30 years in Apple products: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Has it really been 30 years since two buddies named Steve sold off their prized possessions (Woz's HP calculator and Jobs' VW van) to raise money and launch a company? Has it really been 30 years since the two Steves, tired of selling blue-boxes, built the Apple I and began selling it for $666.66? Yes, it has, and if you don't believe it, just compare Jobs' hairlines from 76 and today. And while the company has become known for many things, from its groundbreaking GUI to the iTunes Music Store, we know Apple has always been a hardware company at heart. So here's to you, Apple: the good, the bad and, yes, the ugly from the past 30 years. Happy Birthday.

The good
We're not going to go on about the contributions Apple's made to consumer electronics and personal computing. We don't really actually think they're all that innovative a lot of the time, they just have a knack for taking what's out there, what's a little higher end or out of reach to the average user, and bringing it to the mainstream at just the right time. Apple is Apple because they bring that technology home, and then package it with a friendly user experience and with an eye for style. High tech, good user experience, stylish presentation, it's not like those aren't things being done elsewhere, just usually not all together at the same time. Perhaps that's the essence of the Apple mystique. We've gathered some of the more groundbreaking devices of Apple's career; oh sure, we could have rounded up more, but we had to be fair to the bad and the ugly, too.

..Snip..
1976 - Apple I
1977 - Apple ][
1984 - Macintosh
1989 - Macintosh SE/30
1991 - PowerBook 100
1994 - QuickTake
1995 - Power Macintosh 9500
1998 - iMac
2000 - Apple flat panels
2001 - PowerBook G4
2001 - iPod
2006 - MacBook Pro

The bad
We like a good Apple as much as the next guy, but if you think we're gonna let 'em off easy for their flubs, flops, or complete misjudgments of their consumer base, well, you might not realize we dislike a bad Apple as much as the next guy, too. Sure, they may have some regrets over the years (seems to us like most probably come from simply pricing themselves right out of the hands of potential buyers) but occasionally concept and forward thinking become high concept and too-forward thinking, and what you wind up with is a device that people just aren't ready for yet -- or devices that just aren't ready for people yet.

..Snip...
1980 - Apple III
1983 - Lisa
1993 - MessagePad and Newton OS
1997 - Twentieth Anniversary Mac
2000 - Power Mac G4 Cube

The ugly
Let's face it, not every device in Apple's career has been lustrous, no matter how illustrious Apple may be. Now, we're not saying that Apple's continued success has been reliant strictly upon aesthetics, but there are a number of reasons why 1985 through 1997 were the lean years, and we don't think John Sculley's, Michael Spindler's, and Gil Amelio's sense of style exactly helped. Hey, even Jobs can't escape the fact that some serious fuglies made their way out the door under his watchful eye. We could make a gallery of Apple's egregiously uncomely, but we picked a few of our fav eyesores that we're no longer cursed by the gadget gods to gaze upon (at least not until we put together this piece, anyway).

..snip..
1989 - Macintosh Portable
1991 - Macintosh Quadra
1992 - Macintosh Performa
1996 - Network Server
2001 - Flower Power iMac

They didn't mention the IIc which was a great compact version of the Apple II family, I always thought it was a great package. The IIGX was a step too far.

I have a hard time thinking of the Lisa and Apple III as 'bad'. The Lisa opened a lot of eyes about what a computer could be, it's biggest problem was a huge price tag and having to compete with the Macs when they became available.

The Apple III was a transition system between the II and the Macs and was the first platform to use a lot of the VLSI chips that formed the basis of the Lisa and Mac systems. The III got a bum rap when new out of the box because a few units had issues with chips working out of their sockets, the Wall Street Journal jumped on the problem and their article killed the III before it ever had a chance. The III was also the first commercial PC to offer a hard drive as a peripheral, the Apple Profile with a whopping 5mb of storage.

We had great fun at the computer store by holding the box against our chests, sticking the fingers of our left hand in the heat sinks on the back and playing our right hand over the keyboard while singing 'Lady of Spain'. You had to be there.

