Apple’s desaturation strategy

June 22, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

In Apple’s colour strategy, Nick Heer provides a brief commentary on The Macalope’s piece, which in turn is a reaction to Mike Murphy’s Apple killed fun.

Now, perhaps Murphy’s piece is guilty of all the faults the Macalope points out — it all boils down to the author cherry-picking examples to fit his narrative — but the Macalope, in his rebuttal, does exactly the same. He points out that Apple still has colourful products: there’s the (PRODUCT)RED iPhone, there are the iPod touch colour options, there are the bands for the Apple Watch. These examples are valid, but weak. 

Yes, (PRODUCT)RED is a colour option, but it’s the only truly colourful option available for one high-end device, the iPhone 8 (okay, the iPhone 7 too, but it’s not available anymore). Yes, the iPod touch is still offered in different colour options; the iPod touch also hasn’t been updated in three years, and its design and colours differ little from the previous generation model, introduced in 2012. Whatever ‘colour strategy’ Apple has regarding the iPod touch, it’s basically the same as six years ago. And six years ago there were definitely more iPod lines (the nano, the shuffle) and more colour offerings in general. 

In 2013 Apple would introduce the iPhone 5c with its bright colours. Its tag line was even: iPhone 5c. For the colourful. Not only that, they also offered a line of equally colourful ‘see-through’ plastic cases, so that you could mix and match to create striking combinations:

IPhone 5c and cases

IPhone 5c mix and match 1

IPhone 5c mix and match 2

And you know, maybe the iPhone 5c hasn’t been the most successful iPhone in history, but that’s because it was essentially a re-cased iPhone 5. People were definitely more interested in the 5s at the time. But the iPhone 5c was definitely marketed as a ‘fun’ device. Five years ago, Apple was still unapologetic about colour. The current iPod touch, if anything, is perhaps the only remnant, the only reminder of that era. 

As for the Apple Watch bands, Mike Murphy already mentioned them as an exception, so the Macalope’s pointing at them as example of ‘Apple is colourful’ is kind of redundant and not a strong rhetorical punch.

Overall, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Murphy’s article is ‘ridiculous’ — saying that “Apple killed fun” is a bit over the top, sure, but it’s undeniable that Apple has been progressively draining colour out of its most prominent products; and I can agree with this bit from Murphy:

Perhaps it’s just because metal looks more premium than plastic does. For whatever reason, Apple looks and acts far more like a luxury brand than a consumer-technology brand in 2018.

Agreed, not an earth-shattering insight, but colour today certainly stays more in the periphery when you look at Apple’s product lines. Apple, now more than ever, wants to push forward this luxury brand image, and there’s this idea that bright colours aren’t a good, tasteful choice when you sell $1,000 phones or expensive laptops. Therefore, the ‘colour’ options have more of a jewellery palette; what else can you do with aluminium? Vivid colours are left aside, for accessories and for the last surviving iPod. The (PRODUCT)RED is an exception, I concede, but again, the context in which it’s offered isn’t to make the iPhone 8 a ‘fun’ product. It’s in the perspective of the ‘premium variant’; it feels ‘Special Edition’.

And I agree with Nick Heer when he says that “Murphy’s passive tone here is his way of shifting the blame towards Apple and away from all of the companies that thoughtlessly copy them”. However, Nick concludes his commentary by saying:

There’s every opportunity for Samsung or Xaomi or Oppo or Google to come along and ship a brightly-coloured lineup of devices with unique shapes and clear differentiation through design, but they don’t. That’s not on Apple; that’s on them — but their lack of doing so also assuredly reflects what most consumers want to buy.

I’m not so sure about those very last words. Consumers come last in the game chain, and the chain seems to go like this:

  1. Apple has definitely been shifting towards more austere hues matching their already austere product designs.
  2. This translates into the (misleading) message that “All that comes in metal and monochromatic shades or in a jewellery palette is tasteful, while bright colours and non-metallic materials are tacky”.
  3. Apple’s competition follows in Apple’s steps. They, too, want their flagship products to feel premium and have premium prices, so they mimic Apple’s austere choices and design cues. (Especially so in the case of emerging companies, which could try playing the whimsical card to stand out, but evidently consider it a very risky move.)
  4. Consumers shrug and buy what they are offered.

When purchasing stuff, colour has always been a way to make the product more yours, a way to express yourself through your colour choices. See clothes, cars, Swatch watches, various accessories like backpacks, bags, headphones, protective cases and sleeves, glasses… you name it. I believe that consumers would certainly like more colour options in the smartphone, tablet, and even computer offerings available today. In the years when Apple shipped more colourful computer and devices, I was doing a lot of tech consulting work, and frequently visited an authorised Apple Reseller shop in Milan managed by some friends of mine. When the iMac G3 was the rage, I never heard people say, I wish Apple just made these in grey, white, and beige instead of those stupid colours. Same for the era of the colourful iPod mini, iPod nano, iPod shuffle. Actually, the major complaint was, I wish Apple made these in even more colours.

The Macalope writes:

People who spend $1,000 or more on an iPhone X are not likely to want a chartreuse option that might be out of style in six months.

But why not? It’s not a matter of being out of style, it’s a matter of personal preferences. There are people who would love a purple iPhone X. And they don’t give a damn whether purple is in style or out of style. It would be their very purple iPhone. If someone approached you and asked you what your favourite colour is, then proceeded to tell you, “Hah, that’s so out of style”, would you really care about their fashion advice? I wouldn’t.

The Macalope:

Apple figured out the best thing to do was make the phone disappear so you could get to doing what you wanted to do, whether it was taking a picture, reading on the web or playing a game.

Really? Because you normally wouldn’t be able to do that with, say, a cobalt blue iPhone? Or a bright yellow iPhone 5c? The Macalope’s article is supposed to be a good rebuttal of what is perceived as a ludicrous contribution (Murphy’s). It feels all a bit underwhelming to me.

Colourful design done right

I think it’s entirely possible to offer well-designed, utterly colourful products that are tasteful and don’t feel cheap. Without going too far, Jonathan Ive’s friend and fellow designer Marc Newsom has a fair amount of colourful designs in his portfolio. But if we want to stick to smartphones, the egregious example is Nokia, of course. 

In this article you can see a few examples of colourful (and successful) Nokia dumbphones, plus some images of more modern smartphones, but let me give you a few more selected examples of how colourful, beautiful, and well-designed was the Lumia line, especially when it came to more premium models:

#alttext#
Nokia Lumia 800

 

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Nokia Lumia 920

 

#alttext#
Nokia Lumia 820

 

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Nokia Lumia 930

 

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Nokia Lumia 735 (Image: YouTube)

 

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Nokia Lumia 1020 (Image: All About Windows Phone)

 

#alttext#
Nokia Lumia 1520

 

I have held many of these phones, and only the very low-end Lumias felt cheap — but then again, they were cheap phones. (And something can be cheap and cheerful and be successful if it nails the design and appeal). Photos tend to be misleading with the more premium Lumia models: when you feel how substantial the 930 (or even the 830) is in the hand, you know you’re holding a solid, well-executed phone, which also happens to come in bright colours and thus adds a playful touch to the experience. The iPhone in this regard — if you’ll allow a bit of anthropomorphism here — takes itself very seriously: I am a luxury device, I epitomise tasteful design, I am a status symbol. If you were in the market for a Nokia Lumia back then, and wanted a more muted option, all Lumias came in black and white too. If you want a more colourful iPhone today, well, go and pick a case. 

