What’s It All About, Apple?

(This is an update to an article written for MW06)

The Computer ~ In the history of Man, there have been few all-encompassing discoveries and inventions. These are evident. (1) The control of fire, (2) the invention of the wheel, (3) the screw and the lever; (4) the control of steam which began the Industrial Revolution; (5) the control of electricity; and (6) the computer.

This sixth one, the computer, is a Locus – an everything tool. It is the single invention of Man that is able to do any task, completes any chore, or do work of any description. The computer is pan-effic, pan-epic, and pan-specific. We are limited in our use of the computer only by our imaginations, and our dreams.

The Mac ~ It is becoming increasingly obvious to everyone that the single brand of computer that really becomes the universal tool is the Apple Macintosh. It is the stuff dreams are made of. It is the one computer that people love, that they enjoy using, that they develop a cult following of.

Why is this so? Because the Mac provides the Focus of the Locus.

What good is a universal do-all tool, if it is difficult to use? If it can do anything, what do you decide to do with it first? Apple provides that focus – those seminal applications that help us bring our dreams and plans to reality.

What exactly is so special about Steve Jobs and his famous ”Reality Distortion Field?” It is not Hocus-Pocus that he is giving us. It is Locus Focus.

Think about it. Steve and the great geniuses at Apple Inc. have given us the Finder, Quicktime, the Dock, Dashboard, and Spotlight. They have given us GarageBand, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, and iWeb. They have also given us the iPod, and today, the next iteration of computing.

The things from Apple provide us with focus to make efficient use of the universal tool, the computer, and they just make it easier to do more productive work than any other computing product in existence.

So the media reporters rarely have ever gotten it right about Apple. They assume it is some cult or popular culture product, or that it is some better grade of consumer product – a Bentley instead of a Chevy. But the fact is, the Apple is the locus, the seminal center of computing, and the prime definition of what this sixth tool of Man is all about.

But Steve Jobs is doing more than making the universal tool more efficient, more productive for all of us. Where he leads, the whole industry follows. Apple is leading in the convergence of all things media.

This is why we all expect an Apple iPhone today, and if Steve introduces one, I am sure it will also be a convergence device, combining the best of the iPod and the Mac as well. It might have an on-board camera and also be able to surf the internet and make conference calls. I would also expect Steve to show us a really new interface – something that no one has ever done before.

Why? Because every person who owns a Mac or an iPod already finds themselves benefited with bleeding-edge, advanced state-of the-art functionality, giving them faster productivity, easier use of their time and talents, and allowing them to enjoy their perhaps new-found freedom. For that the things from Apple are nothing if not the most astonishing, permissive, indulgent and provocative everything tools. Would you ever expect anything less from Apple when it introduces a new product?

And the best is yet to come.

So what is Macworld in all of this? That is an easy one to define, if you will pardon my very fitting metaphor. Macworld is as astonishing, amazing, vulgar, noisy, all consuming and prolific as a husband and wife working hard and sweaty to conceive a child. For in the midst of all this noise, chaos and crowd of people here at MacWorld, there is the plain sense of something being created: Something wonderful, beautiful, noteworthy, noble, and of good repute.

Look around Macworld, through the eyes and ears of the writers at MyMac.com. See what they bring to you in photos and podcasts. For the vendors at the Expo are the happy pimps of things created by computers and on computers, for use in and on your computers. And we MacWriters are the kid in the tree, looking through the window, upon that busy couple in their bedroom, and joyfully giving all the juicy details to our friends on the ground below.

And believe me, the next something, the One More Thing, this year, is going to raise the bar of convergence, of focus, and of outright fun and coolness. Nobody does it like Apple.

Regards,
Roger Born

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