Those were the glory days, Apple hasn't excited me for years, and in my opinion has become the 'evil' corporate entity they denigrated in the 80s.

1993 - MessagePad and Newton OS

The problem with the Newton was that it was rushed to market before it was quite ready for prime time. By the time the Newton 2000 came around, the handwriting recognition was pretty polished -- but it couldn't shake the reputation the earlier generations earned.

I found the handwriting recognition even on the MP120 to be pretty good once you formed the right habits -- with Graffiti, developed as an add-on for the Newton before Palm picked it up, it hit about 100% after a bit of practice.

Then US Robotics came out with the Palm Pilot, which was much less capable but much cheaper and pocket-sized, and the Newt was doomed.

I still hold out hope that Apple will bring back the Newton, under a different name and modernized -- give me something the same size as the old Newton or a little smaller, with a big color screen, the drive and functionality of the iPod, WiFi, USB2, Bluetooth and a cell phone, and I'll be the first in line.

I used to hope Apple would use PalmOS, but it's lagging so far behind Pocket PC these days that I'd prefer a version of OS X built for portables.

Apple builds subtle tie-ins between software and hardware which would not be possible running on a generic box. For instance, with an Apple notebook computer, close the lid; the OS goes into sleep mode. Open the lid; the OS wakes. Tap the power button when the machine is already powered up; a dialog box appears asking if you want to shut down or put the machine into sleep mode.

That's what Jobs calls controlling the "whole widget." It lets Apple limit the number of drivers it has to deal with, and to drop support for legacy hardware standards in a shorter time span than Microsoft can; for example, dumping ADB and serial in favor of USB. It lets Apple avoid the kind of code clutter Windows has to deal with, and makes the experience more elegant.

At home, I have a 20" Dell flat panel (as the main of three monitors). At work, an Apple 20". The displays are virtually identical -- I think they both buy their LCDs from the same supplier -- but on the Apple I never have to navigate through menus or use buttons on the front to make adjustments. It's all done in software.

Is that extra level of elegance always worth the cost ($500 vs. $1000 at the time)? Not always. That's why I have the Dell at home. But if I still worked in a business where color matching is critical, the Apple would win hands down.

Note that I am using the word "elegant" -- the adjective that best sums up what separates Macs from Windows -- not to mean eye candy, but in an engineering sense. A minimum of clutter, no unnecessary parts, tools to do what I want to do and then get out of the way.

The biggest thing Apple would have to deal with is the variety of hardware it would have to support. Dozens of video cards, hundreds of different drives, etc.

I've been mulling that over. Since the Intel macs came out, along with the MacOS to run on them, some enterprising hackers have already gotten it to run -- sort of -- on beige-box PCs. The buzz around this has centered on Apple's legal options to shut it down, but I don't think that's realistic. They'll be about as successful as the MPAA has been in shutting down the DVD copying software. On the Internet, US copyright law is just a local ordinance.

So what I'm thinking is this; Apple could license MacOS to another company or companies, or spin off a division, and let them write the drivers and make the tweaks and deal with the hassles of the more heterogeneous world of Windows PCs. And, oh yeah, support it. Maybe under a different name. That way, Apple can get some cash from all those PC owners while keeping its reputation at arm's length from the uneven performance that will inevitably result.

Actually, the more I think about it, Apple's best option is to leave well enough alone. If someone hacks MacOS to run on a Dell, and it's a Charlie Foxtrot, Apple can't be blamed. Maybe the person running the hacked MacOS will be won over and move up to the real deal.

Meanwhile, Apple is making more money than ever. They have about $8 billion in cash on hand. Mac market share is climbing, in part because the iPod gets people into Apple stores and gets them to at least think about a Mac, and in part because the one key asset that has buoyed Windows -- compatibility with the rest of the world -- is fading in importance. The growth of the Internet has moved more and more of the stuff we handle every day into open standards Microsoft can't tweak to shut others out.

