January 11, 1999
New Macs prove the simple stuff still counts
By Bob O'Donnell
Leave it to Apple to prove once again how ridiculously convoluted the general ambitions
and directions of the personal computer industry typically are. In one fell swoop the
company that only one year ago many feared was on the verge of extinction (myself
included, as this old column
proves) both brushed aside conventional thinking about what's important in a computer and
managed to set the course that the rest of the computer industry will follow.
I'm referring, of course, to the new computers that the company unveiled at the
Macworld Expo last week in San Francisco. Both the new line of iMacs and the next-generation Power Macintosh G3 systems
make their mark not through complicated technical enhancements -- though they do have some
-- but because of incredibly simple things.
Making the slightly tweaked and slightly less expensive new iMac available in multiple
colors (or "flavors," as Apple prefers to call them), for example, is a great
idea. In some ways it's trivial, but in others it's really not. I know I'm probably going
to catch some heat for saying this and I realize that in the technology-driven IT world
about the last thing people worry about is the color a computer comes in, but I think
people are really going to like it. Once again, I think Apple has taken the lead in
recognizing how people think about computers -- essentially as appliances, not technical
devices -- and made the right move at the right time. And whether you think it's stupid or
not, I virtually guarantee you that we're going to see a lot more colorful PCs this year
as a result of these new iMacs.
In the newly unveiled next-generation Power Macs, I think the most important innovation
is the door panel that gives you easy access to the computer's innards. Sure, the 100-MHz
system bus and built-in FireWire support is nice, but even dedicated IT junkies have got
to admit that quick entry to a computer's motherboard for adding memory, drives, add-in
cards, and what have you is incredibly useful. The only question I have is, why doesn't
everyone already do this?
What's even more interesting about these simple enhancements that Apple has made (and
that PC makers are sure to soon replicate) is in how they make you realize how far we
still have to go. When you're caught in the day-to-day technological developments that
surround PCs, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture in terms of where computers
really are in their evolutionary development and where they can still go. Seeing these
types of simple enhancements and the amount of recognition they've already received
clearly demonstrates to me that we're still pretty early on in the evolutionary cycle of
personal computing devices. Yes, gigahertz processors and gigabytes of RAM are on their
way, but we're still missing a lot of the simple stuff too.
As for the future, I take hope in believing that there are still going to be many more
days when computer system designers slap themselves on the head and think, "Why
didn't I think of that?" Here's hoping that the new Macs start more of them thinking
in the right direction.
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Copyright 1999, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
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