Sure, those Lumias ran Windows Phone, and that hasn’t been a very successful platform worldwide (sadly), but that’s not a fault of the hardware design or the presence of bright colours. 

Conclusion

In all this chain of linked articles and opinions, in the end I tend to agree with the general sentiment expressed by Murphy. Has Apple ‘killed’ fun? A bit, yes. In their products. They neutered a bit that fun, whimsical ingredient they carried in their underdog identity as a company. Like Nick Heer, I don’t agree with Murphy when he implies that it’s Apple’s fault if the rest of the industry has followed suit when it comes to offer more austere and boring colour options. But Apple has certainly stopped conveying playfulness through the use of bright colours, non-metallic materials or less ‘safe’ hardware design choices. Whatever playfulness Apple is transmitting today, it’s mostly through software (Animoji, Memoji, etc.) and some keynote demos. 

Lastly, according to the Macalope Apple has “made fun cheaper” by shifting it to their accessories. Hardly so. Genuine Apple Watch bands are not cheap. iPhone silicon and leather cases are not cheap. iPad cases are not cheap. Beats headphones are not cheap. Not even the 32 GB iPod touch is cheap at $199 (or more, outside the US — it’s €233 in my country), and today it’s probably more worthwhile to buy a 32 GB iPhone SE at $349.

For those who like to jump to conclusions: I’m not really criticising Apple, here, nor am I being negative ‘yet again’. I’m just sharing observations. This is entirely a matter of personal tastes. Apple has made certain design choices in the materials and colour palette of their products, and I respect that. Some choices I like, some less so. I love the matte black and jet black iPhone 7 variants. Or the red iPhone 8. At the same time I definitely miss a more colourful, more playful Apple, but that’s me. 

What I think Apple has really ‘killed’, in recent times, is the idea of offering truly affordable products that feel robust, well made, and fun. It’s the point I was making a couple of months ago in Apple needs polycarbonate again:

Make the MacBook the most affordable line again, even visually, with this hypothetical new ‘polycarbonate MacBook’; make it in different colours (but bright and vivid ones, like the iMac G3, the first iBooks, the iPod nanos, not the usual and boring space grey, silver and gold); make it reasonably thin (but thicker than the MacBook Pros) and give it at least a USB‑A port; cut costs by using a non-retina display, but perhaps something a bit better than the display in the current MacBook Air; and finally, give it a great battery life, something similar — or even better — than the MacBook Air.

I miss such a MacBook in the current Apple product lines. Even a redesigned, smaller Mac mini could be offered in bright colour variants and durable materials without necessarily feeling like a subpar product. 

So yes, if I have to really criticise Apple for something, it’s for ‘killing’ affordability more than fun, for making everything in shades of premium. Fun has been collateral damage.

Slightly misleading

June 16, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

In his last Monday Note, iOS – macOS: What No Actually Means, Jean-Louis Gassée proposes his perspective on Marzipan:

Having closed one door [“And the fact that the Mac and iOS share so much technology has led people almost every year to keep asking us the question: are you merging iOS and Mac OS? So I’d like to take a moment to briefly address this question. No. Of course not.”], Federighi hastened to open a new one. Instead of an OS chimera, Apple’s software chief announced a bridge between the two related but incompatible software worlds. As it turns out, last year’s Marzipan project rumors, which predicated exactly this state of affairs, were accurate.

In simplified but relevant terms, a foundation of iOS apps, called UIKit, will also appear on macOS.

As a result, in 2019, iOS apps will also run on our Macs. By some measure, there are approximately 2.1M iOS apps in Apple’s App Store. By contrast, macOS apps number in the low thousands — a slightly misleading measure since some Mac apps are available independent of the regulated App Store. But with that caveat, iOS apps certainly outnumber macOS apps by at least an order of magnitude — a ratio that parallels the macOS vs iOS revenue and unit numbers. 

I have much respect for Mr Gassée, and I always read his observations with great interest, but there are a couple of things about this quoted passage above that do not convince me.

Firstly, yes, numbers are misleading, but not in the way Gassée notes. Those 2.1 million iOS apps really sound like a huge number compared to what’s available for the Mac, but please, let’s avoid using gross numbers as a measure for a platform’s ‘quality of life’. Sure, iOS attracts a lot of developers, and it’s certainly a lively, healthy platform, but:

  1. If we isolate the truly useful, well-designed, competently-written iOS apps, I dare argue that of those initial 2.1 million, we end up with a number which realistically is more in the thousands. Maybe even in the low thousands if we restrict the sample to western markets. Of course, we could apply the same logic to Mac apps. There are terrible ones in the Mac App Store. But from what I observed in all these years in the two different App stores, there are many more terrible iOS apps than Mac apps. So let’s say that the truly useful, well-designed, competently-written Mac apps are in the hundreds. This nevertheless significantly reduces the gap between the two platforms, in my opinion.

    If you think I’m off the mark, carry out a simple experiment. If you both use Mac OS and iOS, think about how many apps you really use on a regular basis on your devices. No, not how many you have installed and/or tried out. How many you use regularly. How many you depend on. I have seen a lot of homescreens these past months. Assuming that people keep the most frequently used apps outside folders (they can be reached more quickly this way), then I’d say that on average the most used iOS apps amount to little more than one springboard screen, maybe one and a half. That’s about 35 apps. Which is more or less the amount of apps you’d use on a Mac on a regular basis (again, I’m assuming a prosumer user here). On this vintage PowerBook G4 I’m writing on, I have 29 apps in the Dock, and if they’re there, it means that they’re frequently used. There are at least 10–12 more I resort to occasionally.

  2. Another thing to take into account is the different nature of iOS devices (especially iPhones), and Mac OS computers. This contributes to the difference in number of available apps. There are a lot of single-purpose apps made for iOS, because the kind of simplicity of iOS, and the way we use our iPhones, call for this kind of apps. While on a Mac I may access a website and its services via a browser, on iOS you often have separate apps for that (iMDB, Yelp, eBay, The Guardian, The New York Times, Flickr… you get the idea). Then, on iOS we have entire categories of apps — like photo-taking apps and weather apps — whose sheer variety makes less sense on a Mac; or no sense at all, since you really don’t use a Mac to take photos. The same can be said for all those apps which, on iOS, take advantage of touch as its core input method: apps for drawing, painting, taking handwritten notes. On the Mac, it’s easier to find feature-rich image editors whose overall functionality encompasses many different iOS apps.

I think you’re getting my point by now: we can’t simply say that the Mac app world is “relatively anemic” just because there are fewer apps available, when a lot of iOS apps exist simply because they make sense on iOS in a way they wouldn’t on a Mac. Talking about strength in numbers, here, is slightly misleading.

And this brings me to another point. Gassée writes:

The iOS-macOS UIKit bridge will pump new blood into the (relatively) anemic Mac app world. The arrangement will benefit everyone: iOS developers will find new customers on the Mac, customers who pay multiples of $10 vs single digits for iOS apps; Mac users will be given a wider choice of apps; and Apple gets a livelier macOS store.

