By John Martellaro
Published on: May 10, 1998
Always get the first shot off fast. This gives you time to make the second shot perfect.Lazarus Long
The following essay was published as "Dream to be Different" in Tidbits # 344, 9 Sep 1996. On the eve of WWDC 98, and the morning after the introduction of the iMac, I thought it might be time to republish it for all our new readers. It is a tribute to all those who stayed the course the past two years.
Voltaire said that if there were no God, man would have to invent Him. In a lesser but just as strong and pervasive sense, if there were no Apple Computer, mankind would have to invent it, for we are dreamers, and dreamers look up to the sky, always searching, thinking of what could be.
What most analysts are doing when they analyze Apple is to look down into the murky swells of the business world. Sam Whitmore wrote in PC Week on July 22nd (1996), a very calm and accurate accounting of Apple's problems. An Apple fan couldn't really complain about his thesis for it was even-tempered and to the business point. But the article, as all the articles that suppose to articulate Apple's demise, overlooked something very important. Sam forgot that there are those who have never been afraid to be different or be outcasts. The dreamers, the writers, the artists, the scientists, all those people who look to the future and say "why not?" walk to the beat of a different drummer.
Now, with the further delay of MacOS 8, the most challenging task Apple has ever undertaken, it will be all too tempting, even for the Macintosh supporters, to start throwing rocks at Cinderella.
Do we ask more courage from Apple than we ask from ourselves?
Once upon a time, a man named Jobs, filled with passion and fire depicted the PC users as human lemmings, walking off the cliff of mediocrity. No one liked being compared to a mindless creature, and indeed, Microsoft has made quite a good living by giving business people what they have dearly wanted most for the last ten years: respectability. The line that Windows 95 is "just as good as a Mac" is the anthem of those who, for years, never had the vision or courage to embrace something better. Microsoft's strength is also its weakness.
There will always be those who are sparked by the glimmer of something just a little better, just a little cooler, just a little more inspiring. And there will always be Dilbert Managers who must exert their control by ignoring the advice of their technical people. Here's an example from a computer Weekly in 1991, article titled: "Reaction to 50 MHz 486 is lukewarm." It goes on to quote a woman from Hughes Aircraft,"'many of our users have more power than they need right now [with 386s]'" A manager at Chevron said," 'Right now we could justify the price only as a server.'" To be sure, these people were using DOS, not a powerful GUI-based bit-mapped system that demanded considerable horsepower. (But the Macintosh IIfx at that time was delivering just that.) So where were these people looking? They were looking at their account balances.
Where are Macintosh users looking? Men like Douglas Adams and Arthur C. Clarke? The spirit of Apple Computer is that of excellence and adventure. It embraces the future and everything positive that the minds of men can conceive of. We've often paid a little more, but we paid the money out of our own pockets. Some of us make a living by day with Windows so we can spend our own money on something that captures our imagination in the evening.
Apple lost its way in recent years. Apple forgot about inspiration and wonder. It got caught in price wars, desperately seeking acceptance at any price. Now, Apple's destiny is to be the best. Truly, there may only be 10% of the population that cares about the best. But if Apple gives up that 10%, there are those dreamers and entrepreneurs standing quietly in the wings waiting to take up the cause. We cannot predict what they will do, but the spirit of the dreamers who want something more will always be with us.
More than anything, we want Apple to know that. Truly, the best in us is also in Apple - Courage Under Fire.
Copyright (©) 1998 John Martellaro