“ I ’ve been writing about Apple since it was doomed . ” It ’s a matter I tell multitude sometimes , when I ’m excuse that Apple was waver and its future was in incertitude when I began my career write about technology .
It ’s hard to imagine it now , but back in the nineties almost nobody used the Mac , and that was Apple ’s only merchandise . Being a Mac user was risky . Not hazardous in the sense that cast gangs of PC users were give way to trounce you up and steal your Zip nosedive if they discovered you were using Mac OS 8 , but risky in an emotional means : We were pouring our dear into a product that had every opportunity of die .
After Windows 95 seem , reserve most of the things that made Macs different from PCs , Apple continued to slide downhill . The fright was palpable . Power Computing , a maker of Mac clones ( yes , those were concisely a thing ) , had several ad campaigns with “ struggle back for the Mac ” as the theme . One of the first cover narrative I worked on atMacworldin 1998 was titled “ preserve your Mac , ” and was designed to give Mac user scheme to work with PCs so that their foreman did n’t have an excuse to take away their Macs .
Existential threats
Instead , I shrugged . ( Okay , I ’ll admit that I lifted an supercilium when the hombre in the Surface Book ad start off the top and uses it as a tab , given its dismal battery liveliness as a tablet . But that ’s it , I verify . ) Microsoft ’s test to establish a new product , and it ’s trying everything it can to get multitude to take notice . acquire on Apple ’s products is a practiced way to do that .
The Surface Book , step to the MacBook Pro .
This is where we are today : Microsoft is theunderdog . Apple is the success story . I no longer feel the want to fight Apple from unscrupulous rival who will twist the truth so as to deal the death blow to the company that makes the products I swear on to live on my aliveness . There ’s no death C to be dealt . If Apple end selling merchandise today , it ’s got enough cash in the bank to stay in business fordecades .
Now , if I were an investor in Apple , I ’d be touch for the time to come . Is iPhone growth over ? Can new products and service of process help offset the maturing of the smartphone grocery ? These are honest questions .
But I’mnotan Apple investor . I ’m just someone who uses the company ’s products and wants them to go on . And short of Apple doing something really weird ( like killing the Mac and iPad and becoming iPhone Inc.–which is n’t gon na occur ) , I ’m going to be able to keep using Apple stuff and nonsense for the rest of my lifespan .
Take it easy
I dearly loved the Mac cultivation of the ’ ninety . I was a Mac fan before I ever write about it ; I buy my first Mac ( an SE ) in the bound of 1990 , and read bothMacUserandMacworldmagazines regularly . We were rebels and outlier , even in the already foreigner culture of computer geeks . If we had need to blend in with the crowd , we would have been using PCs like the rest of the world . But we just could n’t .
In hindsight , though , I can see that some of the aspects of being a Mac user during that period of time – most notably the belief that doom could be just around the recess ( because it really , really was ) and the fierce protectiveness it engendered – wouldn’t mix well with Apple ’s eventual achiever .
When the world is against you and the thing you bed are threatened , it makes sensory faculty that you ’ll contend back . But when you ’re riding gamy , safe and well-off , that same sort of attitude can make you seem more like a bully than a Reb .
I think a lot of old - school day Mac users have had to skin with this over the last decade , as Apple has become so powerful that its most notable struggles these days are with the FBI and the White House , not Microsoft or Dell or even Google . Yes , someone is frequently wrong on the Internet , and having a professional debunker on hand to puncture stupid statement about Apple is handy .
But today , there is literallynothingMicrosoft can do to threaten me being a Mac exploiter . Google ’s not snuff it to take my iPhone out of my hands . Amazon ’s not going to wreck my iPad . And Apple ’s going to keep on doing what it ’s doing for a recollective time to come .
Sometimes it ’s worth stepping back and notice this fact . When someone says something nice about Android or encouraging about the Surface Book or even something dumb about Apple ’s business sector , they are not threatening us . Apple is perhaps the most profitable ship’s company ever – it does n’t need our aid defend it from all foe , actual or imagined . We win . permit ’s think of that , and be gracious about it .
