Lions, tablets and the mystery of Apple product placement

OS X Lion running on a new MacBook Air. Photo / Supplied

Canadian site Macgasm (yes, it's a Mac fan site) pointed out the other day that 60 per cent of Apple's current sales are from products that did not actually exist three years ago.

It was three years ago that Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone. Then came the iPad, which has comprehensively owned its segment of the market since it emerged.

Those two products accounted for 60 per cent of Apple's sales in the just-gone quarter. Before the iPhone, we existed in the world of BlackBerry and tiny keyboards.

Remember touch-screen tablets? For indeed, Apple did not invent the touchscreen tablet. But before iPads, the category was a clear failure.

Looking at what little we know of Apple's next revision of OS X, so-called 'Lion', it's little wonder that the iDevice iOS experience should lead to the best elements showing up in OS X, pretty much like the best of the 'easy-to-use' features in Adobe's consumer-oriented Photoshop Elements often show up in the next version of its professional sibling, Adobe Photoshop.

People like to go with what they know, and far more people use iPhones and iPads than use Macs. So if they then buy Macs, they will expect iOS-like features, just as iOS originally derived its look and feel from Mac OS.

When Apple showed a glimpse of Lion, it pointed out that the Mac personal computer business comprised a third of Apple's total revenue last year, equating to a $22 billion industry on Mac sales alone.

Despite the success of non-Mac products for the Californian company, Apple emphatically reiterated that the Macintosh is still big and serious business.

Apple then unveiled the new, even slimmer MacBook Air in two sizes. Those sceptical of the need for a smaller-screen Air can now chew on the fact the 11-inch is in such demand, buyers are already having to wait for it.

Although low-specced at first glance, the new Airs are surprising many with their speed - this is mostly down to good graphics and Solid State Drives, which have totally replaced spinning hard drives in the new line.

Electronista is a good example of 2010 MacBook Air reportage. Electronista is a tech site, not an Apple site.

Reviewer Sanjiv Sathiah concludes "For our money, the 11-inch MacBook Air is just about spot-on. A better processor would be great, as would a backlit keyboard and more battery life, but these aren't deal killers unless the 13-inch Air isn't an option.

"At this size, weight and level of comfort, the Air can win simply because it's the system you'd most want to carry with you. It's also arguably the true speed leader in the category. Even with a Core 2 Duo, the new MacBook Air can run rings around other CULV models through the faster graphics and the instant responsiveness of the SSD. It's not quite the future of notebooks, but it's definitely headed in the right direction."

Traditional hard drives may be cheap, but they are hot, heavy and fragile. Being able to use a solid-state chip with no moving parts saves weight, engineering, power ... and they're faster. And this is only the beginning.

In 2003 I wrote (in Macguide magazine) that one day, Flash-memory-based products would replace hard drives, and that this would have huge ramifications on product design, leading to slimmer, lighter devices with better battery life and requiring less cooling.

This was after a meeting with an American bloke from memory-maker Sandisk. I'm not claiming credit for this prediction - it was pretty clear to anyone with an interest that when memory prices went down and capacities went up, the tech world would change to suit.

Apple is running strong right now. It has consistently outperformed, even while the rest of the market staggers under recessionary pressures.

Indeed, Apple is still growing. It's about to open a huge data centre in Texas and it has emerged that Apple has expanded its workforce by a third this year. This is mostly sales staff to cope with the ever growing legions of switchers. It's getting to the point where Dell, with sales down across the board, is about to spend "hundreds of millions" on Apple-countering advertising. Dell will be hoping for a miracle. Preferably some kind of disaster for Apple. Or people being more accepting of ugly products, perhaps.

For Apple can't seem to put a foot wrong. Even when it does, fallout is muted. There are still mutterings (justifiably so) about conditions in the Asian factories that build Apple-badged (and HP, Dell, Asus and the rest-badged ...) products.

Apple has moved to address complaints, but not particularly publicly. Or effectively, it must be said. Foxconn, for one, did very little after Apple, responding to public criticism (again, justifiably) pressured management to improve conditions on the factory floor.

Apple is undeniably arrogant. That's palpable. No one who ever does Apple any favours would ever know it. There's no acknowledgement. It doesn't matter how long you've been on the ball, you still won't get your emails answered.

And what about the swag that other IT writers get? Software, hardware, accessories ... They must think I'm an idiot.

I guess Apple's point is that it doesn't need to bribe to get good reviews - Apple's products do the work. But it's always galling to meet yet another person who assumes I'm either on Apple's payroll (I most definitely am not, and I never have been) and that I get loads of Apple products to keep.

I simply do not.

For myself, I'd be happy with more answered emails and some information, occasionally.

It's like the fact most people assume Apple seeds TV series and Hollywood films with its products.

Apparently not. An Apple spokeswoman reiterated recently to the New York Times that Apple does not pay for product placement. Indeed, an executive producer of the US TV comedy Modern Family, Steve Levitan, confirmed that the episode that ran a couple of months ago in New Zealand, in which a character was desperate for a new iPad, originated with the show's writers and not from Apple, or anywhere else.

Apple products appear in shows because they look great and people want them. Sucks, huh?

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com