I love Apple products.

But something has been troubling me, and when I get troubled, I mull, and when I mull, I stew, and when I stew I eventually write something that’s either really funny or insulting, and I don’t feel any jokes coming on at the moment.

People have been calling me an Apple Fanboy for many years.   Before that term became trendy they called me an Apple fanatic. I used to resist these labels since from my point of view I was just reporting the obviousness between Macs and PCs. It wasn’t my fault Apple products were superior.

Anyway this isn’t about who’s better or who’s right . That’s old news.   Apple is kicking butt these days and most of the anti-Apple people I’ve known have finally let go of their irrational embrace of a Windows PC-only paradigm, bought iPhones, iPods, iPads and iMacs and we can finally move on.

And my story starts there.

Because as any true Apple Fanboy will tell you, it feels oddly disorienting to see Apple kicking butt .  It’s what we fought for over the last quarter century, and yet now that we have arrived, the universe is out of balance, only perhaps not in the way you might expect…

iTudes

The other day I was ordering a bound photo album I made in iPhoto. The fastest shipping option I saw was still going to take too long, so I went in search of a more expensive overnight shipping option. I didn’t find mention of such an option, so I called the Apple Web Store Support line – since they would know about shipping Apple’s products. The first sales person I talked to naturally sounded cool – like a “Mac”. When I asked if I could overnight the shipping of my iPhoto Album, after it was printed, the line went dead. I was on my iPhone so figured AT&T’s connection dropped. I called back on a landline and this time got another cool-sounding “Mac”. Once again I asked about paying more money for an overnight shipping option, and this time I think the “Mac” mumbled: “Oh we ble…” he trailed off unintelligibly and the line went dead again. This time it was clear – he hung up. In my ear. Mid-mumbled-sentance.

And that’s how I learned, or intuited rather, that buying Apple products online through iPhoto is unrelated to say, buying iPhoto itself.

Thus started my troubling, mulling and stewing. Obviously, I shouldn’t have taken being hung up on twice by Apple representatives personally. There is obviously a rational explanation. And yet I did take it personally.

“Made in California”

An important part of Apple’s brand is it’s personality, embodied by a slightly cooler than you, slightly smug, rather naturally stylish Californian called “Mac” (and this was true decades before any commercials featuring Justin Long were deployed). And if you’re Apple, you’d recognize it would undermine your brand personality if US consumers dialed the Apple Store and were directed to random, heavily-accented operators in India who sounded like they had been hired by the floor-full, to save a few bucks. No, you would hire considerably more expensive, self-entitled, young Californian-sounding American College Students and you would save the money back by issuing a punishable edict that directed all “Macs” (operators) to move through those calls as ungodly fast as possible – even if it meant outright hanging up in the ear of some dumb customer who didn’t figure out that the information vacuum surrounding Overnight Shipping for iPhoto Products meant Apple doesn’t do that. Click – “Sorry, application ‘telephone call’ unexpectedly quit”.

Little Dog

Apple has always had a little dog attitude. You know- the way a Jack Russell will act all self-important, and snarl and snap like he’s all that. He has to do that because he’s so small and powerless. Otherwise he would be eaten. That was Apple for it’s first 20 years. But like me, maybe you have wondered what you would do if your Jack Russell Freaky Friday’ed into the body of a Great Dane or a Rottweiler. There is no room in our civilization for such a vicious K9, and Animal Control would probably put it down.

Well Apple has grown. And by grown I mean it has inserted itself into the body of a Microsoft, a gigantic swath of the population with iPhones, iPods and now trailing, Mac computers. Apple is enjoying more users than ever before in its history. You might argue that in areas, Apple has become a big dog. The problem, and the reason I currently think I would prefer Google own the digital universe despite their utter lack of aesthetic sensibility, is that Apple still carries itself like a small dog. Utterly arrogant, overly aggressive; a little dictator.

It was cute when the company had no power, it was necessary, endearing even. But now that so many lives are intertwined with that personality, now that a virtual ecosystem has begun to build itself around the company and its behavior, Apple’s personality needs an adjustment; the arrogance, once an asset, has turned destructive.

Knights of the Apple Table

If you spend any time in the Apple Discussion boards you have come across a recurring comment convention. Some aspect of Apple’s service or products pisses a customer off and by way of expressing the injustice, the customer will start by listing, in detail, all the Apple products he has owned over so many years; a precious few can even assert that they owned the first Macintosh Computer in 1984. As if such credentials should entitle them to some premier frequent flier status.
I used to laugh at those people – how lame, I thought, this is a company – you just buy their products or you don’t. Apple doesn’t owe you any more than that. The number of products you willfully purchased is a meaningless datapoint with regard to the little issue you are upset about now.

