Davemolloy.net

Recently, I was ensnared one evening by YouTube, and spent far too much of my time watching Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches from every MacWorld Expo I could find.

Now, this might sound like a terrible waste of time, but it was in fact an eye-opening experience as to exactly why Apple is such a strong company despite such a small market share.

Looking back at the announcement of the OSX operating system at MacWorld 2000, it’s a great innovation (the gasp when the public see the dock minimize windows for the first time ever is very amusing). But the real impressive point came from an interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. In his closing comments, here’s what Jobs had to say about Apple:

If you look at the reason why the iPod exists and why Apple’s in that marketplace, it’s because these really great Japanese consumer electronics companies who kind of owned the portable music market for a long time- invented it, and owned it- couldn’t do the appropriate software. Couldn’t conceive of and implement the appropriate software. Because an iPod is really just software. It’s software in the iPod itself, it’s software on the PC and the Mac, and it’s software in the cloud for the store. And it’s in a beautiful box, but it’s software. If you look at what a Mac is, it’s OSX. It’s in a beautiful box, but it’s OSX ... The big secret about Apple- the not so big secret,maybe- is that Apple views itself as a software company.

Now that’s one hell of an interesting point. and it’s probably precisely the opposite of how most people think about Apple, with its proprietary hardware and tight hardware-software integration. Apple’s hardware is massively expensive for its performance: the cost-effectiveness of Apple machines in terms of specifications is pretty poor when compared to generic brand items. But by focusing on their content rather than their delivery method, Apple’s pulled a rabbit out of the hat several times. In relation to the transition from one form to the other, though, Jobs pulled an interesting trick at MacWorld 2005. There, he announced that Apple was quitting the PowerPC processor and moving everything to Intel architecture. After the surprise from the crowd, Jobs announced the big problem: “We need to make OSX sing on Intel,” he said. And then, he proceeded to announce that OSX was actually built and compiled for Intel chips with every version ever made, since 2000: 5 years before the switch. “Just in case,” he said, smiling the modest smile of a man who knows he can afford to be modest because everyone else is impressed. This type of future planning is really indicative of why the Apple share price has gone, from around $9 in 1999 to $115.99 today (with a peak of just under $200 in 2007).

With all the banter about the impending bankruptcy of newspapers, why aren’t more people talking about news organisations rather than news papers? The newspaper, with its oily print and big pages and the wonderful opportunities for beautiful design is just the box. The industry’s all about the software- the news content. I know there’s been a little talk about this, but let’s put it into context by comparing to other industries, like the computer industry that we’re so well acquainted with. In the news industry, we need to solve some problems about content migration, and future-proof everything. We’re far too adherent to our boxes- particularly the print medium, but also the single-publication website. The website is not cutting-edge: it was ten years ago. It’s time to start thinking ahead in the way that the media have failed to do over the past decade, and to make sure that when a new, money-making distribution method arrives, that our content is sufficiently free from the constraints of current methods to take advantage.

After all, it’s all about the software.

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