Bear in mind that Mac customers tend to pay “multiples of $10” when they get an app that’s worth that price in features, usefulness, dependability, design. If you’ve been developing exclusively for iOS, don’t think you can just port to the Mac your cool little single-purpose iOS app and expect to charge $15 for it versus the $2.99 of its iOS counterpart. Mac apps tend to favour a rich set of features and a different level of complexity compared with iOS apps. This doesn’t mean that there’s no space for single-purpose apps on the Mac. This means that Macs have a user interface that’s been historically unafraid of complexity and layers of functionality and interaction, and in this perspective single-purpose apps are considered accessories, ancillary apps. Often they take the form of unobtrusive utilities that live in the menubar, as opposed to full-featured apps taking up most of the interface, and with their icon in the Dock. In short, Mac users (especially non-casual Mac users) have a different set of expectations.

As for the “wider choice of apps”, while it certainly isn’t a bad thing, I wholeheartedly hope that this new bridge between iOS and Mac OS won’t bring a deluge of apps that are low-quality, poorly executed, and designed with the wrong platform in mind. I hope the Mac App Store won’t inherit all the bad practices we’ve seen happen in the iOS App Store: the nasty predominance of the freemium model, silly games that nickel-and-dime users through In-App purchases, and the terrible, unsustainable race to the bottom when it comes to app prices. I’d rather have a “relatively anemic” app store — but with quality apps in the $25–50 range — than a “livelier” one but with the added crap we’ve seen on iOS so far. 

Apple could have rekindled the interest in Mac app development in so many ways, instead they chose this path — using iOS as bait, shortcut, and model — which feels the least Mac-like to me, if you know what I mean. And they led by example: I’m not referring to the News, Stocks, Home, and Voice Memos apps showcased at the WWDC. I’m talking about what they did three years ago: taking away two good Mac apps, iPhoto and Aperture, to serve that wishy-washy hybrid that is Photos.

Just before the WWDC

June 4, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

iOS apps on Macs?

Brent Simmons writes:

I’ve heard more than once that at WWDC we’ll learn about how we can run iOS apps on Macs.

I’m worried, of course, that this will lead to the further degradation of the Mac UI, and even less incentive for developers to write Mac apps.

I’m [against] it. But, also, I don’t know if it’s true and I don’t know any details — so maybe it would be awesome? We’ll see.

Nick Heer responds:

I completely understand where Simmons and others with similar skepticism are coming from, but I think the other side of this coin is more interesting and positive. What if easier cross-platform development is less about bringing iOS apps to the Mac, and more about making it easier for developers to bring Mac-grade apps to iOS?

I don’t know, but either way wouldn’t be great for the Mac. 

The first attempt at bringing some of iOS ‘back to the Mac’ happened with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, and UI-wise we saw the debut of a few hideous things. 

  • Launchpad.
  • iOS-style autocorrection: your mileage may vary, but I remember having to disable it on day one because it was constantly in the way.
  • “Scrolling is reversed by default, to act more like a touch screen computer, so that content moves in the direction of finger movement on touch-pad or mouse (with the scrollbar moving in the opposite direction), rather than the scrollbar moving in the direction of finger movement (with the content moving in the opposite direction). Also, like in iOS, scrolling ‘bounces’ when the scroll bar hits the top or bottom of the window” [Source: Wikipedia]. Thankfully there is still a preference setting in both the Mouse and Trackpad panes to keep the scrolling direction as it always was before.
  • Also, like in iOS, the scroll bar is hidden when there’s no interaction with the content, which is annoying.

Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion introduced other things borrowed from iOS. Most notably:

  • Notification Centre: I’m mostly neutral about it. I don’t find it to be an essential addition, but at least it remains out of my way most of the time.
  • The Notes app as a standalone application.
  • The Reminders app, separate from Calendar. I don’t find this separation particularly necessary, more like a way to mirror things further between Mac OS and iOS.

Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks didn’t introduce anything from iOS that was particularly disruptive. Its Wikipedia page notes that “Some skeuomorphs, such as the leather texture in Calendar, the legal pad theme of Notes, and the book-like appearance of Contacts, have been removed from the UI.” Mavericks was introduced along with iOS 7, and here began the flattening treatment of corresponding Mac apps.

The system-wide flattening of the UI design arrived in full with Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. I actually found the flat UI redesign more interesting on the Mac rather than on iOS, but the decision to drop Lucida Grande as system font in favour of the thin Helvetica Neue was terrible (and I explained how I felt about it when it was just a rumour, before WWDC 2014).

Also, in Yosemite:

  • Notification Centre gets even more similar to iOS’s, functionally, with the added Today’s View and widgets, like in iOS 8.
  • Photos (introduced with OS X 10.10.3) replaces iPhoto and Aperture, and it’s the most glaring example of the ill effects of the process of iOS-inspired simplification of Mac OS.
  • From Wikipedia: “The green ‘zoom’ button on windows now has a different function in applications that support full screen mode. Instead of simply enlarging the window, the button now enters full screen mode, eliminating the full screen button at the top right corner of windows that has been present since Mac OS X Lion. However, holding the Option key (⌥) while clicking the zoom button or double-clicking on the window chrome continues to invoke the original behavior.” I remember finding this change unnecessary and confusing at the time. Now I’ve grown accustomed to it, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good interface decision.
  • Spotlight receives its iOS-isation too. You might like it, you might not. My impression is that it’s once again a matter of looks before function. UI-wise, I’m still of the idea that the best Spotlight interface in the history of OS X is the first one, introduced with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. (I discuss this at length in The first Spotlight interface is still the best).

In OS X 10.11 El Capitan, we find:

  • From Wikipedia: “OS X El Capitan introduces new window management features such as creating a full-screen split view by pressing the green button on left upper corner of the window or Control+Cmd+F keyboard shortcut, then snapping any supported other window to that full screen application.” I think this feature (introduced in iOS 9) makes more sense on iPads — if you’re using two apps and making a lot of back-and-forth between them, with Split Screen on iOS you don’t have to jump from an app to the other all the time, and deal with each one sequentially; you can view them side by side. On the Mac, multitasking is more versatile; screens are usually bigger; apps don’t take the whole screen by default, so you can easily arrange two or more application windows however you see fit and however you need. I guess the Split Screen feature on Mac OS X may have some sense on Macs with smaller displays, such as the 12-inch retina MacBook or the 11-inch MacBook Air.
  • Again, from Wikipedia: “OS X El Capitan adds multi-touch gestures to applications like Mail and Messages that allow a user to delete or mark emails or conversations by swiping a finger on a multi-touch device, such as a trackpad.” I wish there were a way to disable this, as I still happen to delete messages accidentally when I use my MacBook Pro on the go. When it’s in desktop configuration I use the Magic Mouse, and swiping on it does nothing, thankfully. (Come to think of it, this is also an inconsistency; those who like using the trackpad gesture to delete messages in Mail cannot enjoy the same touch feature when using the Magic Mouse. But I’m digressing.)

With Mac OS 10.12 Sierra, the most notable iOS feature introduced on the Mac is Siri. My current Mac doesn’t go past El Capitan, so I don’t know firsthand how Siri behaves on the Mac, but I have no reason to believe it performs better than on iOS. In other words, I don’t know how really useful Siri is on the Mac. I had a few thoughts on Siri on the Mac back in 2016, when it was still a rumour. Have a look at that article for a couple of examples of the ways a digital assistant on the Mac could be actually useful to me. It all revolves around the usual core problem — reliability + consistency. As long as Siri’s responses continue to be hit-or-miss, Siri’s usefulness will always be compromised.

