Monday, July 11, 2005
This upside-down new world with Apple on top
What happened? No really, what did I miss?
It seems like just two or three years ago, we Mac users were still seen as an irrelevant sideshow, still forced to defend our choice of platform even when we had no interest in having the conversation, still subject to a near-daily recessitation of the List Of Bad Things About The Mac That Are No Longer True or Never Were, as if it were a list of absolutely true facts, by someone, somewhere, in some manner. Mac users just couldn't buy a vowel when it came to getting an ounce of understanding about the Mac out of anyone outside of the Mac user base.
But then something happened. And while some will say that a lot of things happened, everything from the rise of the iPod, to the rise of Windows security issues, to the rise of consumer-level multimedia apps on the Mac, these are all merely things that helped that "something" to happen. And just what is this something? Well, it's sort of an ethereal thing, not something that can be described in literal terms or adequately demonstrated by a single example, so I'll sum it up like this:
Apple no longer has the plague.
It really is as simple as that, I think. For the longest time, Apple products all had the plague, at least in the minds of the ninety percent of the world that wasn't using them. It didn't matter, you see, if Apple's products were better or worse, costlier or cheaper, faster or slower, prettier or uglier. None of that mattered because you simply don't touch something that's plague-ridden. And, thanks to a long confluence of events that ranged from everything from Microsoft's long campaign to paint the Mac is incompatible and therefore unusable, to Apple's own long period of screwing things up so royally it didn't really need Microsoft's help to make a mess of its public image.
But somewhere within the past year or so, the plague has simply and miraculously been innoculated (of course, it helps that, as you and I know, the plague never really existed in the first place). The quarantine that had been in effect for so many years has been lifted, and word has begun to spread to this effect. Now sure, there are still plenty of people who are still afraid to touch something that once had the plague even though they're quite confident that it no longer does, but slowly but surely (and actually, not very slowly at all these days, seemingly), people are forgetting that the plague ever existed, or in some cases, are too young to have ever been aware of it in the first place.
If the fact that Mac sales are now growing more than three times as fast as PC sales doesn't speak to this sufficiently, then perhaps the fact that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is now a rock star among people in their teens and early twenties does. When he gets invited to speak at a college graduation ceremony, it's not because he invented something twenty years ago. It's because half the students in the audience during the speech have secretly snuck one of his products into the ceremony, so they can listen to it during the other speeches.
It's a new world now. Apple's on top. Everything's upside down. Long-time Mac users are no longer looked at as a leper colony. Now, the Windows-using public looks at us with a mixture of "please help me find my way into being a Mac user" and "please don't point out the fact that you were right all along." You almost can't help but think big and start wondering just how far this all can go. If you'd asked me two years ago, I would have said that my best-case scenario would be that the Mac would attain perhaps twenty percent marketshare and take its place as a minority too large to ignore. But now, I see no reason why it can't become the dominant platform.
I knew the world would start figuring it out eventually. I just didn't think it would happen this fast.
What happened? No really, what did I miss?
It seems like just two or three years ago, we Mac users were still seen as an irrelevant sideshow, still forced to defend our choice of platform even when we had no interest in having the conversation, still subject to a near-daily recessitation of the List Of Bad Things About The Mac That Are No Longer True or Never Were, as if it were a list of absolutely true facts, by someone, somewhere, in some manner. Mac users just couldn't buy a vowel when it came to getting an ounce of understanding about the Mac out of anyone outside of the Mac user base.
But then something happened. And while some will say that a lot of things happened, everything from the rise of the iPod, to the rise of Windows security issues, to the rise of consumer-level multimedia apps on the Mac, these are all merely things that helped that "something" to happen. And just what is this something? Well, it's sort of an ethereal thing, not something that can be described in literal terms or adequately demonstrated by a single example, so I'll sum it up like this:
Apple no longer has the plague.
It really is as simple as that, I think. For the longest time, Apple products all had the plague, at least in the minds of the ninety percent of the world that wasn't using them. It didn't matter, you see, if Apple's products were better or worse, costlier or cheaper, faster or slower, prettier or uglier. None of that mattered because you simply don't touch something that's plague-ridden. And, thanks to a long confluence of events that ranged from everything from Microsoft's long campaign to paint the Mac is incompatible and therefore unusable, to Apple's own long period of screwing things up so royally it didn't really need Microsoft's help to make a mess of its public image.
But somewhere within the past year or so, the plague has simply and miraculously been innoculated (of course, it helps that, as you and I know, the plague never really existed in the first place). The quarantine that had been in effect for so many years has been lifted, and word has begun to spread to this effect. Now sure, there are still plenty of people who are still afraid to touch something that once had the plague even though they're quite confident that it no longer does, but slowly but surely (and actually, not very slowly at all these days, seemingly), people are forgetting that the plague ever existed, or in some cases, are too young to have ever been aware of it in the first place.
If the fact that Mac sales are now growing more than three times as fast as PC sales doesn't speak to this sufficiently, then perhaps the fact that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is now a rock star among people in their teens and early twenties does. When he gets invited to speak at a college graduation ceremony, it's not because he invented something twenty years ago. It's because half the students in the audience during the speech have secretly snuck one of his products into the ceremony, so they can listen to it during the other speeches.
It's a new world now. Apple's on top. Everything's upside down. Long-time Mac users are no longer looked at as a leper colony. Now, the Windows-using public looks at us with a mixture of "please help me find my way into being a Mac user" and "please don't point out the fact that you were right all along." You almost can't help but think big and start wondering just how far this all can go. If you'd asked me two years ago, I would have said that my best-case scenario would be that the Mac would attain perhaps twenty percent marketshare and take its place as a minority too large to ignore. But now, I see no reason why it can't become the dominant platform.
I knew the world would start figuring it out eventually. I just didn't think it would happen this fast.
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