We're down to the last two-and-a-half days of 2006, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs is 11 days from taking the wraps off a shiny new product line at MacWorld San Francisco. Other former Apple figures might be a few weeks from being indicted. What better time to take stock of the last 12 months and look ahead to what's coming?
None. None more better. Happy New Year, folks, and read on for Cult of Mac's 10 Questions for 2007.
10. Is Apple ready to compete in two new fields (Home Theatre and Mobile Telephony)?
The kids in Cupertino have proven over the last five years that Apple's legendary abilities for interfaces, industrial design and "whole widget" systems integrations make it an ideal player in digital music. The iPod/iTunes cabal is everything that was originally envisioned for the Mac. But while Apple's closed loop for computers meant that the company's masterworks are still minority technologies in the marketplace, the identical model for music translates to total market dominance. Apple is now on the verge of introducing the iTV, the big living room play analysts have been calling for since the mid-1990s. It's to be at the center of home entertainment, from TV shows to music and movies. It might even be a DVR, if rumors are to be believed. At the same time, everyone and his uncle claim that Apple is days away from releasing an Apple-branded cell phone that combines full iPod power with an industry-leading design and feature set. For each of these new markets, the question remains: Will Apple come off the way they did in the PC market in the 1990s or the way they have in the digital media player market for the last five years? If Apple succeeds in both these spaces, they're well on their way to being established as the premier consumer electronics company. If they blow it, expect to see Apple called "beleaguered" by the media so fast your head will spin.
Read the rest of the Top 10 after the jump.
9. Will .Mac survive into 2008?
Ever since Apple rebranded its iTools suite as .Mac and began charging $99 a year for it, the company has rolled up abandoned Mac.com e-mail addresses like so many Lisas in a landfill. Apple begged its customers to answer whether they thought its Internet strategy was good enough to keep using when it went from free to 99 bucks. They answered, and it wasn't in the affirmative. Meanwhile, Google's GMail entered the fray and utterly disrupted the Webmail market with a brilliant, search-based interface and functionally unlimited storage. Apple upped its game late this year, but .Mac is staggering. It's starting to look like the company's MSN, with opportunities to subscribe in every Apple application. Worst of all, Apple has inextricably linked the latest version of iLife to .Mac, meaning that iWeb is severely hampered without a .Mac subscription, firmly taking iLife from the best bundled suite of free apps around to deceptive loss leader for expensive services. iLife's a perfect comparison, actually. It went from zero to $79, and people kept buying it. That hasn't happened here. I think it's time for Apple to gracefully step away from .Mac and rewrite its iLife applications to work with other hosting solutions. Native Flickr support in iPhoto would be a great way to start.
8. Has the switch to Intel been successful from a third party software perspective?
When Apple announced in June 2005 that it would switch to Intel processors in all of its computers, a secondary problem was created: Every application that wasn't already written in XCode would need to be moved to XCode in order to run natively on the new machines. And XCode, though the name has changed, is really Cocoa, the OPENStep-derived frameworks that Microsoft and Adobe refused to move to in the late-'90s during the development of Rhapsody OS. Was Apple going to get their part-time allies to play ball this time? And the vast majority of major commercial PowerPC applications were written in CodeWarrior under Carbon. Would Apple get its part-time allies to play ball this time? Given the recent release of a beta Universal Binary version of Adobe Photoshop, this one's actually on its way to being answered in the affirmative. Microsoft still hasn't announced a release schedule for a Universal version of Office, but that's actually less critical. Running Microsoft Word through Rosetta is typically plenty fast for most people. It will be a tremendous vote of confidence and continued success for Apple when Office for Mac Intel ships, but encouraging graphic design firms to upgrade is critical for Apple's workstation market. With Adobe Creative Suite 3 coming in 2007, Apple should continue to own professional creativity hardware for the future.
7. What should Apple credit for soaring Mac sales?
The last year has been amazing for Apple, both with the iPod and with the Intel Macs. The MacBook was Amazon's number-one selling PC for the holiday season, and Apple is succeeding in the face of competitors with computers that are nearly identical from a pure hardware perspective at lower prices, something many said would be impossible. But how best can Apple build on this year's success? What triggered the boom? Was it the mere shift to Intel chips? The roll-out of Boot Camp in parallel to Parallels bringing virtualization to the Mac? The attachment effect from the iPod that makes people want to get the Mac? The "Get a Mac" ad campaign? iLife and iWork? Incredible exposure for Apple Keynote thanks to Al Gore? We simply don't know. I have a sneaking suspicion that a major contributor to Apple's huge success this year was an artificial dip in demand in late 2005, after the time Apple said they would move all their computers to Intel in 2006. I know lots of Mac users who held out for the MacBook, even though they wanted a new computer much sooner. If Apple's growth in Mac sales doesn't keep up the pace next year, that might be the reason why.
