2009 wasn’t a good year for Apple’s computer division, as a company they’ve had so much focus on consumer electronics in the last few years they they dropped the ball, in fact they did this a few years ago really. The culmination to all of this was a terrible year for OS X.
The only thing that saved the computer division of the company was its hardware designers. The latest generation of Apple computer hardware is excellent and has encouraged major high street retailers, who might never have stocked Apple computers before, to begin selling them.
Then came the ultimate hammer blow… Windows 7.
While not the revolutionary step forward that many, including myself, were hoping for, Windows 7 has raised the bar significantly for OS design and implementation. It’s the first version of Windows since 95 that’s been monumentally well received and who’s critics have quickly and quietly been silenced. It is, simply put, a superb piece of software engineering. This goes doubly so when you compare the sheer number of hardware variations it has to run on.
Then there was OS X Snow Leopard. Regardless of what Apple said at the time of it’s launch it was nowhere near as evolutionary a step forward as Windows 7. Most of the major fixes Apple shouted about on their website were minor bug fixes or features that any other OS manufacturer wouldn’t have bothered publicising, such as a better disc eject.
Is this the death knell for Apple computer?
We’ve had OS X now since 2002, it will in the next few days be entering it’s ninth year of use and in that time the annual updates have gone from major functional changes and significant new features to minor tweaks and updates. The main user interface has changed hardly at all. It’s still the same OS that it was when PCs began shipping with Pentium 4 processors.
Let’s compare this with Windows. In 2002 PC users were using Windows XP. While a good operating system that’s still in widespread use today, later releases from Microsoft have shown its shortcomings in all their gory detail. In the last seven years Windows has changed beyond recognition and nobody is going to argue that its not been for the better.
So why am I having a pop at Apple computer? The reason is this. I’ve never forgotten the nightmare that was Internet Explorer 6, a web browser so hideously unsafe, insecure and buggy that has been single-handedly responsible for the vast majority of cyber crime and virus attacks in the last few years. It’s still in use today because it took Microsoft many years to fix it and replace it with a much better and far more secure browser. Are Microsoft responsible for this? Partly, but there are other companies to blame too.
Netscape had a fantastic browser, it was my browser of choice for many years, but they failed to innovate and keep up with Internet Explorer. The Mozilla corporation had what it took to give Microsoft a much needed kick in its complacency but they were too long bringing Firefox to market. By the time they did the damage with IE 6 was done, it was too late to do anything about it, and we’re still felling the pain today.
The computer market is driven by innovation, nothing else. In the hardware arena there’s no shortage of it. We’re only just getting to grips with high definition TV when along comes 3D TV. The pace of innovation in hardware is forging ahead like a bullet train.
Let’s now look at OS X and compare it to Windows 7. Clearly Microsoft have innovated considerably with Windows 7 but they’ve had to, they were competing with themselves. First they had to make the operating system much more secure than Windows XP, then they had to make it faster and easier to use than Vista. They’ve created their own competition.
In this time OS X has pretty much stood still, Apple haven’t bothered competing with Microsoft on the OS front, preferring to fight the battle in the hardware arena instead. This however is a battle they’re also beginning to lose.
So should Apple get out of the computer market in 2010? No, but what they do need to do is drag themselves, kicking and screaming if necessary, out of their complacency and get on with the business of innovating.
OS X users would, I’m sure, like something new and the PC market certainly needs it. With Windows 7 Microsoft no longer has to compete against itself so there’s a real danger that Windows 8 will begin a line of Windows updates where “better disc eject” becomes a new feature.
So for ***’s sake Apple, wake up and do what’s necessary to prevent the stagnation of the computer industry, and all the inevitable security and other nightmares that would come with it, or get out once and for all.