But is it? During my stewing and mulling, I began to understand why they felt that way. Why some of them intuitively felt that Apple owed them a little bit more, perhaps more than all these new, fair-weather, iPod-gateway, converts. Why being shuttled through the same long cues and dismissiveness, as everyone else felt unjust. And why, after some real soul-searching – I now sincerely feel that way too.

Apple does owe us. Some of us. For we are the loyal minority. The long-timers. The knights of the Apple table. They owe us because we were the kids who fought off the countless bullies on Apple’s behalf at a time that Apple was weakest. We were Apple’s first line of defense. The ones who tucked our precious Mac OS under our arms and carried it away from threat of disaster. We protected it.

We defended Apple’s honor against an inescapable and humiliating tidal wave of proof that Apple was the weakling of the personal computing party.

We fought these countless adversaries with the most valuable weapon of all:

Our own credibility. Because Apple carried so precious little then.

To keep the company alive – in effort of defending the unacknowledged rightness of Apple’s mission, we put our very faces and reputations on the line in defense of an ideal that had not managed to manifest a meaningful footprint. Apple was weak, it faltered, it was shrinking to toy-like proportions, so as far as anyone knew at the time our assertive actions were reckless, self-destructive and ultimately doomed. But through it all – we fanned the Apple embers tirelessly.

These were the darkest years. Seriously, Gil Amelio? Really?  It took a level of courage and self-confidence to be an Apple supporter then.

My minuscule part in this legend was as the creative head of a highly-awarded Interactive firm at that time, and there was not one technologist, IT executive, or engineer who thought we should have a Mac in the shop. Like vultures they circled, “Apple is about to fold, Photoshop runs on Windows now, we need to move to PCs now”; it was their repeated and logical assertion.  It became an IT mantra.  And yet we fought.  My business partner and I, against the obviousness, we fought. So my company bought more ugly beige boxes from Gil because “Damnit,” I said, “the OS is BETTER. And I believe in their rightness.  They’ll come back.” Obviously I had no clue Apple could come back – just a deeply wishful belief in the justice of it all.

And I wasn’t the only one. There were more of us. A well-documented, miniscule percentage of the personal computing population – we evangelized, consistently, passionately, angrily even – to the near-death of our professional relationships.

Frequent i-er Program

Apple’s Steve Jobs died and was reborn to rule once more.

Could this have been possible had the believers ceased believing?   I don’t think so.  When I recall the relative viscousness of our fight, no, I don’t think so.

So I stand before you today, Apple, with the scars, and sacrifice that you survived long enough to rise to new power upon, and I ask you to remember.  Not to forget us.

Maybe… maybe you do owe those few something after all? Those few who stayed with you from the 80s onward?  It wouldn’t take much.

You could acknowledge our greater-than-mere-consumerism sacrifice by instituting a literal premier customer status that it takes years to acquire. A good friend of mine, had a simple suggestion: Lifetime Applecare.

Or maybe we just need you to grow up. Go the extra distance and show us all how such a great company – who survived thanks to a relative few fighting proponents – can mature gracefully. Lose the little dog attitude, and for Christ sake – don’t dismissively hang up in your evangelists’ ears.  Find out who you’re talking to before you treat them like annoyances.  I know you think “Hey – this is awesome, look at all the new customers we have now!” But look more closely and you won’t see any evangelism in that body of new users. You’ll just see users. Uninvested users who follow trends. And that’s great, so long as you remain the trend.

Similarly, when you lose your loyal soldiers, the lifers – you’ll have another problem. A population of trained, outspoken digerati who know your strengths and weaknesses intimately and who share a new mission. Look at this post. It’s the inevitable byproduct of such a scenario. And a pretty mild one at this point.

Now that you are strong, it wouldn’t take a lot to get me back. But I… we, are not like the rest of your new customers.

We had an income in 1984. We bought every OS you have ever released and more hardware than some companies do.

The people who call us ‘Fanboys’, who lump us in with this iPod generation of trenders, totally miss the point.

We are not Fanboys.

We are the proud Apple Freemasons, and membership has been closed for a long time.