6. What's Apple going to do with its new campus in Cupertino?
Steve Jobs caused a stir in the Bay Area this spring when he just popped up at a Cupertino City Council meeting to announce that Apple would be building a new local, massive campus in addition to its world headquarters at One Infinite Loop. Little has been announced about the project since then, but it clearly points toward Apple's vision for itself going forward. It's a virtual certainty that they aren't just opening a bunch of new buildings so they have more people to work in their existing businesses. Apple has lots of roads open ahead of it, including phones, broader content management and even business consulting services. As Apple's next businesses go, so go the fortunes of their traditional strengths. For Mac users, the company's overall health is critical to our contentedness with our computers. Let's hope Steve has a great new plan.
5. Is Apple comfortable with Mac OS X as the "Big Tent" operating system?
Parallels Desktop has made Mac OS X the number-one operating system to use if you want to run everyone else's operating systems: Ubuntu, XP, Vista, OS/2 Warp, OpenBSD, BeOS, OPENStep 4.0, you name it. With the new Coherence mode, highlighted in the company's most recent betas, it's now possible to run applications from other operating systems without ever showing their host operating systems. It's a disconcerting sight, and it speaks to a major issue Apple must address. Though the cross-compatibility makes Macs attractive to people who would never have let go of their Windows security blankets before, it can also dilute Apple's overall UI. The company could choose to be the Big Tent party of operating systems, providing a safe, crash-proof shell for everyone else's work, but that more than anything else would slow development of native software. This could be disastrous. Apple needs to put a stake in the ground and play up its standards, or embrace all of refugees and truly be the computer for the rest of us. It can't try to be both and neither.
4. Is Apple getting complacent with its industrial design?
The snow-white iBook rolled out in 2001 changed the look and feel of Apple's computers for the long term. Setting aside the candy-coated looks of the original iMac, the blue Power Mac G3 and their successors. Since that time, however, Apple has barely shifted its look. Professional machines are silvery brushed metal, and consumer machines feature a lot of white or black plastic. And that's just the way it is. But this design language is inconsistent. Some of it maps really well. The iPod shuffle looks like the Mac mini crunched down into a tiny form factor. But the high-end iPods look more like the iMac and MacBook than they do the MacBook Pro or Mac Pro. Instead, the iPod nano looks like the pro lines. Moreover, all of it is pretty tired. The only significant changes of form or design features of the 2006 macs was the addition of built-in iSights and, in the case of the MacBook, a new keyboard. Other than that, Apple was treading water. I've said for awhile that Apple was deliberately maintaining continuity to older models with the first Intel macs so they could go bolder with the next generation. One transitional generation and one radical reinvention. If they don't do that, they run the risk of falling behind. For examples of the problems with complacency, look at the recent HP Pavilion laptops – they're completely hot in a non-Apple way. Apple can't sit still when its competitors are making a design play.
3. What more can Apple do with the iPod?
For all the talk of the true video iPod, I'm beginning to wonder if the product will be disappointing. If Apple brings out something that is like a normal iPod but with a bigger screen, will you be satisfied? I don't think I will. The iPod's biggest innovations have been in the form of its physical and software interface. I'm not sure that the touchpanes or touchwheels mooted for the device will be enough. To defend its lead, Apple has to go back to its strengths. For instance, I think the iPod has plenty of room to get lighter and thinner, as the MacBook Pro has done for laptops. It also needs to get friendlier to hold and become central to all home entertainment. Work with TV companies to integrate iPod docks to watch shows easily. Do whatever it takes to build on what people know and and need and innovate from that perspective. It's easy to fall from the top – just ask Sony.
2. What's Apple up to do with Google?
One of the juicier rumors of 2006 was all about what Apple and Google would do together. Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO is on Apple's board, and Mountain View and Cupertino are ridiculously close together. The two companies own customer opinion like no one ever has. What could they do together? I hate to cut this one short, but the answer is everything. Or nothing. Having lived through Taligent, AIM (I like to call it MIA), Pink, Blue and other strategic alliances under Apple, I don't have a lot of faith in their success. Let's keep wishing, though.
1. Can Apple stay successful if Jobs steps down?
What's the secret of Apple's success? Steve to the J-O-B-S! Since his return to Apple in late 1996, the company has been utterly reborn and moved to record size and profitability. But this growth feels surprisingly fragile. It all comes from Steve himself. Tim Cook is rumored to be next in line for the CEO's chair if Steve ever steps down, but the company's overall strategy to keep their recent success going regardless of the iCEO's involvement is unclear. He understands what people really need like few other CEOs to ever live. Working for a company that's all about need-finding myself, I kind of have to defer in awe to his instincts. Efforts to bring others into the Steve-note process have generally been met with lukewarm response, and the stock market ties Apple's fortunes to his health, regardless of how meaningful a metric that is. Apple needs to start demonstrating that they aren't just the wild success of one of the most charismatic gurus in American business history. That can come from Steve, but he needs to do it soon. Apple is clearly capable of succeeding without him, but few in the cognoscenti believe it. While Apple is strong, Steve can start to work towards a more hands-off approach and cultivate a culture of hundreds of gurus instead of the one most believe in at this point. If they do that, Apple will be around until 2184.
Image via Desight.
