The benefits of a controlled ecosystem
This week, Apple released two brand-new products and various significant upgrades to existing products. In releasing the MacBook Air to the world, an almost unbelievably thin notebook, it re-ignited an age-old debate over openness and user-friendly expansion. The MacBook Air is perhaps best described as a really big iPod nano with full computing functionality added. It's a Mac notebook complete with keyboard, screen and Mac OS X Leopard, but it lacks an optical drive, the hard drive (be it HDD or Solid State Disk) is not user-replacable nor is the battery.
You can already hear the tech journalists, pundits and bloggers scream and shout that this product is doomed to fail.
Just like the iPhone and iPod before it, two other disastrous products Apple released to the world that serve distinct purposes and have no user-replaceable batteries or disk drives / flash storage units. But I'd rather not spend too much time explaining the beauty of the MacBook Air when Wil Shipley has defended the Air so well already. Suffice to say, if you think about the intended purpose of the MacBook Air, you'll soon realize that Apple did a fantastic job here.
Then there was the announcement of iTunes Movie Rentals, paired with Apple TV "Take 2" — a version of Apple TV which forgoes the need of a computer (Mac or Windows) running iTunes and hosting your content in primary form. Apple TV is now a fully independent media player for the digital age, driven entirely by a broadband connection, opening up that market at last. Time will tell how much (or little) consumers want this market to exist. Given the ever-increasing shift towards digital everything, we suspect the answer to that question to be "very much."
And then there's Time Capsule.
Wireless Time Machine-driven backups of all your Macs (running Leopard) for every hour of the last day, every day of the last week, and every week for as long as storage permits? Without any configuration needed? I'd love to see Microsoft try that. Or Dell, or HP or Sony.
Integrated, seamless services that greatly add value (or stability or security) to your entire lifestyle without getting in the way or taking up any of your time at all are not just fantastic, they are the way of the future.
The iPod was the first home run by Apple that showed the world that a seamless and tightly-integrated experience is what consumers want. Not all of them perhaps, certainly not every tech geek that just can't stop fiddling with things by hand, but very clearly most of them.
The iPhone took that concept and drove it further, merging all electronics we tend to carry with us every day into one device and integrating it with our computer, giving us all of our most important needs on the go without the need of any instructions to the end user. The user-friendliness of the iPhone is the reason behind its incredible success; no tech product has ever scored higher satisfaction ratings amongst its users.
Time Capsule may not be as sexy a device as the iPhone or as commonly used as an iPod, its function and use will be more constant than either of those products. It will be backing up your data safely and securely every hour while you're at home or at the office, wherever you may have a Time Capsule plugged into the wall, and be there when you need it.
Paired with Apple's .Mac service and Leopard's (.Mac-driven) "Back to my Mac", Time Capsule now offers you access to your data in a very handy backed up way, easily accessible even if you've left your files at home and have only your laptop with you at work. You can go Back to your Mac at home with the click of a button, and if you accidentally deleted something or saved the wrong version last, you can go back in Time on your home Mac to retrieve it, then send it over via Back to your Mac.
But Time Capsule's true shine is in its invisibility to the user: no cables to plug in (beyond power of course, but nothing into your Mac(s)), no configuration needed beyond simply selecting the unit on your Mac to use as the Time Machine backup drive, and everything… just… works.
Apple has moved itself into a fantastic position within the technology industry where it can innovate in ways and at a pace that no other company can. By controlling a large ecosystem of computers and portable devices it can integrate products and services that delight consumers and create increasingly compelling user experiences, all the while extending or improving functionality of some or all of your devices.
If you think that Time Capsule is the extent of the possibilities that are slowly opening up for all-Leopard households or offices, then "you ain't seen nothin' yet!" We're confident that we'll see many more great products that have Leopard at the heart of it all, not just from Apple but also from its third-party developers.
Like Jobs said at the end of his Keynote earlier this week: there's 50 more weeks to go in 2008.
You can already hear the tech journalists, pundits and bloggers scream and shout that this product is doomed to fail.
Just like the iPhone and iPod before it, two other disastrous products Apple released to the world that serve distinct purposes and have no user-replaceable batteries or disk drives / flash storage units. But I'd rather not spend too much time explaining the beauty of the MacBook Air when Wil Shipley has defended the Air so well already. Suffice to say, if you think about the intended purpose of the MacBook Air, you'll soon realize that Apple did a fantastic job here.
Then there was the announcement of iTunes Movie Rentals, paired with Apple TV "Take 2" — a version of Apple TV which forgoes the need of a computer (Mac or Windows) running iTunes and hosting your content in primary form. Apple TV is now a fully independent media player for the digital age, driven entirely by a broadband connection, opening up that market at last. Time will tell how much (or little) consumers want this market to exist. Given the ever-increasing shift towards digital everything, we suspect the answer to that question to be "very much."
And then there's Time Capsule.
Wireless Time Machine-driven backups of all your Macs (running Leopard) for every hour of the last day, every day of the last week, and every week for as long as storage permits? Without any configuration needed? I'd love to see Microsoft try that. Or Dell, or HP or Sony.
Integrated, seamless services that greatly add value (or stability or security) to your entire lifestyle without getting in the way or taking up any of your time at all are not just fantastic, they are the way of the future.
The iPod was the first home run by Apple that showed the world that a seamless and tightly-integrated experience is what consumers want. Not all of them perhaps, certainly not every tech geek that just can't stop fiddling with things by hand, but very clearly most of them.
The iPhone took that concept and drove it further, merging all electronics we tend to carry with us every day into one device and integrating it with our computer, giving us all of our most important needs on the go without the need of any instructions to the end user. The user-friendliness of the iPhone is the reason behind its incredible success; no tech product has ever scored higher satisfaction ratings amongst its users.
Time Capsule may not be as sexy a device as the iPhone or as commonly used as an iPod, its function and use will be more constant than either of those products. It will be backing up your data safely and securely every hour while you're at home or at the office, wherever you may have a Time Capsule plugged into the wall, and be there when you need it.
Paired with Apple's .Mac service and Leopard's (.Mac-driven) "Back to my Mac", Time Capsule now offers you access to your data in a very handy backed up way, easily accessible even if you've left your files at home and have only your laptop with you at work. You can go Back to your Mac at home with the click of a button, and if you accidentally deleted something or saved the wrong version last, you can go back in Time on your home Mac to retrieve it, then send it over via Back to your Mac.
But Time Capsule's true shine is in its invisibility to the user: no cables to plug in (beyond power of course, but nothing into your Mac(s)), no configuration needed beyond simply selecting the unit on your Mac to use as the Time Machine backup drive, and everything… just… works.
Apple has moved itself into a fantastic position within the technology industry where it can innovate in ways and at a pace that no other company can. By controlling a large ecosystem of computers and portable devices it can integrate products and services that delight consumers and create increasingly compelling user experiences, all the while extending or improving functionality of some or all of your devices.
If you think that Time Capsule is the extent of the possibilities that are slowly opening up for all-Leopard households or offices, then "you ain't seen nothin' yet!" We're confident that we'll see many more great products that have Leopard at the heart of it all, not just from Apple but also from its third-party developers.
Like Jobs said at the end of his Keynote earlier this week: there's 50 more weeks to go in 2008.
posted by Aric Winton at
1:17 AM
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