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What 10 years of Apple did to its main product
How time flies! In the year 2000, I was just finishing high school, listening to Bush, and becoming acquainted with Windows 2000. Back then, I knew very little about Apple, and I'd certainly not heard of the Bondi Bubble iMac (the first iMac was released in 1998). In 2010, well...how things have changed for me! And, as illustrated by Brett Jordan in the graphic above, things have also changed at Apple. It's incredible to think that the iPhone has taken center stage at Apple over the last three years. As noted by some of our commentators, there has been a real lack of Mac-centric news recently. Sure, there was the update to the iMac a few months ago, but it's glaringly obvious that the Mac has taken a back seat to the iPhone -- certainly in the limelight department. In fact, I'm reveling in the fact that I'm writing about the iPhone and the iMac at the same time! Today, the Mac is the center of our digital hub, but it's no longer the center of our digital world. When we leave the house / office / room where the Mac lives, it's the iPhone ( iPad / iPod touch) that is constantly in our hands, and Apple knows it! Of course, we have to come back to our Macs eventually (in my case, repeatedly, everyday) because the iPhone can't do everything that we want it to, or even some of the things that we want done well, yet. But just looking at this picture shows how far things have come, and how the direction taken by personal computing is becoming even more personal. The only feature of the iPhone 4 that doesn't beat the iMac of yesteryear is screen real estate. The processor and RAM are double the capacity of the iMac, the iPhone's storage is 2 gigabytes larger, and it's flash-based memory. And of course, it's tiny in comparison. As noted by Obama Pacman, it's Moore's law in effect. But when will it end? In 10 years time, will we have an iPhone that's five times smaller than the current one, but more powerful than the personal computers of today? Who knows? That might be a weird phone, but anything could happen. For now, I'm still stuck with my iPhone 3G, and I think it might still have some Bush on it. In the meantime, I'm just looking forward to getting the iPhone 4!
An interview with the man behind the name "iMac"
This is a cool interview over at Cult of Mac -- you've heard of Steve Jobs of course, you know who Jonathan Ive is, you might have heard of Rob Janoff, but do you know Ken Segall's name? He's a former creative director from TBWA\Chiat\Day, and he has two claims to Apple fame: he worked on the "Think Different" campaign, and he's responsible for coming up with the one letter that may have defined the modern-day Apple as we know it. That's right, he named the iMac. The writeup is fascinating, even if you get the sense that we're looking through the lens of history, and things may not happened quite as stylishly as they seem. Jobs apparently showed the Bondi Blue iMac to the ad team, and while he originally "hated" the name, he obviously came around -- though Segall apparently never got the satisfaction of official approval. He closes with an interesting sentiment about the company, too: at Apple, it's always about moving forward to the next big thing, and everything is product-centered, not number-driven. Segall says he was around for a few Jobs "flare-ups," but if there was a fit thrown, it was always in trying to keep the company moving forward as quickly as possible. Interesting stuff. It's quite a legacy, too -- the iMac was originally called so because it was a Mac that connected to the Internet, but obviously since then, the i has become symbolic of many other things, all the way up to iLife, the iPod, and the iPhone. You tend to forget, after all of the millions of dollars and the culture and promotion, that it all came from the head of a guy in a conference room looking at a computer Jobs just pulled the cloth off of.
Apple's 10 year comeback
9rules' Apple blog has an interesting look at the last ten years of the company that makes the Mac. In 1997, everyone from Wired to BusinessWeek was proclaiming the death of Apple, rumoring that they'd get out of hardware completely, or that they'd merge with Sony or even Nintendo (those rumors are still floating around, I think). Then, in 1998, Apple introduced that Bondi Blue iMac, and the rest is history. They became a company known for making simple, beautiful and iconic computer products, and in 2001, the deal was sealed with the iPod and in 2003, iTunes.And now, ten years later, it's 2007, the iPhone has been released, iTunes is the biggest online music store in the world, and bumping shoulders with even traditional retailers. Apple's not quite on top of the world (let's not forget that while they dominate the categories they choose to dominate, they're still a fraction of the overall market), but there is no question that Apple as a company is going gangbusters. Amazing to see the difference between where the company was just 10 years ago, and where Apple is headed in 2008 and beyond.