Now, zooming out and looking at everything that has been brought to Mac OS from iOS over the last seven major releases of OS X, the really useful features are perhaps those behind the scenes, features that improve the integration between the two platforms. 

With regard to the user interface, I find that iOS has acted as a distraction and an interference in the evolution of Mac OS X’s UI. While I understand the intention behind the ‘back to the Mac’ concept of 2010, what I’ve seen happening on Mac OS X from then on has been a constant import of features and ideas first originated in, or conceived for, iOS; some useful, some less so; but in such a way as to suggest that Mac OS can’t basically go anywhere without its iOS crutch. I’m tired of seeing this sort of codependency. I want to see Mac OS brought to a new level of power and flexibility, outside iOS’s growing shadow. I want to see an operating system that can truly make the Mac’s powerful hardware shine. Not dumbed-down systems that have to behave more like iOS because apparently the Mac is not user-friendly anymore on its own and needs iOS’s friendliness to be perfectly usable and absolutely idiot-proof. 

And I’m getting carried away once again.

So, if it’s true that soon it will be possible to run iOS apps on Macs, will that make the Mac OS stronger and more versatile, or possibly weaker than before, a sort of final cop-out from a company that seems basically out of ideas on how to evolve Mac OS and create new paths and directions for it?

Again, perhaps the ability of running iOS apps on a Mac is a way to further facilitate iOS development. As I wrote in Speculation and dread for the next transition:

Imagine being able to develop and test an iOS app running natively on a Mac instead of inside a simulator. Or imagine playing that iOS game on the Mac directly, taking advantage of the more powerful Mac hardware. Or the benefits of the Mac/iOS integration, where the Mac can run iOS widgets and little utilities as extensions that, for example, can directly interface with another iOS mobile device. If this were 2011, the narrative would probably be, Here’s what iOS can do for the Mac.

This wouldn’t be a total loss for the Mac, but it would certainly reinforce the impression that the Mac is kind of lost without iOS.

In that article, I continued by adding:

But it’s 2018, and seeing where things are going, I worry that the narrative is going to turn out as this: Here’s what iOS will do to the Mac. Because I have the distinct feeling that if iOS is allowed to run on Macs, it will be the end for Mac OS. Maybe not entirely, maybe not overnight, but who’s going to develop Mac OS apps when one can develop a iOS universal app that can work on iPhones, iPads, and Macs? Sure, the Mac version will have to adapt to the non-touch, keyboard + mouse (or trackpad) user interface and interaction, but perhaps it will be less of a headache than having a separate SuperGroovy Text Editor for iOS and SuperGroovy Text Editor for Mac OS.

In this perspective, I find difficult to be as quietly optimistic as Nick Heer. While I desperately hope he’s right, looking at how Apple has been prioritising iOS over Mac OS in the past few years, my gut reaction is more similar to Brent Simmons’.

WWDC 2018 wishlist

The WWDC will start in less than a day at this point, and I have no wishlist to share. I used to get excited before this kind of Apple event; now I’m just trepidatious. Once I used to look forward to the next thing Apple would introduce, I used to wonder What are they going to show us? Now I anxiously wonder, What are they going to break this time? The list of things I wish Apple would fix is getting longer and I won’t bore you once again with my complaints, so I’ll condense everything into a single wish — I would like for Apple to reassure me as a long-time user and customer. Reassure me that they have a plan, that they have the most important things under control, that they’re not like one of those motorised toy cars that keep crashing against obstacles at maximum speed, then change direction randomly until they hit the next obstacle, and so forth.

Apple is eroding the trust of a lot of long-time Mac users, with decreasing software quality, decreasing hardware reliability, and in the way the company is treating customers when (not) addressing such issues. I’ve been reading a lot of articles and blog posts, and watching a good amount of tech-oriented YouTube videos, and I’ve never witnessed this degree of widespread disappointment. Not even in 1995–1997 — the only time when Apple was really doomed (because of poor management, no less). What I wish from this WWDC 2018 is to catch a signal, a clue, however small, that Apple has been truly listening and is willing to course-correct for the better.

Follow-up: The iPad 1 as daily driver

May 21, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

IPad 1 + Logitech keyboard

The experiment is over. Now the actual, everyday use has begun.

As I’m sure you remember, one month ago I received a very nice gift from David: a first-generation iPad. After ten days spent customising it, downloading old versions of apps I had already purchased to see which still worked, and even looking for new ones that had been on the App Store long enough to have an old version still running under iOS 5, I wrote an extended overview and report about my experience.

If you don’t want to read it in full — though I suggest you take a gander at least at the screenshots and at the section titled Interface considerations — the gist of it is more or less this paragraph towards the conclusion:

In short — this iPad 1 has turned out to be more useful than anticipated, also thanks to the careful app setup I’ve assembled. On a personal level, the fact that I can go back and enjoy certain apps I had been missing (such as Posts, the WordPress client) makes the iPad 1 possibly more useful than my iPad 3 in certain areas.

When I say I love to put older devices to good use, I mean it. It typically isn’t the kind of short-lived experiment of other ‘throwback reviews’ or ‘retro reviews’ we’ve all happened to read or watch on YouTube. When I do a similar experiment — especially if I have the luck of getting a device that fascinates me for some reason — I tend to spend more time with the device, trying to make it work at its best, putting it through its paces to evaluate its behaviour under regular, daily usage (which I find a better indicator of a device’s usefulness than its pure performance measured in benchmark scores). 

And again, I’ve been definitely impressed by the iPad 1’s overall performance — or rather, usefulness — as I brought it with me out and about these past weeks. My early findings have been repeatedly confirmed when using the iPad 1 as my daily driver. It is indeed more responsive than my third-generation iPad with iOS 9.3.5. Animations, transitions, going in and out of apps, even the banal orientation change from portrait to landscape and vice-versa was smoother than on the iPad 3. When typing inside an app with either the virtual keyboard or the external keyboard, I didn’t generally notice any significant lag. There was lag, here and there, mind you, but it was nothing compared to the frequency and the degree of annoyance it has been happening on the iPad 3 under iOS 9, and as iOS apps have become more optimised for faster devices.

When I started using the iPad 1 after it arrived, I assumed that I would be disappointed by four main factors:

  1. CPU — I don’t own many faster iOS devices to make a comparison. The fastest for now is my iPhone 5, with a dual-core A6 chip at 1.3 GHz. The iPad 1 has a single-core A4 at 1 GHz, two generations older. I thought: It’s going to be slow.
  2. Memory — The iPad 1 has only 256 MB of RAM. I thought that it would cause the iPad to choke often, with apps shutting down, and with a laughable multitasking experience.
  3. Non-retina display — I remember wanting an iPad since the day it was introduced, but patiently waiting two generations before getting one because I wanted a retina display. The iPhone 4 made such a positive impact on my eyesight when I upgraded from an iPhone 3G, that I honestly didn’t want anything to do with non-retina displays from that moment on, as far as iOS devices were concerned.
  4. Another non-trivial thing was the software. Eight years and six iOS releases have passed since what an iPad 1 can offer. I was pretty sure the software landscape would be a graveyard.

