dubious.biz(ness)

Well, it finally happened. In the 21st century, Apple released a flop. Oh, it hasn’t been released yet, but the fact remains, it’s a flop. In my circle of tech fiends, some Applistas and some immune to the “reality distortion field”, only one (and a distant one who I don’t always agree with) was passionate that this is a great product.

Sure it’s thin, light, and functional. But do you want it? No, you don’t. It’s the third device. Apple milked us for two devices, and that’s pretty impressive: you have a laptop and a phone. Chances are if I know you, at least one of those is an Apple product. Great work. But the third has to be better than the other two for a task that you desperately want to do, and given that this is Apple, everyone expected this third device would change the entire way we thought about… well we didn’t know. I guess we just thought it would blow our minds. But it didn’t and suddenly everyone I know is back where they started: they don’t want a third device.

Jobs wanted a third. An intimate piece of technology you would put on your lap while you sit in a comfy chair. And he embodied that in his announcement, taking us on a browse, a surf, rubbing and stroking the iPad so delicately in front of a huge audience and now the entire world. The subtleties of this device are many, and the demo was more like the demo of Jobs’s ill-fated NeXT computer than the iPhone or any MacBook launch. Watching Jobs sitting on the stage, he is stripped bare of his “Fake Steve Jobs” jackass domineering attitude, and his passion is splayed out across this piece of technology he helped wrought. We are watching him interact with his own child, and like most children, he loves it so much and is so impassioned that we too should appreciate it as the very best of all but to us it’s just a strange box on his lap.

This is clearly Jobs’s last big innovation. He doesn’t look great, and the elephant in the room is what future his company may have without him. Well, I will say this: Apple is the same company with him and without him. He has instilled his essence into the products and for the next few years we can expect more of the same. But he does not have the golden touch, nor did he ever. What he does have is a sense of what he wants, and an uncompromising will.

What is the iPad? It’s what Jobs has always wanted: it’s the ultimate personal computer. It is the final crescendo of the PC: the Apple, the Macintosh, the Powerbook, and now, this is it. He has, as Bill Gates also wanted, to make the computer so personal that you could stroke it and interact with it as if it were your own flesh and blood.

Unfortunately, the world isn’t the PC anymore (and I don’t mean John Hodgman, I mean Macintosh), and this device is lost in a networked world where interactions take place between users and users, and at worst, between users and services. What it is not is between users and applications. And so we have, with Steve Jobs’s last, brilliant efforts, the ultimate personal computer born into a world that no longer needs it.

Apple, the organisation, knows this, and this gives me the greatest hope for Apple’s future as an innovator that pushes the limits of what is possible. They know their future is not in this device. How can I split Apple from Jobs? First, watch the money: the price is ridiculously low. This device must have the lowest margins of any device I have seen from Apple, especially a first release. It uses a custom chip. It is the same unibody chassis manufacturing process started on the MacBook Air, which has now moved down to the MacBook Pro. It uses a very expensive and beautiful screen. It has a prodigious battery. It has all the bits and bobs that up the price of the iphone, and yet it costs relatively less. Only with the fully spec’ed out package do we get to “normal Apple prices”. Why? Because people will spend a load on their “work machine” (i.e. Laptop) that they use to make money. People will spend a lot on phones because it’s with them all the time. But this tablet thing? Nobody needs it, and the price point says it all: “I’m cheaper than you thought, why not give me a go?” Who sets that price? It’s not Jobs. Jobs may give the direction up and down, but ultimately it’s the combo of market research for the upper bound and cost for the lower. This device is so close to cost it’s a Dell, not a Mac.

Who else in Apple hasn’t gone ga-ga over this thing? The marketers. Another friend pointed out that this is the wordiest slogan an Apple has ever had. Let’s review:

Think Different.

Wow.

The ultimate all-in-one.

The fastest, most powerful iPhone yet.

Say hello to iPhone.

Introducing the Macintosh. For the rest of us.

iPad
Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.

It’s advanced, maybe, but who cares? It’s not magical, at least not outside the reality distortion field. I think you can see I don’t find it revolutionary. And last, the price is only unbelievable because we have come to expect huge prices from Apple. What that all says is that no marketer could figure out why she or I would want this thing, and went to adjective land to try to find a savior, and came back with advanced, magical, revolutionary, and unbelievable. Apple doesn’t need adjectives. The iPhone ad might as well have said, “Screw your vacation, buy this.” Or better yet, “I will make you happy.” Or nothing. You don’t have to sell perfection, and it doesn’t need any adjectives.

So this isn’t it. And somebody else gets a shot. What I can say is that even here we were pulling for you, Steve. And we love you and we’re all a family here: we’re trying to pull the world forward one giant leap at a time. This is a miss, but you are Dylan, you are Elvis, you are Michael Jackson. You’re just a guy, but you’re more. You rock. And seeing you on stage showing us this thing, this new amazing thing you created, with such pride… it is moving. You are the guy every guy like me aspires to be. Even if I wasn’t with you on all the adjectives.