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It wasn't long ago that Apple was outright embarrassing the PC industry with the evolution of the home computer. Overnight, the original Bondi blue iMac made the 1.44 MB floppy disc obsolete. Apple took a couple of emerging communications technologies, USB and Bluetooth, that were languishing on the PC side, and not only made them work but made them mainstream.

Suddenly we could do things we could never do before.

Apple was also very early with the LCD display technology. Admittedly, the very first Apple flat panel LCD's were analog devices*, but they were the best analog-based LCDs money could buy. I remember back in 1999 when I bought a brand new Blue and White G3, it wasn't long after that I also bought a 15-inch Studio Display. The one up on a pedestal. (It still works, by the way, seven years later. It's connected to my MacBook Pro as a second display.)

So, back in 2000, while my friends and colleagues were staring at ViewSonic CRTs, I felt as if I were on the bridge of a starship with the Blue and White G3 and matching LCD display on a beautiful pedestal.

Your Mac Life in 2007

It's true that Apple has made substantial improvements in the PowerBooks and then MacBooks. These computers are a joy to hold and use. But in terms of the overall excitement of using Macintosh hardware, something seems to be missing.

Apple's external LCD displays, which were always the coolest in the industry now cost as much as an equivalent HDTV. The HDMI protocol which might make the displays more useful in many ways is nowhere to be seen. The standard Apple keyboard is so cheap, clearly an afterthought, that I (and may other writers) have been forced to use the Matias Tactile Pro keyboard for its crispness and overall great feel.

Now since I spend a lot of time covering Apple news over at The Mac Observer, I am well aware of the issues surrounding the Blu-ray format, its competition, possible negotiations (or friction) with Sony. But I'm also feeling just a little bit weary of the SuperDrive and its 4.77 GB capacity. Truth be told, I have written about and advised people on the fact that the best way to back up a hard disk is with another hard disk. But there are times when one has to make a stand alone backup on a nice piece of plastic. 50 GB versus 4.77 GB has been a long time coming.

Lest you think I've forgotten, I have absolutely not forgotten Mac OS X. Tiger is simply so much of a joy to use and so much more secure than Vista, it's just no contest. I'm all in favor of Apple's attention to the user first. No smoke filled rooms and hidden agendas mar the beauty of Tiger, and it's only going to get a whole lot better with Leopard.

A lot better.

And yet... I still long for that feeling of opening the box and pulling out hardware of beauty and class that just puts the everyday PC to shame.

Changing Times at Apple

Could it be that when Apple announced at Macworld in January that they're changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. that the message was more than just Apple recognizing its vast expansion into consumer electronics? I note that on Apple's page of executive bios that there is no longer any mention of a Macintosh Hardware division VP of any serious rank. John Rubinstein days are gone.

In addition, when Apple was tied to Motorola and IBM for its CPU fortunes, Apple could afford to be somewhat of a maverick. While certain standards like PCI-Express and USB2 have made their way into Macs, Apple could always afford to be somewhat iconoclastic in its overall PC design and thinking. Nowadays, however, Apple is deeply married to Intel, Intel's long term strategy and CPU design, supporting technologies, and so on. The ability to run Vista on a Mac via virtualization or Boot Camp has probably set some boundaries as well.

Even so, I would like to see Apple reinvigorate the design of the home computer. I'd like to see Apple's Multitouch technology of the iPhone make it's way into Apple displays. I'd like to see Blu-ray storage sooner rather than later. I'd like to see a simpler mechanism for handling all the USB and FireWire cables I have for iPods and cameras. I'd like to see RAID 5 reliability brought into the mainstream via hardware not software. I'd like to see years and years of voice recognition and computer speech brought to a mature, usable level. Yes, it's hard. But that's what Apple is all about.

I passed on upgrading my PowerMac G5 dual processor, 2.0 GHz Mac to a Mac Pro. The Mac Pro, despite incremental enhancements, just wasn't that big a leap, three years after I bought the G5 back in November 2003. I spent my money on a much needed upgrade from an old G4 PowerBook to a MacBook Pro, Core2Duo. Now that was a quantum leap in technology.

I'm longing for another quantum leap on the desktop.

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* Digital on the video card, converted to analog VGA, sent as as analog on the cable, and converted back to digital in the LCD electronics. Current Apple displays have long been 100% digital.

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This is Warp Core column #87. The Warp Core archives are here:

Year 2006

Year 2000

Year 1999

* Your humble author also writes a column for TMO.

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John Martellaro is a senior scientist and author. A former U.S. Air Force officer, he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple Computer. During his five years at Apple, he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager for science and technology, Federal Account Executive, and High Performance Computing Manager. His interests include alpine skiing, SciFi, astronomy, and Perl. John lives in Colorado. He can be contacted via his Website or the Applelinks Contact link.

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