Let me preface my comments by saying that I like Apple, and I love the Macintosh. I really do. And I want to see them succeed.
The iMac has done much to put Apple back along the road to success, and because of this it's hard not to like the bubbly little machine. And yet, my experience at Macworld Expo struck an unconscious, disharmonious chord in me.
How else to explain the sudden feeling of disorientation and uneasiness, almost like nausea, that came over me as I stumbled across Apple's showcase pavilion in the expansive South Hall of Moscone Center?
I can only describe the sensation as something akin to one's reaction upon kicking over an anthill. There I stood, surrounded by a veritable horde of bug-like iMacs, now available in a variety of candy colors.
Every so often amongst this swarm, I would catch a glimpse of one of Apple's new "Pro" line of Power Mac G3 computers, squatting like a fat queen bug with its oversize case decked out in the same translucent white and Bondi blue plastics as the original iMac. Next to these were large monitor screens — also blue and white — connected to the Power Macs with twisting cords like monstrous semi-opaque egg sacks.
I scanned the crowd, half-thinking I might spot Sigourney Weaver.
At that moment, I was forced to come to terms with that dreadful truth which I had so far managed to escape. I love my Mac, and I think the Mac OS is the most beautifully and elegantly designed operating system on the market.
But Apple's latest computers are ugly as hell. Sure, they catch your eye — but they do it in a way that's less like a supermodel, and more like a fly fisherman with bad aim.
"Even the server systems look like that," my friend Dave sputtered. "As if the Mac didn't have a hard enough time being taken seriously, how is a Mac manager supposed to get any respect dragging that thing into a server room?" Dave, a Windows NT administrator for a major search engine, wasn't inspired to become a convert.
Of course, not everyone is so repelled by Apple's new machines. While it's early yet to get feedback on the new "Pro" line, a number of folks I talked to were excited to hear about the availability of new fruit-flavored iMac colors, thinking something other than blue might fit better with their décor. Though personally, I can't imagine any self-respecting interior decorator designing around a theme like "Strawberry," "Grape," or "Tangerine." Not a sober one, anyway.
However you feel about the new designs, this focus on appearances is a telling, if subtle, statement about the direction of the "new" Apple. Under interim CEO Steve Jobs's "Think Different" regime, the emphasis is no longer on what Apple has become, but on what Apple seems to be.
What's that you say? Appearances aren't all that important? It's what's inside that counts? If that's the case, then why did so many news reports on the new iMac models focus only on the new colors and the discounted price? Why did they tend to gloss over, or even fail to mention completely, that the new iMacs also feature a 266 MHz PowerPC processor, and a 14 percent speed increase from the earlier version?
The answer is probably because today's Apple would rather you didn't pay attention to things like processing power, or how well its offerings compete in the cut throat computing marketplace. That's never been Apple's forté. They'd rather sell you a computer based on aesthetics than on a bunch of stats and numbers, gigabytes and megahertz.
"People don't care about that stuff," Steve Jobs said in his keynote address to the Macworld Expo. "What they care about is, 'I want to express myself.'" And express themselves they shall — if picking a color from a box of crayons can be considered self-expression.
Not that Apple hasn't come up with ways for computer hardware geeks to express themselves, too. The new "Pro" Macs feature a host of new technologies adopted as standards across the platform. The graphic processing power has been improved over the last generation of G3s. In place of serial ports, parallel ports, and SCSI, the new Macs have lightning-fast FireWire connectivity, along with the USB ports that made such a big splash with the introduction of the original iMac. And like the iMac, these machines have no old-fashioned floppy drives.
Fully equipped with gizmos, the "Pro" Macs should spark a twinkle in the eye of technophiles everywhere — if they can get over the blue plastic, that is. But how much of this new technology represents real benefit to Macintosh users, and how much of it is just headline-grabbing industry hoopla? Though FireWire is potentially an exciting technology, at present there are virtually no computer peripherals that use it. And while the industry has embraced USB, the number of USB devices that support the Mac platform is still relatively few.
Meanwhile, the new Macs lack any of the hardware necessary to use the thousands of existing peripherals in the homes and offices of Mac users. Without SCSI, you can't use any of your old external hard drives, scanners or CD-ROM burners. Without a serial port, you can't talk to MIDI devices, your digital camera or your PalmPilot. Without an ADB port, the iMac won't allow you to use your joystick or your graphics tablet, and that $10,000 engineering application that requires an ADB copy protection "dongle" will be useless.
And while there are adaptors available for the iMac, they'll certainly cost you more money and they may not work smoothly in all cases.
In fact, there's very little that's practical about today's Macintosh. Its round mouse is difficult to aim and use. Its neo-modern industrial design is sure to quickly become dated, if you don't consider it so already. To color-sensitive graphic designers, who make up a large portion of the Mac's installed user base, its bright color scheme is likely to become an irritant.
Still, these new Macs look good on paper, if not in person, and as far as Apple is concerned, that's enough. In the long term, Apple can't succeed against the Windows PC market just by comparing speed for speed, feature for feature. The name of the game is grabbing headlines and building market share. It's a shame, but make no mistake — despite a profitable year for Apple, it's still the future of the company that's at stake.
There's one real gem among Apple's current product line, however. I can say without equivocation that my PowerBook G3 is the greatest computer I have ever owned, bar none. It's compact, sleek and fast, has a huge, beautiful screen, and can be expanded with a host of peripherals via its standard Mac ports, expansion bays, and PC card slots. It's what's long been overdue from Apple: a Macintosh that fits in a backpack, and yet can do everything most desktop computers can do.
And, get this one. The PowerBook comes in only one color: black. Just...black.