As I said in my original article, after a few days of use I was rather astonished to realise that those fears were unfounded. CPU performance has been great so far. The iPad 1 has handled every task I’ve thrown at it. Only in a couple of situations I’ve noticed I was pushing a bit, but the iPad 1 handled difficulty more gracefully than my more recent iPad 3, whose favourite sport in similar circumstances is self-rebooting. Same with the RAM. Sure, when switching from an app to another and back, apps have to reload content basically all the time; but, as I explained previously:

[G]iven the small amount of RAM, when switching from an app to another the iPad 1 had to reload more content than the iPad 2 and iPad 3, but somehow it was also faster at doing so; while my iPad 3 was quicker at presenting me an app’s state when returning to it, I also had to wait a bit before the app was actually ready to accept taps and interactions. This creates a frustratingly stuttering pace when multitasking. On the iPad 1, such transition felt more organic and homogeneous, for lack of a better term.

Again, I expected to be more bothered by the non-retina display, but as I said in my previous piece, this too ended up being a non-issue. And I’m quite sure the æsthetics of the pre-iOS 7 user interface help a lot in making the low-density 1024×768 iPad 1 display feel more tolerable. iOS 5’s UI elements and typography are clearly optimised for non-retina displays, while anything past iOS 7 on the iPad 2 with the same display clearly isn’t.

As for software, well, you can take a look at the extensive list I’ve assembled in my other article. It definitely helps having started early in the iOS ecosystem, because you may be able to install certain apps that have been later removed from the App Store and that now only live in your iTunes library (I’m on iTunes 12.6.3, so I can still use it to manage iOS apps, of course). Another trick I’ve discovered recently is this:

If you are attempting to download the app for the first time, the App Store will not offer the download of an older version. You must already own the app for the older version to be offered (see [below] for iOS devices if you don’t). 

NOTE: The following will only work in iTunes versions prior to 12.7, as later versions do not have an iOS App Store section. To check your version, go to File > About iTunes (Windows) or iTunes > About iTunes (Mac).

If you do not already own the app, one workaround is to purchase/download the app from the iTunes Store on a Mac or PC using the same Apple ID you are using on your iOS device. The app will then be associated with your account and you should then be offered an older version if you attempt to download the app again on the iOS device. Do not try to install the copy downloaded in iTunes, as it is the newer, incompatible version. That step is only necessary to attain ownership of the app. You will need to access the App Store on your iOS device to be offered a compatible version.

[Source]

And if you can’t use iTunes on your computer, an alternative is to purchase/download the app on a more recent iOS device first, then go to the App Store app on the older device, enter the Purchased section, and install the app from there. If all goes well, you should be offered to install an older version.

Assembling a good and extensive-enough set of apps on my iPad 1 took some time and a bit of patience, required by the trial-and-error process, but the end result was not disappointing. Naturally, you have to expect a certain lack of variety in some departments (for example, I searched in vain for a third-party email client that could work under iOS 5, but Apple’s Mail works well after all), but at the moment my iPad 1 has a total of 77 third-party working apps installed, and it’s still a surprisingly capable tool for several tasks. Browsing the Web, managing email, editing photos, exchanging documents (thankfully Dropbox, Box, CloudApp, and Simplenote’s sync services still work — iCloud too, of course), viewing and editing PDFs, listening to music in Spotify, listening to podcasts and Internet radio stations, watching videos, checking the weather, writing (including publishing blog posts directly), drawing and painting, taking handwritten notes, managing calendars and to-do lists, reading my RSS feeds and the news, using the iPad as a remote trackpad/keyboard (so glad I still had an older version of Edovia’s TouchPad) or to connect via SSH to another computer or server, playing some casual games, making music (and using it in combination with the iPad 3 has been quite fun — with Propellerhead’s Figure open on one iPad, and GarageBand on the other)… 

My iPad 3 has still the advantage of the retina display, and the selection of working/available apps is much wider. If I want to edit and retouch photos, on the iPad 3 I have an entire screen of apps to choose from (and more). But as crazy as it may sound, I’m finding the iPad 1 more appealing simply because iOS 5 runs better on it than iOS 9 does on the iPad 3. I know I said it a few times already, but it’s really the case where you can see how a well-designed operating system software can make the hardware shine — and this is iOS 5 on the iPad 1 — or can make the hardware show its limits and age at every turn — and this is iOS 9 on the iPad 2 and iPad 3. I noticed this in the responsiveness and memory departments, especially. Using apps under iOS 5 on the iPad 1 I often thought, Wow, it’s amazing how well it’s handling everything considering the iPad has only 256 MB of RAM. While lately, using apps under iOS 9 on the iPad 3, I often feel as if the 1 GB of onboard RAM is never enough.

Full disclosure: some apps on the iPad 1 did seem to use all the RAM they could, and when switching to other apps, I noticed a brief moment when the iPad was getting its bearings, so to speak; but the occasional procedure to free up RAM (press and hold the power button until the Slide to Power Off screen appears, then press and hold the Home button until such screen is dismissed) seemed to work its magic. And again, emphasis on ‘occasional’.

An aside on planned obsolescence

When you’re trying to use an older device today, especially one whose app ecosystem updates at a breakneck pace like iOS, you soon realise that in certain cases it’s not the hardware what really makes the device obsolete, but the software. In Ten days with the first-generation iPad, I wrote:

This iPad 1 is definitely slower and can’t keep up where processor-intensive operations are required, no doubt, but the biggest blow to its usefulness today comes more from the dropped software and services support.

Now, I can understand dropping support of older hardware or older OS versions when there are objective, technical reasons to do so. A service may need higher system requirements to keep running securely and protect your data in transit, for example. An app may have been updated to provide new functionalities that only a better processor or graphics chip can handle. You get the idea. What I don’t understand is making an app cease to function from one day to another for no real reason. The device is clearly capable of running that app; then one day the developer or the service provider decide to make the app stop working with just a vague message along the lines of, You’re using an older version of the app. You need to upgrade. Why, exactly?

I’m looking at you, YouTube, eBay, and iMDB. These have all one thing in common: they are essentially containers. They fetch the same content you can access through their websites using a browser. The advantage is that the native app usually offers a more comfortable experience where everything is at your fingertips and you can perform searches and other actions more quickly and efficiently. I’m not aware of recent major changes in how these providers deliver their content, and yet this is what’s happening and my related observations: 

  • The eBay app has stopped working under iOS 7 and earlier. When you launch it, a modal dialog appears that says: Update required. This version has expired. Please update your app now. The only choices are Exit and Update. If you tap Update, you’re directed to the App Store, but you can’t update, of course, because you’re running the last compatible version of the app on your iOS 7 or iOS 6 (or earlier) device.
  • The iMDB app doesn’t work anymore under iOS 6 and earlier. When you launch it, you only see a skeleton of the various sections, but no content at all. When you try to search something, a dialog appears: Network Error. We couldn’t connect to iMDB right now. Please try again. The only choices are OK and Retry. Retrying, of course, does nothing. I know what you’re thinking because that’s what I thought at first — iMDB has changed something in the connection between app and service. Maybe there are different internal servers, and older versions of the app simply can’t know how to find them and just ping the old addresses. But then why does the iMDB app still work under iOS 7? Sure, iOS 7 is running a newer version of the app, but the point is: the iMDB app has been running fine on both iOS 6 and 7 until sometime recently. Then it stopped working under iOS 6 and there hasn’t been an update released for iOS 7 to make the app keep working.
  • The YouTube official client was working fine under iOS 5 until a few days ago. Then, overnight, stopped working. Again, one wonders why an app that’s still perfectly capable of playing videos suddenly cannot play them anymore. When I vented my frustration on Twitter, Angelo came to my aid suggesting a smart little hack you can perform to make the app work again. It basically involves spoofing the app version number from 1.3.x to something greater than or equal to 9.x.x. It would appear that the app version number is checked at launch, and if it’s too old, then the app doesn’t work. And in fact, as soon as I was done with the hack, the app got back to working exactly like before.

