The Candy Man's Gone

It is Thursday, that trifler of weekday-weary emotions. Can't you just taste the weekend coming? Well, it's not here yet! Lure, hook, whack!

This blog started as a tracking of commute music playlists suggested by the random shuffle algorithm of an older 80GB iPod (the scroll-wheel sort that now is called an "iPod Classic"). The man behind the magic of that device passed away yesterday, and the Web is crowded with reaction. I first heard (read) the news via Twitter (Twittilator Pro app purchased through the iTunes App Store) on my iPhone 4. Like the address of the Company he founded, there is a certain infinite loop in that circumstance.

So, like many many others, a reflection on the impact one man has had on my life.

Back in a previous life, when I worked for a large commercial bank, Apple introduced the first Macintosh computer. The bank I worked for decided that it was time to put a desktop computer on every employee's desk and that the Macintosh would be that computer. I was tapped to become a paratrainer for the introduction of desktop computing at the bank. I was loaned one of the first Macintoshes, a large padded carrying case for it, and a cassette tape player with Apple's follow-along-on-the-screen tape introducing how to use a "mouse" (this is how you move it, click, drag, etc.), pull-down menus, windows, and fonts/styles you could actually see on screen before printing. If you weren't there, you probably cannot understand how eye-poppingly revolutionary it was to have a personal computer that displayed documents the same on-screen as they would look coming out of the printer.

I was hooked, and I was spoiled. I had tasted what design elegance and the ideal pairing of form and function could mean (not that every Apple product hit that sweet spot, to be sure), and would have little patience for the poorly implemented knock-off operating systems the soon followed.

Look at the technology landscape today and tell me who, other than Apple, could make a mouse whose surface works just as well as a multi-gesture touch pad? One that really does work as well as advertised?

Critics sometimes complain that Apple didn't invent the mouse, or the MP3 player, or even the desktop computer. They miss the point. Apple took those early innovations and channeled them into a complete user experience product and brought them to market in a way that consumers would gravitate to. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, but it was the most elegant to behold and use, and (most importantly) it came with the iTunes music store. Only then did digital music make sense to the average person.

My first iPod will always have a special significance for me. As anyone who has read this blog can likely guess, music has always held a significant place in my life, and here was the leap to digital music encapsulated in a device that was as satisfying to see and touch as it was to use. The year it came out we were not exactly cash flush, and as much as I wanted one, it just wasn't in the cards. My family, however, felt otherwise. For my birthday that year my wife and kids pooled their resources and saved up to buy me one of those first iPods.

I had already transitioned through vinyl albums, eight-track tapes, cassette tapes, and CDs (in that order), but this shift didn't require as much loss of older media. Now I could easily "rip" my already-purchased CDs and begin to buy digital music moving forward. Suddenly, my entire music library could go with me. For a serious music junky, this was huge.

I think folks, now, easily forget (or, were simply born after) how groundbreaking a shift the first iMac was, how much it changed the way we think about using computers. The notions that the floppy drive was dead, that all home computers should be connected to the Internet, that USB should be standard, and that the computer was the conduit rather than the repository, were all (as so often is the case with Job's visionary products) ahead of the curve. The iMac anticipated the path of human need and interest and in so doing lead us where we were destined to go but hadn't yet realized. Too much credit, you say? Think back to the explosion of translucent plastic and bondi-blue colored gizmos that quickly followed, the seemingly cathartic release of some unrealized demand resulting in a near veneration of "i" everything and translucent plastic everything. Think back to the rapid growth of USB and the increased interest in home Internet access that followed.

Steve was foretelling and preaching the "cloud" with that first iMac. Now, pretty much all of my content is stored or backed up to one cloud or another. When my office computer died several months ago I lost nothing. Not because I had everything backed up, but because all of my files and resources were stored elsewhere. When the new computer came I had only to install the necessary applications and reconnect to my cloud-based files and resources. While I was without an office computer, while the replacement was shipping, I used my personal iPad for almost two weeks to connect to my cloud-based content and never missed a beat.