Apple Freemason Medals of Service

I started with a Macintosh Computer in 1985. I bought half a dozen beige boxes with names like Performa, LC, and Quadra. I bought a Duo. I bought the first iMac (bondi blue). And the second iMac (blueberry). I bought three Powerbooks. I bought the Cube. I loved my Cube. I bought another iMac (AV graphite). I bought two G3 towers(beige and blue), and two G4 towers. I bought several tube Monitors, and on the day it was available bought a 20″ flat Cinema Screen and then the 23″ Cinema Screen. I bought the first iBook. Naturally I bought the first G5 Tower, and then another faster G5. I bought two MacBooks (one white, one black), and I bought the first 30″ cinema screen (with the necessary video card upgrade). I bought an iSight webcam. I bought the first iPod with mechanical spinning click-wheel and surrounding buttons, the iPod with four red glowy buttons, The first iPod Mini, the first Nano (still the best iPod design), and the clip-on Shuffle. I bought the first iPhone, the iPhone 3G, the 3GS, and now 4. I bought the first Airport Base Station. The first Airport Extreme. Numerous Airport Express bricks. The new Airport Extreme 802.11n. And I bought a coveted AppleTV. I recently bought a spanking new Nehalem MacPro Tower. I bought a new 15″ MacBook Pro and an iPad.

I bought every Mac OS ever released. Every version of iLife and iWork. I bought Final Cut. I bought all manner of Apple adapter and cable and battery and mouse and keyboard in multiples. Apple, you kind of made me buy those adapters.

I have spent untally-able dollars at the iTunes Store on music, movies, TV shows, apps and books, as well as photobooks and cards through iPhoto (minus overnight shipping). I have been a dual-account holder of mac.com since it was launched (boasting Virex!), and maintain two Apple developer accounts.

I didn’t buy the iPod Hi-Fi. Sorry, that was the stupidest product I have ever seen. For a while I tried to pretend like I never saw it. So I guess I saved $349 there.

By my rough estimation, I have personally purchased well in excess of $70,000 of Apple products.

I additionally was directly responsible for ensuring that Apple products remained the dominant tools in my company of 550 people for the worst decade of Apple’s lifespan to date.

And this is just what I remember.

During the same period, I purchased maybe 4 versions of Microsoft Office.

You too?  Welcome to the Apple Freemasons.

Let me know you’re out here.

Three years ago some ad agency dweeb leaned into my office and smirked “Dude, our campaign just went social”.

Social Marketing: sequence of events

It’s cold in hell today.  Well, in my private corner of it anyway.

That’s because my default home page – across all my browsers – was just changed to Microsoft’s Bing.com.

In my world – that’s really big news.  I have friends who have responded with utter disbelief.

For the last 24 years I have been, you might say, generally anti-Microsoft.  Or rather – I wasn’t impressed with this company that had defaulted, and then bullied it’s way, into ubiquity slightly ahead of availability of vastly better designed systems (cough – Mac OS – cough).

Yes, of course I was, and to a large degree, still am, an Apple fanboy.  And yet when I think about the companies that I would prefer to have rule the universe, I have always thought Google makes a slightly more benevolent ruler than either of the former.

Over the last 24 years I repeatedly asserted that the day Microsoft developed a product that is better than Apple, and later Google, that I would have no problem adopting it.  And of course that was so easy to say because such a thing had never happened.  Like ever.

But for the last month I have been trying Bing, and guess what, it doesn’t suck.

In fact, it doesn’t suck so much that it’s actually really great.  Dare I say – the greatest Internet search engine available today.

For over 10 years Google has held the status as the top subject in my private Internet kingdom.  The first logo I saw every morning, and the most used internet tool every day.  But all that changed today.

Using Bing, it’s pretty obvious that search results are more relevant, videos more immediate, dynamic and easy to navigate, and images are more relevant, numerous and easy to view.

And, gird yourself Google, I’m about to utter an alien phrase… it’s cooler.

Using Bing, I realized that Google, the search engine, just slipped, unceremoniously, into the bottom half of the hour glass as an artifact of a previous time.  A time when aesthetics necessarily fell by the wayside in favor of functionality and conservative technical etiquette.  Business models had to actually work after the bubble burst- imagine that.  And the growing tidal wave of newbie mom and pop internet users were still a little confused by all them thar buttons and interwebs and emails and such.  Google’s child-like branding and minimalist (read: mundane) approach to interface design and aesthetics made the company and it’s site friendly and accessible.   …Back then.

However, today, Google’s obvious repulsion against anything remotely related to aesthetic beauty or adventurous U.I. has left it with all the design gravitas of a pocket calculator.  Yeah, it works, but there is no joy in using, it’s not delightful, it’s not cool.