My suspicion is that there’s a similar app version check involved with eBay and iMDB as well. That older versions of an app are simply considered obsolete and are made to stop working, even without a real technical reason. It’s simply absurd that my fourth-generation iPod touch — which runs on the same processor as my iPhone 4 — can’t display iMDB content in the app just because it’s running iOS 6.1.6 instead of iOS 7.1.2, but the same content can be accessed and viewed in the browser on the same iPod. And as for eBay — funny how the app can’t be launched or used anymore on iOS 6 and iOS 7, but its push notifications still work perfectly.

It’s planned obsolescence, pure and simple. What drives me crazy about these particular examples is the arbitrariness of it all. The iPad 1 is still absolutely capable of handling YouTube videos, and yet YouTube doesn’t want you to use the site through the app if you’re doing it with an older device. And the excuse of not delivering the best experience is misplaced. You’re using an old iPad: you know you’re not looking at the best experience — but if that’s all you have, you’d like to keep that experience, however limited, rather than suddenly finding yourself with a non-functional app. 

Closing thoughts

Hopefully I’ll soon purchase a 6th-generation iPad, so I’ll have a more up-to-date, and certainly much more powerful and responsive iPad. In the meantime I’m truly enjoying taking this iPad 1 out and about as a ‘road warrior’. I’ve even managed to find a couple of nice accessories for it. The first, as you can see in the opening photo, is a Bluetooth keyboard. Specifically, it’s the Logitech iPad Keyboard and Stand Combo (you can see it in more detail on Amazon). I was looking for solutions that weren’t tied to a particular iPad model but that were also compatible with the iPad 1 (I had read somewhere that not all Bluetooth keyboards would work with the iPad 1). This Logitech came out when the iPad 1 was in production, so it’s of the appropriate vintage; it’s elegant and rugged enough; it’s pleasant to type on; it has a few nice dedicated keys (Home, Search, media keys, even a key to lock the screen without reaching for the power/sleep/wake button on the iPad); and it can be used, together with its accompanying stand, with other iOS devices as well. I got it new-in-box on eBay for $20 plus shipping. Not bad.

The other accessory was, surprisingly, harder to find than expected. At least locally. As a general rule, I give precedence to local, brick-and-mortar shops when I want to buy something. Sometimes it’s cheaper online, but once you add the shipping costs, what started as a bargain isn’t anymore. I wanted to get a protective sleeve for the iPad 1. You know, a simple neoprene zippered affair not dissimilar from what you’d buy for a MacBook. And it was nowhere to be found. Granted, I didn’t roam the city for days trying every possible shop, but went to the usual places that had never let me down before, which typically provide a lot of variety with this kind of accessories. Apparently, the trend today in iPad cases is either the case with integrated keyboard or a type of case derived from Apple’s Smart Cover, with one side enveloping the iPad, and the cover folding onto itself so that it acts like a stand. It’s a practical design, but not what I was looking for.

So I first checked old product reviews in tech magazines I translated back in 2011–2012, and that’s when I remembered that Booq used to make nice bags and cases to carry tech devices around. Sadly, when it comes to protective cases and sleeves, it seems that today Booq is more focused on covering laptop computers; but after being directed to their European site and checking the Sales section, I found what I was looking for: the Taipan Spacesuit XS, selling at a discounted price of €10 instead of €30. I quickly placed an order for the red variant, and after a few days it arrived. It’s really beautiful and well made:

IPad 1 + booq sleeve

Like the Logitech keyboard, this sleeve was originally made when the iPad 1 was in production, so it safely accommodates its thicker size. I’m glad I could find accessories that were specifically designed for the iPad 1 without having to resort to used products. And without having to spend a lot of money.

You may find my fascination with this ‘old’ iPad a bit silly. And I’ve noticed how it’s somewhat okay to be into vintage Macs but being into older iOS devices makes people smile that kind of condescending “Dude, what’s the point?” smile. People obsessed with the latest and greatest often forget that just because a device stops receiving OS or app updates, it doesn’t mean it stops working or being useful. 

The eye-opening aspect of going back to this first-generation iPad has been this: given a set of still-functioning apps, this iPad can still carry out all the tasks it was created for, with surprising responsiveness. Of course a current iPad is better, and if you’re a fan of the flat design introduced with iOS 7, a current iPad will also have better-looking software, not to mention more system features, et cetera. But this iPad 1 really turned out to be less slow and sluggish than anticipated; again, thanks to its tight integration between iOS 5 and the iPad’s hardware. I remember many people being upset back then when iOS 6 came out and Apple decided the iPad 1 couldn’t go past iOS 5.1.1. With hindsight, it was probably a good decision. Because if anything, during the past month the iPad 1 has shown me how slow and sluggish my iPad 3 actually is, in comparison, and how demanding iOS 9 is for both the iPad 2 and iPad 3.

Finally, I’m grateful to all those iOS developers who haven’t retired older versions of their apps from the App Store, and to those who haven’t removed their old apps even when it’s clear their development stopped years ago. Kudos also to those developers who, after introducing a paid update to their apps, have decided to keep the old version around as a separate ‘legacy’ app. I wish more developers did this — they’d certainly make owners of older devices very happy.

A useful approach to carry out my extensive search for older, compatible apps, has been to read old app reviews (thanks again, appstorm.net!) and it’s been a bit sad to realise just how many good apps have vanished from the App Store. In a few cases, I even managed to contact the developer and ask whether it was possible for them to send me the old .ipa file, but apparently it’s not that easy.

Anyway, this is getting much too verbose. I reiterate every word I wrote when wrapping up my previous piece: setting up this iPad 1 to work as a daily driver today, eight years after its introduction, has been a fun and oddly rewarding experience. Despite its obvious limitations and dated hardware specs, the iPad 1 has demonstrated a degree of usefulness that exceeded all my expectations. And once again I’ve been reminded that, sometimes, obsolete is just a label that is slapped on a product out of convenience, and it doesn’t mean that such product has suddenly stopped being useful.

The iMac turns 20 — a few assorted bits

May 9, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

The most dramatically new Macintosh iMac 1998

These days, in my spare time, I’ve been almost completely absorbed by the astonishingly positive experience I’m having with a first-generation iPad that’s been recently given to me. I’ve talked about it at length in my previous piece, and there will soon be a follow-up in case you were interested. And that’s why, until my RSS feeds were flooded with articles and mentions on the subject, I was nearly forgetting about the iMac’s twentieth anniversary. I really don’t have an organic article to talk about the iMac, so here are a few notes, in no particular order of importance.

