| The G4 Cube: "What the Old Man Does is Always Right."
There is an old story by the wonderful Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, by title of "What the old man does is always right". The story is about a man who goes out to trade the family's only horse for something more useful. He makes the most astounding series of bullheaded decisions about it, ending up with a sack of rotten apples, but thanks to the unyielding faith his wife has in him, it all turns out right in the end anyway. I think we could learn something from this story regarding our relationship to Old Man Steve. (It must be a sign of power to be in the position of Old Man when you're barely middle aged.)
Apple and particularly Steve Jobs has always made some really bullheaded decisions. A very telling example is the arrow keys on the original Macintosh. They weren't there. Now, nobody had ever heard about a computer without arrow keys, so there were a lot of complaining about it. But then nobody had ever heard about a Graphical User Interface either, which used the newfangled invention called the mouse, and the lack of arrow keys were a way of enforcing use of the mouse. There can be little doubt that many users would never had learned to use the Graphical User Interface properly if they had been able to continue using their old keyboard habits as always.
Of course not all bullheaded decisions are right. Steve also emphatically did not want the memory of the first Mac to be upgradable. And the machine were woefully under-supplied with memory. So the Macintosh developer team made it upgradable and kept it secret from Steve. As it turned out, the Mac that Steve used to show at the presentation conference in early 1984 had had its memory upgraded, otherwise it could not have done what it did!
Similarly the story with the iMac's compact keyboard and circular mouse, which were soon used on pro Mac models as well, despite being universally hated by pros and usually replaced by third party products. It took us two years to get through Apple's thick skull that they could and should do better than that. Of course, in typical Apple fashion, when they finally get something right, they do it better than anybody else. (I notice Adobe has a little of the same trait, like when they went from Photoshop's single undo level to the marvellous History feature.)
The Cube has a few things like this. It is quite clear that Apple does not give a flying flick if you want to use the Cube with your own monitor, it is designed to be used with the new Apple monitor! Preferably the flat panel ones! Even the older Apple flat monitors from last month do not work at all. (Sure, an adapter may come, but all this just illustrate what I mean) Apple's new flat monitors have USB ports built in. Which is great. But if you don't have one, then after you have plugged in the keyboard and the speakers there is only one free USB port, the one on the keyboard. See what I mean? (Oh, it will work with ordinary monitors, I use one, but it is not elegant.) It works great, if you do it exactly like Apple intended you to do it. The mouse cord is so short it only works well if you can plug it into the keyboard, which means a rather new keyboard. The keyboard cord is so short that it has to be plugged into the monitor or something very close to it. Etc. Etc.
This kind of attitude drives some people livid. They dislike arrogance and know-best attitudes. They like to make their own decisions. Which is a very good trait.
But on the other hand, without this attitude at Apple there would be no Cube, no iMac, and no Macintosh, perhaps not even a graphical user interface and its progeny, the Word Wide Web.
Perhaps sometimes, What the Old Man Does is Always Right. Much as it pains us.
- Stobblehouse |
