I must admit I was disturbed recently by Ric Ford's year end column concerning the platform we all know and love. The reason I'm disturbed is that Ford is no "casual" Mac observer. Ford is a vintage Mac enthusiast and has followed Apple since the company's inception.
Ford made a statement at the end of his MacWeek/eMediaweekly column that is sobering for Mac users, if it pans out to be true. Commenting about Apple's problems with its customer service system, Ford said: "Following all the successes of the past year, this remains a big problem that Mr. Jobs needs to fix to keep his platform alive for a while longer." Read the full article at www.emediaweekly.com/1998/12/20/macintouch.html.
It was sobering for me when I read it, considering all the good Apple news of late. My habit every morning once was reading the morning newspaper, but these days, I turn to online news on the Internet. I read about world news, sports, the weather, and about the Mac right from my home computer.
I found Ford's column while checking out my favorite Mac sites one morning following Christmas. I had just returned from an trip visiting relatives in Little Rock where I had been pleasantly surprised by activity I witnessed at a CompUSA store. While I was in the store about an hour checking out the Apple wares, I witnessed an iMac being sold, along with lots of other Mac stuff, to other patrons. There was quite a buzz in the Apple section of the store.
As I stood there playing with an iMac on display, I observed that there seemed to be genuine interest in the Mac once again. The shelves of the store were stocked with Mac software and there were Macs and Mac accessories everywhere. Running on the iMac was the new Electronic Arts game Future Cop, which is nothing less than impressive on the machine with its fast graphics acceleration.
Less impressive was my visit to Best Buy across town. There was one sole (and pitiful looking) iMac sitting on an end shelf amid a sea of Wintel boxes. There were few accessories and software located nearby (when I saw it I wondered why would anyone want to sink $1,300 into a computer without a printer or software) for the iMac at the Best Buy store. But overall, I thought, for those seeking the "best buy" on an iMac, it's good that Apple has expanded it's retail horizons to Best Buy.
Anyway, I left the Little Rock area with a good feeling about what Apple is doing. I guess that's why I felt my balloon deflate a bit when I read Ford's column upon my return home.
There's evidence big things are up with Apple, if you believe what you read about its consumer portable and the new desktop machines on the way. It should all become much clearer once the Mac World Expo in San Francisco kicks up steam in early January.
As I've said before, Steve Jobs has learned a lot since being ousted by Apple in the 1980s. Jobs wants Apple to succeed and I wouldn't count him out in pushing the company to once again become the software and hardware innovator in the future. Jobs has an ego the size that can keep him at the helm of Apple and Pixar for many years to come; and don't think that he doesn't want both of this companies to succeed and succeed big time.
After I thought about it, I had to agree with Ford's statement about Mac technology coming to the end of its life cycle. But I'll add that Windows (in its present form) is doomed as well. I'm not a Java fanatic, but I'll say that something bigger than proprietary operating systems is coming to personal computers. Either Apple will create it or someone else will. One only has to look as far as Sun Microsystems, Oracle and others to see that the race is on to move us away from Windows, Mac, Linux, UNIX or whatever.
All of us Mac users can only hope, Ric, that Apple innovation that's coming will help extend the platform (whatever form it takes) well into the future.