The problem is that Apple is, and has been for at least 20 years, a software company funded by hardware sales. Their hardware is top-drawer, but it's MacOS that sets a Mac apart from a really well-made PC like, say, a Sony. So they can't risk expanding software market share at the expense of cannibalizing hardware sales, or they won't have the funds to keep developing the software that makes us go all gooey.

If I were Apple, I'd stand pat for now, but be prepared to pounce if the environment changes. There is every sign that Apple is doing that -- it was working on an Intel-based version of MacOS in parallel to the PowerPC version for years before it moved the Mac to Intel chips, if even a fraction of the rumors are believable.

I'd bet some folks at Apple, or at a trusted subcontractor, are working on the drivers and other code it would take to run MacOS reliably on a generic PC. They're just keeping that card in their sleeve until the right hand comes along.

They'd also have to beef up their security substantially. There aren't a lot of Apple viruses because hackers don't bother trying to break 2% of the world's installed base.

The script-kiddie spammers and pornographers who are trying to assemble an army of zombie computers aren't likely to bother with the Mac for the reasons you cite (though the Mac's installed base is more like 8-10%; Macs stay in use for longer, on average, than Windows PCs, so the installed base is higher than the market share of new system sales).

But to the real hackers -- black hats and white hats alike -- there is a powerful incentive to crack the Mac. The same incentive that led Hillary to Everest: It's there and no one's done it. You're not going to tell me that there aren't a bunch of people out there who are dying to plant that flag.

The first couple of OS X viruses (more accurately, Trojans) have sprung up, using an exploit in iChat. I think that's been patched. I haven't heard of any widespread outbreaks in the wild. And none of these exploits have the kind of reformat-my-hard-drive, sleep-with-my-wife, drink-all-the-beer-in-my-fridge potential of the nastier Windows viruses.

Get a few more percentage points and the wide variety of OSX vulnerabilities would be exposed.

Oh, there will certainly be Mac viruses, but not as many or as bad as on Windows, even if the Mac were to surpass Windows in market share. Behind the pretty veneer of MacOS , under the hood, the parts are mostly Unix -- the most battle-tested OS around.

The fundamental difference between OS X (I'm not going to try to defend OS 9 on security) is that it is a multi-user, networked, security-aware OS from the ground up. Windows slapped that functionality onto a single-user OS. It's definitely gotten better since Windows ditched a DOS-based OS for an NT-based one, but there are still bazillions of lines of legacy code swimming around in there.

Another difference is that Darwin is open-source -- When an exploit breaches the Mac border, there's a Minuteman militia out there to plug it. Microsoft is largely on its own.

Unfortunately I don't think Apple has the vision to do this anyway.

I don't think it's a question of vision, but of strategy, for reasons I outlined above. Apple would have far less to gain than it has to lose by positioning MacOS as an alternative OS on commodity hardware -- and several other companies have tanked trying to take on Microsoft on its home turf. Including IBM (uh-oh, here come the OS/2 die-hards), which used to be the 800-lb. gorilla of the industry.

I'm a diehard Microsoftie. I worship at the altar of Bill Gates.

This was my baby during the 1980's

That said, my platinum colored Apple IIe (released in about 1988-89) was the most fun I ever had with a computer.

I never liked Apples

The computers at my high school were brand new macs and they just sucked. Part of our final in computer class was to make an simple animation (remember this was the mid 80's, not as simple as today). I choose a shark swimming. On my PC Jr. I could do it in about 15 minutes just using the pset, line, draw, get & put statements in Qbasic. On the mac however just to do a simple image was ridiculously complex, first you had to draw the image on graph paper, then you had to do all the weird functions to draw out the image in the computer, etc. then you had to repeat all that for the other images in the animations which was real long and time consuming. I got so fed up that I actually wrote a program on my PC JR that would print out the source codes for the mac for any image you made on it and took them to school and copied it into the mac.

It had the best feeling keyboard of any keyboard I've ever used, and I expanded the hell out of that thing.

Actually, I liked my Pc Jr. Keyboard (Not the "Chicklet" one) because you didn't have to plug it into the computer as it was wireless. Though replacing the batteries was annoying.

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