well, wait until they get home with their Mac Mini, only to find that neither their keyboard nor their mouse will work with it, despite Apple's claims to the contrary. Remember that perceived notion of compatibility? Gone. Instantly. Long after that Mac Mini gets taken back for a refund, the disgusted customer is still going around telling everyone that Macs aren't "compatible" after all. Regardless of the fact that it's the PC companies' faults for (still, even here in 2005) shipping PS/2-based peripherals with their many of their low-end models in order to save fourteen cents, the public will still blame Apple. Techincal explanations about the virtues of USB aren't gonna cut it. And should we even address the fact that a Windows-based keyboard has a number of different keys, in different locations, than a Mac-based keyboard? Should we even think about how ugly that's going to get when the poor sap tries to follow directions or get Mac help from a book? Forget about it.

Complete solution: Go over to the Dell website right now, or the HP website if you prefer, and take a look at what percentage of systems are offered with a bundled monitor. You'll see that in the PC world, when people buy a computer, by default, a monitor comes with it. But in the new Apple land? No, you're left to fend for yourself. And while you're over on the Dell site, see if you can figure out how to buy one of their computers with neither a mouse nor a keyboard, because I sure can't. Now you see that in the PC world, when people buy a computer, it's not even a question that a keyboard and mouse come with it. But in Apple land? Nah, we wouldn't want to provide you with essential components, or anything.

Think about how asinine this is now: Apple's goal here is to get PC users to buy a Mac by making buying a Mac more like buying a PC. But when you buy a PC, it's a given that a monitor, keyboard, and mouse will be bundled with it. So the Mac Mini doesn't offer a PC-like buying experience at all. No, it offers something far less: a literally unusable machine, unless you sink more money into it or pluck spare parts from your previous computer. I mean, if you're gonna go that way, then let's go all the way: ship it with no RAM. You'll just have to pull the existing RAM out of your old PC and use it. Oh, it's not the right kind? Too bad. While we're at it, we're going to ask you to use the existing power cord from your old PC as well. If it turns out that it's the wrong wattage and it burns your house down, that's not our problem. In fact, we're not even going to put the Mac Mini in a box. Bring your own cardboard box, we can't be bothered.

And it's right about now that I'm realizing that I'm probably going to regret having published the above paragraph, when next month Apple announces that they've lowered the price of the Mac Mini to four hundred and ninety-two dollars, and it now comes with no RAM, power cord, or box. Think that's crazy? Yeah, me too. But at this point, nothing Apple does would surprise me. Nothing.

It'll be a long time before I make another prediction about what Apple is going to do with the Mac next. And that's not because I'm afraid of being wrong. It's because I have no idea what on earth this company is thinking anymore. The things that this company did used to make sense. We had a good run there for awhile. Heck, ever since Steve Jobs came back in 1997, nearly every move Apple made was one that actually made sense. Oh, some of them were mistakes, flops, things that probably should have been caught in hindsight. But things were done for reasons that seemed to make sense at the time, at least. Ever since Steve came back, Apple has consistently been the smartest company in its industry. Today it looks like the dumbest. It's almost as if Steve Jobs lef the building and put his idiot nephew in charge, and today's debacle was the result.

I mean, this is such a giant leap backward that if Apple's CEO were anyone but Steve Jobs, I'd be flat-out calling for their resignation right now, no questions asked. Steve, on the other hand, gets spared this fate (if perhaps only slightly) by the fact that he's just finished putting in seven years of miracle work at the company, and every miracle worker gets to screw up now and then, even royally.

But then I get to thinking about the fact that Steve's cancer surgery and recuperation largely kept him away from Apple during late 2004, the fact that he did leave some pencil-pushing bean counter in charge in his absence, and I really can't help but wonder: is Steve Jobs actually in charge of Apple anymore? Is he really calling the shots? Because it looks like some know-nothing geek bean counter was in charge today, and Steve was up there like some kind of a puppet figurehead who was just reading a script. Steve Jobs is too smart not to be the myriad critical flaws in this course of action, and yet he's going ahead with it anyway. Did anyone who attended the Keynote in person notice any strings descending from the rafters, attached to Steve's arms and legs? And pupetteers crawling around in the rafters? Because Steve's smarter than this, and yet he let it happen anyway. There's got to be some explanation other than Steve suddenly became stupid.

