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FOR MANY YEARS now Apple's inability to keep pace with the raw speed of the x86 architecture has been explained away by its pundits as not important. I myself have made this claim, and I think that if anyone ever really bothered to measure true productivity on both platforms they would find that the two come out about even. For the average user, the Mac probably wins in workflow and x86 wins in speed.
But many argue that what is more important is Apple?s computing experience - analogous to the experience of owning and using a luxury car. In fact, a popular comparison is to BMW automobiles.
It is often pointed out that BMW has less than five per cent of the world auto market, and yet the very stock analysts that slam Apple's miniscule market share drive these cars (or ones with similarly small market shares) every day. BMW prospers despite its small market share because its cars are made for drivers. The very experience of driving is made exponentially more rewarding by virtue of the precision engineering and design passion that goes into every single element of the car. A similar zeal for design and engineering is applied to every Mac, and therefore this makes them better.
In short, the quality of the Mac computing experience makes up for any deficiencies in pure speed. But what happens when you are promised BMW quality and are delivered a product that (from a quality perspective) has more in common with Eastern Europe's most utilitarian stamped steel people movers?
I suppose one of the things you get, is an article like this.
The other by-product is an eroded fan base. As a Mac user who frequents many of the more vigorous discussions of the 'Mac web' I see several trends emerging from the recent spat of quality control issues. Actually, this is in fact less of a spat and more a sustained problem with QA dating back several years and plaguing numerous key product introductions. Coincidentally, the number of Mac faithful seems to get a little smaller every year.
Some of the trends that I have noticed:
First time Mac users, initially wowed by the elegance of OS X are finding out that things are really not that much different on the 'other side.' Fewer viruses? Yes, but also some quality problems that Apple is not always very quick to rectify. Although this particular example has been beaten to death, iBooks are a good example. If large educational orders for these machines were not on the cards, would there have been an Apple iBook logic board warranty extension?
Apple?s reaction to its customer complaints about defective product seems to relate directly to the number of major News sites carrying the story. Recent problems with 15-inch PowerBooks and the aforementioned iBook problems are good examples of this. Given that Apple sells about as many iBook and PowerBooks as it does Desktops, we can say with certainty that a lot of switchers and long time users probably bought Apple portables. Given that the market share numbers keep shrinking, shouldn?t Apple be pulling out all stops to keep its users from migrating? Do surveys that consistently show Apple near the top in user satisfaction compensate for news stories claiming that major product lines are afflicted with problems?
Die-hard Mac users are becoming gun shy of 'Revision A' products. Seasoned Mac users repeat this mantra when a new product is released, 'I will wait for the second revision before buying.' This hurts Apple for obvious reasons. Product launches have less initial sales impact than they might otherwise have. Perhaps the PowerMac G5 is an example of this. Just as professionals that relied on Mac OS9 apps ignored OS X, perhaps they have also ignored the new G5 hardware for risk of having hardware problems. To date the hardware problems on the G5 relating to power and FireWire performance have been annoyances, but they hardly inspire the confidence to bank your livelihood on Apple's latest PowerMac. Especially when that two-year-old G4 is working just fine. One wonders how prolonging an Apple upgrade for these professionals might increase the appeal of a commodity x86-based box.
Despite having beautiful and accessible cases that most PC users would kill for, Macs are still ?closed systems.? For many people, building a fast PC is easier than assembling a Lego kit. Commodity computers and thin margin vendors like Dell have forced many average users to fix their own problems. After Dell has walked you through a hard drive replacement over the phone once or twice, you won?t need any further coaching. Some of Apple?s current designs, and I am thinking iBook and PowerBooks, have internals that are needlessly complex ? inaccessible by design. Apple does not want you replacing your own iBook logic board. They don?t want your local computer repair shop fixing it either. So if you can?t ship your iBook to Apple and be without a computer for a month where does that leave you? There are people who can field dress a G3 PowerBook in 30 minutes, so the decision to lock Apple users out of their computers is a recent one.
As unfashionable as it is these days to think of Apple as a computer maker, the company and its investors had better start getting serious about elevating its computer product quality standards again. Pretty and slow can sell (as any Hollywood agent can tell you) but throw-in a few too many breakdowns and people stop buying.
Someday, iPod technology will be commoditised and companies in China and India will be the only ones making any money off of them. That money will be made by moving insanely great volumes of these iPod-a-likes. The capacity, ease of use, and even cool design will all be copied successfully at some point by people too far away to worry, or even care, what Apple?s lawyers think of the situation. Can Apple become a media company by then and live off of iTMS? Maybe, but I doubt it.
The record companies are busy sharpening their knives, Apple is distracted by a product line that will some day be as sexy as a USB flash drive, and all the while the Mac OS market shrinks. No one at Apple is talking about install base and whether the switchers are growing the base, filling in the vacancies left by the recently departed, or whether it is in free-fall. If Apple is still a computer company, perhaps it had better start sorting out its product line from a quality standard.
Given the (often) interminable wait between Apple product revisions, one would hope there is enough time to get the product sorted out properly. If there isn?t, maybe it is time to reconsider Intel?s offer of using commodity x86 hardware as the basis for future Macs. Let the massive x86 community economies of scale and extensive QA of big component manufacturers work to Apple?s benefit. If the case is still pretty, who cares what is inside the box? Do you buy a Mac for the exotic G5, that for all its strengths will ultimately end up being slower than Intel and AMD?s chips? I can?t speak for other Mac users, but I am in this for the software. Using OS X is a good enough experience to make me tolerate Apple hardware ? not the other way around.
Source:
The INQ!
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