The Future of the Internet iMac G3

Internet at home

That the Web was going to be a big deal, it was globally acknowledged pretty soon. But having Internet at home as a ‘normal’ thing took time, and some countries got there before others. In Italy, where I lived at the time, I remember using computers to access the Web to search information online around 1995 at the university, but it wasn’t until 1997–1998 that being able to just go online from home became a more common, widespread phenomenon. I’m talking about this from memory, so I don’t claim perfect accuracy on the matter, but I seem to recall that one of the major factors delaying the process was that telecom companies were slow to adapt to the trend, so there was a distinctive lack of affordable connection options. Connecting to the Internet via modem meant using the telephone landline to call a dedicated number, so that the call was billed as if it were a local call. Still, if you stayed connected for, say, three hours straight, even a local call would end up being rather expensive.

I like to believe that the introduction of the iMac helped to improve this situation — it was certainly much better when I finally could afford to purchase an iMac in late 1999. By that time, the iMac was already at its third round — the so-called ‘slot-loading’ model, an improvement over the previous five-colour offering, with a slot-loading optical drive, better processors, better graphics, more RAM. I got the entry-level 350 MHz blueberry model, which lasted until sometime in 2003. I had been using Macs for about ten years at the time, but that was the first Mac I actually purchased brand-new. All the Macs I had owned previously were second-hand purchases. It was also the first Mac with which I went online.

Headphone jack? We have plenty!

Dual headphone jacks in iMac

As far as I know, the iMac G3 is the Mac with the most headphone jacks ever offered. As you see in the picture (an excerpt from a 1998 brochure), the iMac G3 had two jacks on the front, but also a third one on the side. I remember using the side jack to connect a couple of external speakers, while having jacks on the front of the machine was useful when using headphones or earphones with particularly short cables.

The round mouse: a contrarian opinion

In A brief retrospective on failures (my, my, I wrote that more than 10 years ago!) I talked about the infamous round mouse that came with the iMac:

I don’t quite understand the general bashing — perhaps it’s nicknamed ‘hockey puck’ not for its shape, but after all the bashing. Perhaps it’s just me and my slim, long-fingered hands, but I’ve been using one for 9 years without a problem. It has to be handled slightly differently than a more elongated mouse (like the Apple Pro Optical Mouse or the Mighty Mouse, for example), and you can’t expect to be resting your hand on it. The way I hold it — putting my thumb and little finger at either side of it and using the forefinger and the middle finger to press the button — has made it the most comfortable mouse I’ve ever had, believe it or not. Before using that mouse I frequently ended my day with an aching wrist. That issue disappeared after using the rounded mouse.

The round mouse is probably the most hated Apple peripheral, and I know that a lot of people can’t stand its design; just like they can’t stand the design of the current Magic Mouse. I’ve used every mouse Apple has made since the first Mac, and while I find other designs undoubtedly comfortable (the Pro mouse, the Mighty Mouse), if today I don’t have the slightest symptom of RSI is thanks to the iMac’s round mouse and, later, to the Magic Mouse.

Chic. Not Geek.

The mother of all bold moves

When it comes to demonstrating Apple’s boldness, the original iMac has become the tritest of examples. It’s been 20 years of “They point-blank dropped the floppy drive, along with other legacy connections, and introduced a new standard, USB”. And yes, it’s true, it was a bold move, it was a gamble. It could have backfired. Customers and third-party manufacturers could have resisted, kept on with their floppies, rejecting USB, and turning to other solutions. The iMac could have been a total flop. Turns out it wasn’t.

You see, I don’t really believe Apple ‘got lucky’ with the iMac and the accompanying technology and design decisions. The 1.44 MB floppy certainly had its usefulness. Sometimes today I talk with (younger) people about this, and for some it seems crazy that, at the time, many users held on to the floppy, given its small capacity. In 1997–1998, Macs were usually equipped with 1.2 up to 6 GB hard drives, for comparison, and there were already higher-capacity removable media around, such as Iomega’s Zip and Jaz drives, which used 100 MB disks and 1 GB cartridges, respectively; and of course magneto-optical disks — long-time pro Mac users will surely remember SyQuest’s 44, 88 and 200 MB cartridges, rather popular at the time. 

But floppy diskettes retained a degree of inexpensiveness and practicality which, combined with their ubiquity, made them difficult to let go. They were often used for quick document exchanges in the same way today we may use an 8 or 16 GB USB thumb drive. At the time, basically every computer had a floppy drive. But Zip, Jaz, or other magneto-optical solutions? Not so much. It was more likely among Mac users, but if I had to deliver some files to a client, I was often asked to deliver them on floppies, even when recordable CDs were already getting traction.

And yet the lack of a floppy drive in the iMac was more of a problem on paper, or in the tech debates of the time. This ‘transition’ turned out to be smoother because — and I’m reading this from a 1998 issue of MacFormat magazine — companies like Imation and NewerTech had already announced external USB floppy drives. Imation’s SuperDrive, for example, could “read and write standard floppy disk formats as well as Imation’s own 120 MB format”. Iomega would “also be bringing its popular Zip drive to iMac” [with a USB connection].

In other words, if you decided to get an iMac in 1998, and you wanted to keep using floppies, the period of discomfort didn’t last very long. When I got my iMac one year later, the landscape had already changed so much that I didn’t even buy an external USB floppy drive. Whenever I needed to exchange stuff via floppy diskettes, I would resort to any of the older Macs I still had around, like the Classic or the PowerBook 150 or the Quadra 700. For the rest, it was email, or even recordable CDs. But if I absolutely had the need for a USB floppy drive for my iMac, by 1999 the options to choose from were plenty. 

Sure, not putting a floppy drive in the iMac had its risks, but the iMac was also a compelling computer with a very strong identity and purpose. Apple (Jobs) had a very clear idea of the iMac’s target audience, and that is reflected in the articles dedicated to the iMac in this October 1998 issue of MacFormat magazine I have in my hands. Lindsay Bruce writes: 

The home remains a place of critical importance to iMac’s success. As good as Apple’s Performas have been — especially the most recent Creative Studio minitower model — they have failed to appeal to a wider audience beyond the traditional Mac constituency: they’ve been too expensive, or too slow, or simply not accessible enough. 

iMac reverses these trends, and it does so spectacularly. […] Its speed is certainly impressive, running the legs off last year’s Performas, and in many ways it’s faster than any Pentium PC you can buy, for the home market or for business use. In short, iMac is the fastest sub-£1,000 computer currently available by miles.

And concludes:

Those who criticise iMac’s undoubted limitations compared with other Macs, such as the notable absence of a SCSI connection port or a floppy disk drive, miss its point: this is a Mac for people who need a computer just to do the simple things most of us do most of the time — word processing, playing games, learning to use or exploring the Internet and so on. But it does these tasks considerably better than anything else available at the price.

It’s all there: the genius in the iMac’s proposal was to provide a computer with a unique signature and personality which, combined with good (or good-enough) technical specifications, a very defined target audience, and an extremely competitive price, resulted in such an appealing package that regular people didn’t really mind certain limitations or omissions. Or at least they were willing to accept the tradeoff because what they got in return was a capable, fast, and — why not? — iconic machine. 

