Let’s rewind to to 2001-2003. Macworld SF, CES, Special Event, WWDC, Macworld NYC/Boston, Macworld Tokyo, Apple Expo Paris, Special Event, Press Release, etc.
That’s how many times we would most likely see Steve Jobs each year back in the day. Most of the times, we’d see a CPU bump, a new keyboard, a new version of iMovie or iTunes (iLife didn’t exist) and hear about Pro apps. There would be entire demonstrations on QuickTime and WebObjects and how XCode was SOOO much better than Metrowerks’ CodeWarrior and that all developers should ship and here’s an Intel PC inside of a G5 body to help get you started on building Intel apps and here is a reason you should write in Cocoa and BTW, we have a new ad for our new iMacs colored “Dalmation” and “Indigo”…
Today, we don’t see much of Steve Jobs or Apple. We might see them in the spring for an iOS event and again at WWDC and maybe twice in the fall for a Mac update and iPod update. Also, rarely do “PC” announcements from Apple warranty any in-depth analysis, teardown from iSuppli or Wall Street Journal taking about 2,000 words to discuss why a quad-core processor in a new iMac is going to “upset the competition” or lead to “antitrust suits”
Nah, we just say, “oh cool, maybe I should upgrade my Mac? Nah, I’m good.”
The result sometimes is me and this blog OWNING the Google PageRank for new computer announcements. I wrote 5 posts about the next generation MacBook Air or iMac i7 versus i5 and I get Google hits like crazy. People still don’t understand computers and here we are moving on. I’m alright with this but I do wish we would care more about computer updates and not iOS updates. I’ve attempted to write this one for a while now but I’d be damned if Marco Arment beat me to it (in some way) with a blog post today:
Apple now seemingly considers most Mac hardware updates boring enough to skip any potential press event and just feature the new models on the Apple website for a while. Event-worthy Mac updates are now limited to entirely new products or major redesigns.
This makes sense: most people don’t care when a new laptop looks the same as its predecessor and has all of the same general benefits and drawbacks, but has a faster CPU. These core-component updates barely warrant a press release, because for normal usage, the difference is barely noticeable.
and
It wouldn’t surprise me if updates to the iPod product line became as un-event-worthy as Mac CPU updates.
But couldn’t this happen to the iPhone and iPad as well?
Not every time, of course. Just like the Macs, what if the iPhone didn’t get massive updates on a regular annual schedule, but only got a significant redesign every few years, with minor mid-cycle updates as needed? Some wouldn’t even be announced at events at all, and others would be quick footnotes during otherwise software-focused events.
Although, Marco is an iOS developer ( a damn good one) and he’s writing from the perspective of an iPhone hardware announcement this year but I wonder if Apple is moving too fast. They’ve done an incredible thing with the iPhone from 2007-2011 and now it’s so mature and they’re releasing iPad updates yearly and doing amazing things with those as well. When is a Macbook too thin and that question applies to the iPad and iPhone as well.
I have to wonder, will we get bored of iPad updates as well? Probably, but the software capabilities are limitless.
I’ve been hoping and praying since Jaguar in 2003 that Mac OS X would get better and better. It has from a “tweaks” point of view and we’ve seen a few new features but I really don’t feel like OS X has changed that much since 2003. The dock and overall interface is largely unchanged. I want HUGE changes like Windows ME to Window 7 kind of changes. I honestly feel like Mac OS X from a UI point of view is FAR BEHIND that of Windows 7 which came out a couple of years ago. Apple hasn’t updated the UI and I’d rather go a year without any hardware updates and apply Marco’s logic of huge changes in the software to OS X. I hope the UI we see now in the Lion preview isn’t the final UI because I’m just tired of quirky perks like Expose and Quick Look and stacks. I want REAL changes and you can’t tell me OS X was perfect from a UI perspective to the point where they can go 10 years without updating the interface at all.
I wish there was more hype for Macintosh updates. I also wish Apple would update the body of their entire lineup. The MacPro, iMac, Macbook Pro and MacBook all have 2-7 year old body designs.The iPhone and iPad can chill out for a bit and sit just like they are. I want Mac updates and software updates and I want Final Cut updates and a refresh to the design of their Airport Extreme and for Apple to release a 30″ Aluminum LED display. These are things that I want…
Will people care? Probably not.