I've had PCs ever since 8086. I've witnessed the evolution of 286, 386 with and without math coprocessors, 486, etc. Only recently I got my hands on a Mac, and I'm impressed.
There are many little things in Mac OS X polished to perfection that we've never had in any of the Windows versions. Little, but important things.
For example, consider the iLife suite. One of its "components" is iPhoto. It's a relatively small app which allows you to organize digital media. Not a revolutionary concept, right? The first time I ran it I thought its developers were out of their mind. "Why would you want to compete with the big names, such as Adobe, who already develop bigger apps of the same kind?"
Just for the heck of it I threw in some pictures from my daughter's birthday, created an "album", tried to lighten 'em up a bit, etc. All of a sudden I loved iPhoto! It doesn't have killer features of complicated image processing apps, and I don't need them.
I also noticed iPhoto could create a slide show, make an image my desktop wallpaper and burn an album on a disc. What I like the most is I can send a picture to Kodak, have it printed and mailed to me. iPhoto is nice enough to point out what size of pictures I can expect without loss of quality given the resolution of each image.
This brings me to my point. This little application is nicely tied with an online business. I see this pattern throughout Mac OS. Its software updates are nicer—no goofy ActiveX controls. Even the Microsoft Office for Mac updates are nicer—no goofy ActiveX controls either.
You launch it, it goes out and checks for updates. No BS about pop up blockers or ActiveX controls. You see this non-intrusive connectivity all over the place. I don't know what powers the Mac update. XML? Web services? FTP on steroids? I don't know, and they don't say it. This got me thinking...
Alice in Wonderland by Microsoft
The good old Alice in Wonderland is full of neat philosophical dialogs. I think it's more entertaining for adults than kids. Microsoft has been getting its messages out in the same funky language.
.NET hasn't received as much acceptance as was anticipated. I blame Microsoft marketing for it. When geeks "get it", they get addicted to .NET. Decision makers have a harder time "getting it". The message about the usefulness of .NET has been too vague and confusing. 90% noise, 10% signal.
Case in point. In spring of 2003 I attended Office 2003 Launch in Manhattan. The crowd was quite large. The first, general session was conducted by Microsoft marketing people. Since Office 2003 received new additions to its "family", e.g. OneNote and InfoPath, I came to the Launch expecting to learn what InfoPath was about and what was in it for me.
However, the speakers did a fine job confusing the hell out of me and rest of us in the audience. I remember only one word from the presentation: XML. They've stressed it enough times. I also remember the word leverage. I would like to know whose idea it was to popularize this dumb word, leverage. They apply it to everything.
At one point they had a developer come up on stage and say, "With InfoPath we can do RPC over HTTP with SOAP." For those of you non-technical suckers in the audience, pull out your Geek-English/English-Geek dictionaries and look up RPC, HTTP and SOAP.
Eventually, I left the morning session with loud noise in my head—I still didn't know what InfoPath was for. And come to think of it: I develop software every day of my life!
No wonder nobody understands what .NET is because, typically, you hear something like this:
Leveraging the ubiquity of XML web services allows us to connect disparate heterogeneous systems with SOAP and WSDL. Building interconnected infrastructure positively impacts the bottom line and streamlines revenue for better ROI. In contrast, homogenous legacy systems do not possess the same level of availability, scalability, extensibility, and they hinder business processes. With .NET you can repurpose such systems and boost collaboration between them.
So What's Up With Mac?
Back to my Mac. I have yet to find the word XML anywhere. They don't throw funky abbreviations and concepts at me. Their stuff just works. It does whatever it needs to make "connectivity" happen.
On the surface the message is clear. It took me 10 minutes to figure out what iLife and .Mac were. I think we're years away from a similar .Windows service because we're always in beta stages with everything—.NET 2.0, Avalon, Indigo, Longhorn. Mac doesn't need Indigo to run its services; neither does it need Avalon to run Exposé. And when you see Fast User Switching in action, no special hardware is required.
It's All Greek To Me
How about a real-life example? Let's compare overviews of Indigo and .Mac. Indigo first (taken straight from Microsoft's web site):
"Indigo" is a set of .NET technologies for building and running connected systems. It is a new breed of communications infrastructure built around the Web services architecture. Advanced Web services support in Indigo provides secure, reliable, and transacted messaging along with interoperability. Indigo's service-oriented programming model is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and simplifies development of connected systems. Indigo unifies a broad array of distributed systems capabilities in a composable and extensible architecture, spanning transports, security systems, messaging patterns, encodings, network topologies and hosting models. Indigo will be an integral capability of Windows "Longhorn" and will also be supported on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Even though you probably understand every word, can you tie it all together at first try? What's in it for you? Do you happen to know how you benefit from "secure, reliable, and transacted messaging along with interoperability" and "a composable and extensible architecture"? For the life of me, I don't.
Now skim through the .Mac FAQ:
The .Mac membership includes a powerful collection of software and services specifically designed for the Mac user. With an annual membership, you can:
Share and access files, photos, movies and more...
Protect your data ...
Synchronize your most important information...
Not a word of hardcore geek talk. Granted, Indigo and .Mac are in different weight categories, but which site gets the message across better? Whose marketing team did a better job?
Apple conveys their message much better. This clarity also reflects in their products. A score for Apple.
Wrap-Up
Our existing developer tools aren't solid enough. They get abandoned in favor of what's cool but not usable yet and won't be until Q3 of 2005. That's the case with ASP.NET, that's the case with Visual Studio.NET and the likes. With these products it's hard to build "connected systems." I'm not even talking about the biggest piece of legacy junk, Internet Explorer.
What sucks is Microsoft has the best minds committed to its future technologies, but certain people just can't explain in plain English what those best minds are up to!
It also sucks that marketing gets the upper hand and can't communicate Microsoft's message. We all know how technically illiterate marketing people are in general, so why not refine the message or move to the passenger seat and let knowledgeable people drive?
I also wish the barrage of betas stopped. It distracts. It confuses. Too much noise, too little signal. How do you expect us to hear anything?
