The Iron Yuppie

Scoble Under Attack

It looks like it's Scoble vs. the rest of the world... well, the rest of the Mac world anyway. He seems to be holding his own... good for him. I used to be over there, yelling about how MS was the downfall of mankind and ultimately would doom us (IT Pros/americans/humanity/whoever) to a life where mediocrity would be accepted and true creativity would die, blah blah blah. Needless to say I used to be fairly passionate about this stuff (or insane... po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe).

But the fact is I'm not sure either side has really nailed the crux of the situation accurately. Scoble says that MS is innovating... I agree. The tablet _is_ cool... so is the media center, Windows mobile, MS IPTV, and many other things that no _one_ company is doing. And because MS is doing them all, I can check my hotmail through my Windows Mobile phone, and extend my media center through my xbox and so on. On the other side, Mac _has_ done some cool UI stuff. They've done plenty to annoy the shit out of me, but mostly they get it very right. Expose? Awesome! The dock? Fucking worthless! Old Apple menu? Fantastic! New Apple menu? Terrible! Spotlight? Great! Spotlight in the control panels? Neat effect, but doesn't really tell you every thing you need to know (I want to change the resolution, so I type in resolution and it very elegantly highlights what I need, but just the icons... after that, I'm not sure what to do). And so on. Both sides have their points... but both sides are missing big ones as well.

First, even if Longhorn^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Vista copies EVERY aspect of OS X, why is that a bad thing for the average user? As long as MS respects the IP (and licenses or avoids stuff that has been patented), computer users will rejoice. The fact that Apple had it first? Who cares... That, and $3.50, will get you a double tall breve mochachino.

Second, and more importantly, there's an elephant in the room that people cannot seem to grasp. The person who seems to have gotten closest to the mark is this fellow:

I think the easiest response to Scoble's challenge is, "Does Apple make an operating system and applications that aren't the targets of every malware author in the world, malware so burdensome and odious that people will toss their old machines and buy new ones rather than try to fix them?"

It's not good that MS attracts so many malware writers, but the fact that SO many people are developing for it is the power of Windows. Let's say that Vista DOES copy everything about OS X. If you put them side by side, it's not the OS's that will sell the products. The ecosystem of hardware, software and service people make the system work, not the underlying OS or quality thereof. I used to say that a strong ecosystem was unnecessary, that you could browse, use email, write a word document on any platform and that was all you needed. But that kind of stuff only covers about 70% of what people use computers for. The second a user runs into something that she wants to do but cannot because it sits squarely in the 30% realm that is not available on their computer, she is going to be pissed. It's not the OS that makes the difference, it's everything that surrounds the OS that makes it viable.

Further, when you have hundreds and thousands of companies developing hardware and software for your platform, they become your advocates... every sale of their products support your platform even more. Every sale of your OS gives them a bigger market to play in. When you are developing a product, there's just no way that you will ignore 95% of the people out there and remain successful.

Suffice it to say that Apple does good work and, of all their innovations, I think they succeed the most when it comes to hardware (barring the iPod, I've never really understood why it's been so successful... the Rio Carbon seems much more user/human hand friendly to me). But until a dramatic change in the market place occurs, it's MS's true innovations, around making the life of developers and partners as easy as possible, that will carry the day.

D