The Apple advantage - get with the application

Microsoft, and even global banks, are copying Apple's successful store concept. Photo / Supplied

Several commenters refuse to accept Apple is expanding, with sales rising, and all for very sound reasons. They can't accept (or understand) the 'Apple advantage'. So on the understanding these particular people will never accept any of this, here goes for the rest of us.

Enablement

Once upon a time there were computers that only people with pointy heads could use. These may have been loveable, well-intended people (and clever to boot) but they had to know code to get anything done. And that was a very small segment of Homo Sapiens.

So Apple came along and invented computing 'for the rest of us'. At first this seemed a mere curiosity, until designers clicked to WYSIWYG - what you see it what you get.

So?

With WYSIWYG, you put some type here, make it bold, draw a line under it, change the typeface of the body copy and press Print - and what you have on your screen comes out of the printer.

It might sound crazy now, but it didn't used to be that way - you had to send the printer commands to make it do certain things like bolding, change typeface and add lines. And you were never sure what you'd get till it came out.

So designers started buying Macs, and learning to use them, for this terrific, empowering feature - and traditional prepress was gone a few years later.

This 'desktop publishing revolution' also gave rise to companies like Aldus, Adobe and Macromedia (with Adobe eventually absorbing the other two). It also gave rise to a worldwide tidal wave of magazine producers and content that simply was not possible before that.

I know, because that's the industry I used to work in - and just to prove a point, most people don't even know what 'prepress' is (was) any more.

That was way back in the 1980s, so it's old news. But Apple boosted several other waves of societal and technological change after that. Think about music production. Music playing. Multi-media production.

And so on - all possible on other platforms, sure, but only because Apple put the innovation into readily-available technology.

As far as 'enablement' goes, anyone who buys a new Mac now can output a high definition and slick slideshow - or movie, or a musical score - an hour later, no other software required. That's an inexpressibly powerful thing.

GUI, intuitive interface

Everybody is used to icons, folders and files and all that now, but it's Apple that introduced the Graphic User Interface to mainstream computing.

Without it, Microsoft wouldn't have made so much money out of Windows. Or even given it that name.

Ease of use

Apple did not invent the mouse. But Apple genius and co-founder Steve Wozniak refined an existing device down from a couple of dozen parts to just four, meaning it could be mass-produced.

Apple introduced it along with its computer, and everybody laughed. Who's laughing now?

Learning curve

Give an iPad to a 99-year-old who has never used a computer, and suddenly she's a computer user. "It's changed her life," one of her daughters told OregonLive.com.

Here's another example - a two-and-a-half-year-old using an iPad for the first time.

There's a reason for that. Right from the beginning (1976), Apple's vision was to make computers intuitive and easy to use. Every single Apple device is easier to use than an equivalent ... unless you've used a PC for a decade or two and that was a struggle. For you, it may be hard to change. You have my sympathy.

Apple Macs are not Windows' PCs. They will not work exactly like those PCs, although the systems are more similar than ever before. (Of course, you can just install Windows on your Mac using the free Apple Boot Camp utility.)

Aesthetics

Apple makes beautiful stuff. Most people - people with any taste at all - are happy to have Apple gear in their environments.

And for all of you out there who honestly think AlienWare makes beautiful gear ... I'm sorry. For you, all is lost.


Money

Apple has more dollars than Scrooge McDuck. Sure, it means CEO Steve Jobs can swan about the world in a private jet, but it also means Apple has the power to produce its innovation, making things ever faster, sleeker - even when it has to buy the plant to produced the materials it designs. Thankfully, that's what happens.

Loyalty

There are long-term Apple fans that are loyal to the core (ha ha - and for those, like me, who eat Apple pie, I salute you).

For believe me, I know it was hard to hang on through the Dark Times. I mean 'the nineties'.

But new-to-Apple fans are just as loyal. In fact, they're like born-again Christians in their proselytisation. They'll bang on about the merits of Apple till you ... change friends. Or get a MacBook.

This is pure gold for Apple. Always has been. You couldn't buy this.

You can tell yourself this is because Apple is 'just great at marketing' till you're blue in the face, but I simply can't believe this could have continued so long without getting something fundamentally right to back it up.

So get over it.

Fifty-nine per cent of iPhone owners said they will stick with the Apple handset. In the German survey, the figure topped BlackBerry and Android-based alternatives, and left Nokia at 24 per cent and Microsoft down at 21.

"If a phone doesn't do what it says it will do or what the owner hopes it will do, the maker will lose loyalty," GfK analyst Ryan Garner told Cult of Mac via Reuters.

Success

Squillions in the bank comes from producing and selling great products. As John Boudreau wrote in the Mercury News, during the just-completed fiscal year, Apple broke four consecutive quarterly revenue and profit records amid the worst recession in decades.

Apple hired thousands while others cut jobs, and instead of cutting costs, acquired new technology through mergers. "This $65 billion company has been relentless in innovating like a startup and ruthless in promoting technologies that disrupt its own product lines."

(The Mercury News is a news site based in the region Apple is based.)

Apple has outpaced the computer industry three to one. In. A. Recession.

Envy

Microsoft copied, I'm sorry, 'borrowed' elements of the interface of Apple's OS for Windows. Very successfully - it was cheap as you could buy the system by itself and put it on almost anything. Microsoft was wise and did extremely well with it, while Apple stuck to its guns - Apple systems will work only on Apple devices (for the most part).

Microsoft did it again, using the iPhone as a template for the new Windows' phone. (I'm not saying anything against the device - it looks OK to me.)

I'm sure Apple is flattered. If not, worryingly for Microsoft, bothered at all.

Dare I say, Microsoft has missed the boat on this one. Even a search engine company figured that out long ago.

Microsoft has even built stores like Apple Stores - which is pretty weird: a software company building stores to sell other people's computers because they will have Windows on them. (Well, I think it's weird.)

Now, you might think this is "rather bereft of imagination and mindlessly emulative", as Cult of Mac does - Microsoft Stores have almost always been opened in the same malls as Apple Stores, sometimes directly across from them.

Microsoft now has seven, while Apple, with its head start, has over 300. Apple opened its first Store in 2001, by the way.

You may be interested to read what the LA Times thinks of the Microsoft Stores.

Personally, I don't have a problem with Microsoft. The firm makes great keyboards and mice, it's nice to its developers and Microsoft Exchange is cool. To name a few things.

But it's a company that needs to redefine itself. In an original way.

Even banks are trying to copy Apple - and yes I think this is absurd.

Citibank intends opening a series of branches all across Europe modelled on Apple Stores.

To end on a high note (and no, I don't smoke. Never have): I predict another Apple fuelled boom is about to happen: the iPad is going to revolutionise business, plus ... not publishing, so much, as reading.

You'll be seeing a lot more about that. Will you get with the application?

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com