I have a Mac desktop. I have a mac laptop, my wireless network is built on mac’s Time Capsule. I have several ipod iterations, an Ipad, and to complete the collection, an iPhone. You could call me a mac guy. You could also call me an aging wanna be hipster who glommed on to a product identity that became essentially unsustainable with the death of its defacto creator, Steve Jobs. Apple is an idea and an identity. Unfortunately, that identity truly lived in the heart of its biggest supporter.
Apple captured the idea of cool at two points in my life. During college I looked at those boxy one-piece computers with the funny faces and said: Nerd Chic. I was all in. Unfortunately, all mac ever gave me back then was a picture of a bomb and an error message informing me that my latest story had suddenly become the victim of a terrorist attack. I caught the bomb so many times I thought I was Laos.
Fast forward to the next thousand years and mac is back and on the back of Steve Jobs, a meglomaniac ‘meanie’ whose constant health battles and innovative thinking captured the hearts of a generation of tech supporters. I bought right back in to Jobs’ vision. I wanted to shell out thousands for a macbook and as soon as I did I ordered a wicked cool sticker from Tokyo to show how my nerd chic had evolved. It made every bit of sense to go all in. Mac products are (as one friend put it) hermetically sealed. You buy all the products you need from their line and the set works together seamlessly. There are no driver errors as one often experiences with mac’s bigger and far more wealthy competitor Windows. From OS to end user, mac works as it should–on the surface.
Dig deeper and you find that in the absence of Jobs there is a decline in product usefulness and efficiency. My iphone, for instance, doesn’t hold a charge at all. While these errors happened in the time of Jobs, that leader understood that the experiences of a handful of end users could shape and thusly unshape the cool in a way that made it necessary to put out a product that not only worked but allowed the end user to feel good about themselves. Jobs’ macs were green machines that had a minimal impact on the environment (despite being assembled in Chinese sweatshops–but you can’t blame a corp for doing what every other competitor is doing). Post-Jobs macs are not green. That entire movement has been scrapped in pursuit of a higher profit margin.
I am not saying Jobs wasn’t a money loving fool. I am saying that he had enough of himself in his corp and enough history and awareness of what that corporate identity means to understand the value of a good product. These new guys understand the value of a good quarterly report. Mac is going to be pushed further down the road of maximum profitability for minimum product. Before long the hackers are going to catch on to how badly Apple has strayed from its vision. That’s when they’ll take action. That’s when the fall begins.
I’m betting it starts with the iPhone