But then I think of the Cube, how obvious of a flop it was straight out of the gate. The product simply had no target market. An all-in-one is wonderful because there's no external CPU wasting desk space, and the a minitower has its merits because at least you can stick it on the floor or in a cabinet. But the Cube? Nothing but a waste of desk space. It has to sit on your desk, and so does the monitor that you have to buy to go with it. The Cube had neither the space-saving virtue of an all-in-one nor the tuck-it-out-of-the-way virtue of a minitower. And its flop was monumental.

Oh, it's not that the Geek Caucus hasn't spent the past four years trying to rationalize that the Cube somehow failed for some other reason. A handful of Cubes did develop cracks in their casing, but the Cube had already flopped long before that story made the rounds. And the price of the Cube was extreme. But you know what? Even after the Cube was cancelled and Apple slashed its price to an absurd length in order to flush out the warehouses full of Cubes that they were stuck with, they still had a hard time moving them. And even after Apple, in one last desperation move, brought every remaining Cube back to the factory and retro-fitted them with CD burners, they still couldn't sell the things. But ask any geek out there, and the Cube would have been a massive success if not for the dozens of excuses that they'll gladly recite for you. Sorry, it's the monitor, stupid. It's not that hard to figure out. A little "thing" sitting next to the monitor wasting desk space just isn't anyone's cup of tea.

And the Cube fiasco was all Jobs. That was his baby from start to finish. Apple had been on a roll, and his ego soared to the point where he temporarily lost his mind and hit us with the Cube, the Flower Power iMac, the Blue Dalmation...shall I go on? Because maybe it's happened again here. Apple's been on a roll, the iPod is taking over the universe, the Macintosh is finally being embraced by people who spent years despising it, and here goes Apple off the deep end again. It took Apple's stock crashing for Steve to come back down to reality and begin giving us legitimate products again.

But regardless of whether today's debacle is the result of Steve's absence from the company or the absense of Steve's brain from his body, the result will be the same: egg all over Apple's face, public embarrassment, bad PR for the brand, and opportunity wasted. People were getting ready to line up around the block to Switch to the Mac in 2005, and up until today Apple was ready to embrace them with a product line that was understandable, honest, and made sense. But instead they'll be greeted with a train-wreck of a line-up that's going to make them less likely, not more likely, to actually buy a Mac.

You know, the childish hatemail I've been receiving all evening isn't particularly bothering me, as it's no different than the childish hatemail I've been receiving for the past week. Step on someone's ridiculous geek fantasy that they've been dreaming of for years, and they're bound to come after you like there's no tomorrow. There's this bizarre notion that I'm supposed to apologize now, or eat crow, or feel humble, but I can't imagine why or what for. Did I make a mistake? Absolutely. I made the mistake of believing that Apple would never do something as groundbreakingly stupid as what it did today. But that's all.

The sad twist of all of this is that now that Apple has gone ahead and made the mistake, I'm going to eventually be proven right about this being a terrible idea, but the whole time I'll be wishing like heck that I was wrong. I can't tell you how much I'd like to see the Mini Mac succeed. I could care less about being wrong or right. But as much as I'd like to be wrong about this, I know I'm not.

I am going to try to put a positive spin on it, though. In the next day or two I'm going to try to compile a list of things Apple could do right now to help minimize the damage that they've done today, ways that they could make this whole thing less idiotic. Maybe Steve Jobs (or whoever's running Apple now) is listening, and maybe some improvements will be made as a result. It's been a long time since I've viewed Apple as an old friend who fell off the wagon, and I hate to see it, but I guess now it's time to try to help pick that old friend back up. We'll see if this mess is salvageable after all.

Note to readers: my list of things Apple can do to clean up the Mac Mini mess can be found here.