This makes sense now, but back then, when Steve first stuck a small letter "i" in front of Mac to signify Internet-focused, it was more than revolutionary, it really was visionary. Most pundits focused on the lack of a floppy drive and the lack of upgradability, but the real story was that small letter "i" and where it was taking us. Without the iMac, we may not have gotten to social networking, because ubiquitous home Internet use was not commonly envisioned outside of tech-geek circles.

And Steve has taken us, and the entire technology industry, on a journey into what could (he would no doubt argue, should) be. Apple, under Steve Job's guidance, has never advertised equipment specifications. If you want to shop smart phones based on processor, MHz, pixels, and refresh rates, there are plenty of alternatives out there that will cater to your inner geek. Probably the same demographic that argues passionately about which make/model of car is best based on an extra 10 ponies under the hood, the specific shape of the torque band under full throttle, or the weight of the flywheel. None of which does the average user any good at all in normal usage. Get over it.

Instead, Apple's advertising focuses on what you can do with their products, and how easily you can do them. Apple wrested computing devices from the technical smoke-screen jargon of "experts" and made them commodities any mortal could purchase without first finding a geek friend/family member for advice.

I have, over the years, been fortunate to use or own most of Apple's various products, from the first Mac to the iPad-2. I have a first generation Newton (for the record, the handwriting recognition worked very well for me after the first few days of conditioning). I have an older 80 GB "scroll-wheel" iPod that has driven much of this blog's purpose. I use an iPhone 4 and my iPad every day, and my only office computer is an 11" MacBook Air.

Last night I started jotting down much of what would frame this post. iTunes was shuffling through my music and playing it over a Mac Mini driven entertainment system running the Lion version of OS X. My wife sat working on the classes she teaches, using a two-year old MacBook Pro while I wrote on my iPad from another chair. Both of us sent and received texts from others off and on over the course of the evening, on iPhones. We retired to bed and listened to an audiobook from our iTunes library via a second-generation AppleTV.

Most of my tenure at the college saw a second-class status afforded to Apple products and those who used them. Oh, there were believers within IT, but they were few and official support was often hard to come by. Allowed, but not officially supported, was the policy. There were several attempts to "standardize" on a single platform (read: eliminate Macs), but the numbers behind the justifications never stood the test of scrutiny.

When I stepped into the IT Director's role I know one of the concerns some had was whether my Mac-centric background would mean I would start to push Apple products. I didn't, but then I didn't have to. By then, Apple's products (laptops, the iPod Touch and, later, iPhones) were already drawing users. They became what is known in IT support circles as "invasive" technology trends. A number of Windows users wanted Apple's laptops even though they planned to run the Windows OS on them.

Today, nearly every portable device I see in meetings and events around campus has an Apple logo on it. It is rare to see a different flavor of laptop, and iPads are rapidly spreading across campus (though Windows is still the dominant desktop computer OS on campus).

The rise of iOS is another watershed in computing history. When those of us who have been around since the start of the personal computing era talk about looking forward to the new version of an operating system, we are usually talking about those that run on desktop/laptop computers. When my daughter, in a text exchange last night, mentioned she was looking forward to the new OS, I knew she was talking about iOS. Oh, we use desktop/laptop computers, but mobile computing is where more and more of our digital lived are lived.

Only Steve Jobs had the vision to eat his own lunch and create a new platform and totally separate OS that would cannibalize sales of the company's other offerings. It was a genius move, and the results speak for themselves. Microsoft, by comparison, still cannot bring itself to create a new OS for mobile devices, only a new view of an old OS, still attempting to keep users tied to the old revenue stream metaphors while offering them the new eye-candy.

It was Steve Jobs' ability to understand how technology could be better, and specifically how it could be better for non-geeks users, combined with a perfectionistic drive to deliver that perfect balance between form and function, that made his efforts so successful and his impact on our lives so significant. No wonder the Web is crowded with remembrances and tributes.

For all of this, and though I never met you, I sincerely thank you Steve Jobs.

Today's soundtrack should be:
- Bruce Cockburn: The Candy Man's Gone


- Posted via Hermes.