As a Google corporate outsider it’s hard to tell how much of Google’s home page (and logo) – which has changed glacially in the last decade – was initially accidental or the result of advanced calculation, but in either case it worked at that time, and it’s unlikely that anyone inside Google has been willing to take responsibility for messing with that success by fundamentally refreshing the product’s appearance and behavior.

“DON’T TOUCH IT!” is the more likely conscience on the primary-colored campus.

But technology runs to commodity.  And one day you wake up and the only difference between two competing products is aesthetics and an implied lifestyle.

In hindsight, “change it” is something Google needed to do some time ago.  Embracing the risk, reward and uncertainty of great design would have given the company a chance.  Might have pre-empted Microsoft’s bid altogether.  But you don’t write algorithms to do that, you employ artists, and unconventional U.I experts, you trust their intuition and taste, and you relegate to them some directorial control.  You don’t drown them in statistics, limitations and testing.  That procedurally kills good design.

Look at Apple – the poster-child of industrial design and aesthetics working hand-in-hand with great technology.

Apple gets it.  Pretty much always has.  Except for maybe when Gil Amelio was there.  And it’s not like they don’t do consumer testing.  they do – but they value great design.  And Google could learn a few things about consumers and marketing from the design powerhouse, if they would just pull away from the ones and zeros long enough to appreciate organic, intuitive creativity.  But alas, outside the occasional visiting artist who is paid to perform during the lunch-break (the videos we have all envied), Google does not seem to have any idea how to incorporate the intuitive creative sensibility into it’s products in a meaningful way.

I’m not saying Bing is some design nirvana – it’s far from it.  It even shares many similarities with Google.  And I’m not saying that it is so advanced that Bing can’t be unseated, but for now, it’s just better than Google.  And in the small, small world of search engine powerhouses, that’s all that matters.

I will add that it appeared to be a rather unbecoming defensive move when Google announced an operating system initiative – just as the obvious superiority of Bing’s search over Google’s was settling into the Internet stream of consciousness.  Perhaps a bid to steal some of Microsoft’s thunder – or keep them feeling the pressure of an inferiority complex that should be pretty well entrenched at Microsoft by now.

For now, Google’s well documented subservience to testing and data, and it’s aversion to artistic intuition has done it this one infinitesimally small disservice: it has turned at least one staunch Apple Fanboy and Google advocate into a Microsoft convert.

I’m writing this on a Mac.  One that has never revealed a positive thing about Microsoft.  And I even still want Google, with it’s slightly more trustworthy corporate mission to “do no evil”, to ultimately rule the technical universe.  And yet…

Bing is now my home page.

Sorry Google, you have some work to do, Buddy.

The iPhone mic snags on any button-down collar, um... but not t-shirts.

I can’t be the only one. The only lifelong Apple fan boy who wears shirts with collars on occasion. Am I?

I ask because if there were others, if maybe even one of us worked for Apple on the iPhone team, the iPhone headphones would be designed differently. It’s a fact – no two ways about it. That somehow this critical design flaw should never have survived the Apple design process, unless of course, they really all do wear t-shirts – exclusively.

Hey, I wear t shirts. Cool ones too. But now and again – and maybe more often than some, I wear similarly stylish button-down shirts with collars. And this is where the design flaw reveals itself.

See, the wired iPhone mic catches on your shirt collar. And by catches on your collar, I mean the sharp edge of the mic invariably snags your collar with enough force to tug the earpiece out of you ear, and then the earpiece and mic fall 4 feet to your knees mid-conversation. It never fails. Turn your head an inch too far and – pop.

“Wait, HELLO!? Hold on, I can’t hear you – sorry! Hello? you still there? Oh hi, sorry – my headphone just popped out of my….” Never fails. I really don’t get it.

Oh sure, it looks nice. It looks awesome. And it even feels nice in your fingers; that little wired mic. But by God, as sure as I am writing “mac genius” that headphone catches on my collar and pops out of my ear.

Maybe like you, I’ve become subconsciously sensitive to the problem. I have developed this acute reflex due to “the pull”. That feeling when the cord tugs at my earbud, the mic having snagged my collar. At the slightest resistance, my head freezes and I carefully bring it back to center, just shy of popping the earbud from my ear. There was a point where I would use my patented oval-head-move to release the mic from said collar. I’d gotten pretty good at that too, that oval-head-move; made me look like a pigeon walking down the street. But alas – whatever momentary satisfaction I may have had at releasing the mic – it only caught again a moment later. Without fail.