Who s supporting USB on the iMac

And third-party manufacturers agreed: there was both a rush to adopt the USB standard and offer products that could work with the iMac as soon as possible, and to fill the void left by the lack of a built-in floppy drive by making external USB drives. It’s easy to dismiss the colourful shape and the cartoonish, whimsical design of the iMac now that most computers have become æsthetically as boring as in the beige era (I hear you, Peter Cohen). But the iMac’s unique organic design and colour made such an impact that a lot of third-party USB peripherals produced for the iMac at the time were built with a similar choice of materials, colours and translucency. And soon after, copycats started to produce PCs with a sheath of coloured plastic thrown over decidedly ugly designs.

Getting a couple of things straight

I was a bit amused by Matt Birchler’s Living that #DongleLife all the Way Back in 1998 but I politely disagree on how he frames his comparison. He quotes a rather terrible review of the iMac by the New York Times. On the absence of a floppy drive and the introduction of USB replacing ADB, Serial, and SCSI ports, Matt quips:

Yup, even back in 1998, Apple was breaking hearts by removing ports “before their time.” And since I can already hear you countering “but it was different then, USB was clearly better and was the obvious replacement.”

and takes this excerpt from the New York Times article to finish his statement:

Others in the industry have doubts about the decision not to include a floppy drive. ”Those silly little floppy drives still perform a useful function…People still use floppy disks to move files around between home and office, between members of a work group and to make copies of documents and projects.”

Ray A. Meifert, director of the Superdisk…said his company sold between 600 million and 700 million 1.44-megabyte disks last year, out of a total worldwide production of more than 4 billion disks.

When Steve Jobs says the floppy is dead, I’d take that statement cautiously,” Mr. Meifert said.

I think that citing the opinion of a floppy disk seller on the future of the floppy disk is, well, awkward at best. We can hardly expect Mr. Meifert to reply, “Yeah, the floppy disk is history now. I advise you to stop buying floppies as soon as you can.” (This is a fault of the original author of the article, who evidently needed appropriate bits to fit his narrative). 

The fact is that the floppy drive was dead in Steve Jobs’s mind because he thought about what came next, not about the status quo. Of course there were still hundreds of thousands of floppies around — every other computer that was not the iMac had a floppy drive, including all other Macs. But documents and projects were already getting bigger, and I remember (again, to please a client who didn’t have a Zip drive and whose email provider didn’t allow big attachments) having to compress a project into a StuffIt archive, then split the archive in four parts and use four floppies to deliver it to the client. Floppy disks were getting progressively annoying to use, exactly because their capacity was obsolete for the time.

USB was indeed superior than the connection technologies it replaced. From MacFormat again:

USB has three central advantages over its predecessors, though. The first is simply that it’s much faster than either ADB or Serial. […] The second advantage is that USB is ‘hot-pluggable’ — you can unplug one device and plug in another without switching iMac off. […] USB is an invention of Intel, the firm behind most of the processors used in PCs. Some may view Apple’s adoption of USB as siding with the enemy, but prosperity in the computer industry is based upon exploiting good technology standards. USB works well and is set to become a standard on PC as well as iMac (USB software is a core part of the new OS upgrade Windows 98). So its third advantage is that you can expect far more USB devices for iMac than you could choose from for other Macs.

Back to Matt Birchler:

Yes, even 20 years ago we were living that #donglelife.

Now I’m not saying what Apple was doing in 1998 with ports is exactly the same as what they are doing today, but those paragraphs feel like they could be pasted into a review of the current MacBook line and all you’d have to do is swap out the nouns.

Dongles and adapters aren’t a recent invention (and annoyance). I remember using them ever since I started working with Macs and PCs in the late 1980s. There were network adapters, ADB dongles, SCSI terminators, SCSI adapters (when you needed to hook up an external peripheral using DB-25 SCSI connectors to a Mac laptop using the smaller, square HDI-30 SCSI port), and so on and so forth. But the so-called ‘dongle life’ wasn’t really a problem when you were on a desktop workstation that had several peripherals permanently connected via different adapters. All connections were cabled anyway, so whether it was direct or through an adapter, nobody cared. You looked for the right adapter, you installed it, then it was there. It worked. 

But today’s ‘dongle life’ with MacBooks and MacBook Pros is another thing altogether. In 1998 with the iMac, Apple was able to get away with those drastic changes because the company managed to attract such attention to a perfectly marketed and inherently interesting machine that of course third-party manufacturers wanted to jump aboard. USB was an emerging standard with obvious technical advantages. Connecting peripherals could become and would become a simple affair (bye bye, SCSI terminators, SCSI chain configurations, or having to connect things before turning them on for fear of breaking something). And third parties could provide the iMac with everything it lacked, making money in the process.

Today’s USB‑C has certain advantages over the connections it wants to replace, and the ability to provide different types of data and power over the same physical connection is indeed noteworthy; but aping the same boldness of 1998 in 2015 with the 12-inch MacBook, and in 2016 with the MacBook Pro line, hasn’t produced the same results. Why? I can’t say exactly. In my opinion, while going USB in 1998 was part of a plan focussed on the possibilities that the new standard could bring to the table (faster, simpler connections, and more Mac/PC interoperability), going USB‑C — and USB‑C only — in 2015–2016 was more a decision dictated by design constraints than anything else. A decision that, paradoxically, has turned the MacBooks into systems that are more ‘closed’ than the iMac was in 1998. 

As I said above — again, going from memory here — the ‘period of discomfort’ for owners of a new iMac in 1998 was relatively short. If you look at the table in the previous section, you can see that third-party USB offerings were already a fair amount less than two months after the iMac’s availability. And the situation got better quickly. I don’t have similarly hard data at hand, but after the MacBook and MacBook Pro introduction I don’t recall the ready availability of, say, a USB‑C scanner or printer. Or even a USB‑C keyboard or mouse or drawing tablet, if you’ll forgive a bit of hyperbole[1]. Nothing but dongles. Even to connect other Apple products like an iPhone. A year after the iMac’s introduction the choice of USB peripherals was staggering compared with today, three years after the introduction of the 12-inch MacBook, and two years after the introduction of the latest MacBook Pro design. The ‘period of discomfort’ for many MacBook Pro owners seems to be longer in comparison. Check this post on Michael Tsai’s blog and the many links it contains to have an idea of the debate surrounding USB‑C.

Today we’re still stuck with having to get a dongle for connecting a regular USB thumb drive or an SD card reader, or an external display, or… many other devices, really. And that’s what’s ridiculous about today’s ‘dongle life’: featherweight, ultra-thin portables that quickly become cumbersome because you have to bring a bunch of adapters with you in case you have to work off-site and you may want to interface your sleek machine with the rest of the world.

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  • 1. The idea of a wired USB‑C keyboard or a wired USB‑C mouse isn’t that far-fetched. I know that today most people choose to go wireless with these input devices, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But there are certain users who also use a laptop in desktop configuration, and may want to use, say, a wired mechanical keyboard, or a wired mouse, which I hear is strongly favoured by gamers due to its higher responsiveness. While a dongle isn’t really a big deal when using a Mac at a desk, having to resort to dongles even for basic input devices is, at best, an inelegant and not entirely cheap solution. ↩︎