As a result I finally gave up and now walk around with one hand holding the mic to my mouth. Just like I did years ago with poorer sets designed by your average run-of-the-mill, low-end industrial designers. It would appear to most passersby that I am actually holding the mic to my mouth so that my voice is better heard, but no. The mic works fine without that. No, I am simply trying to keep the earbud in place, simple as that.

Naturally, this never happens when I wear a t shirt. And maybe that’s the idea.

ABOVE: Apple's 16GB iPhone 3G - in White. Optional keychain ring and free pink eraser not pictured.

When Apple started using the color white as it’s industrial design foundation back in the late 90s – it evoked all the coolest parts of Star Wars’ Storm Troopers, 2001: A Space Odyssey – and bathroom fixtures all at once.  It was a powerful design conceit that differentiated the company assertively for a decade – and big-banged out trends that are still rippling their way down the lower design food-chain today.

Then, with the advent of multicolored aluminum iPods, Black MacBooks and silver iMacs, Airs and Mac Pros, it looked as though His whiteness was finally, at long gasping last, bowing out.  And none too soon.

The fact is, the whole white consumer technology thing has been done to death.  There is all manner of non-Apple, white and plastic-chrome “iWhatevers” on the market.  So ubiquitous is the white and “chromed” plastic look that anything done that way today usually has “made in taiwan” embossed on the side or comes from a gum ball machine.

And then Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G.

When I saw the white and chrome iPhone 3G – an exclusive color way for the premium 16GB model – I remember mildly deflating and uttering, “…really…?”  And then I think I just squinted at it – waiting for the coolness to kick in.  A reality distortion field.  A different angle.  Anything.

But no – with all the industrial design ‘tump’* of Hasbro’s plastic iDog, here was my favorite company’s most awesomest product announcement on Earth and it carried itself in the housing of a 10-year old Hello Kitty school supplies compartment.  With free pink eraser.  I half expected to see a keychain ring hanging off one corner.

The application of ancient white plastic to the high-end iPhone model smacked of an obvious attempt to re-invigorate the material.  To wrest ownership of the scheme back from the i-mitators.  To scotch tape the bastard if necessary, back onto a pedestal, by serving as an indication of one having afforded the “high-end” model.

But instead, the thing felt old and just made me wonder if the exceptionally cooler looking 8GB model in black would be fine after all.

Turns out it is by the way.

I do have an old friend who chose the white model.  On purpose.  He said he thought it was cool. I said, “…really…?”  And he said, “Yeah it’s totally cool.”  I wasn’t totally convinced.  I know him better than you do.  I think, like a lot of people, he just liked the idea that it would passively communicate the status of his greater purchase price.

I asked my wife what she thought about the design choice – she told me that it was probably just targeting girls.  I look forward to my friend reading that.

Either way – I hope it’s the last time we see such a cheap use of shiny white plastic in Apple’s industrial design for a long time.

The Apple I love sets trends.  I’m willing to forget this ever happened if the next iPhone has that sweet black anodized metal border of the iPod Touch, and… it’s gone? Oh now that’s too bad.

*Footnote:  ”TUMP” is a word I learned years ago from my friend and business partner Tim Smith, who’s southern roots go a little too deep to entirely shed the stigma of banjo playing on the porch.  As it was described to me, it’s a cross between “tip over”, and dump and thump.  Both evoking an action and a sound, I have come to find it a surprisingly useful word, even when describing the unfortunate unveiling of the white iPhone.

Sorry for the belligerent title. But you know it, I know it, and everyone you know knows it, except maybe those 11-year-old-girls at the mall who smell like strawberry lip-smacker and buy Live Strong-knock-off rubber bracelets that say “I’m Rad” at Wet Seal, that music-based ringtones are so very lame.

I’ve used them. I confess. At a time when there were no other options, before phones networked with PCs. And yet, like most others, I can honestly say – the following is always true:

If you liked the song before you made it into a ringtone, you come to dislike it after it’s a ringtone.

No matter how cool or witty the song choice may have seemed when you assigned it, all humor and hipness mysteriously evaporates into embarrassment the instant it rings in public.

You only hear the first 6 seconds of the song, which on repetition generates a kind of pavlovian annoyance for you and everyone around you in ear-shot.

You realize that at some point you actually started answering your phone to make it stop ringing – not to have a conversation with the caller.

You either a) start apologizing to the nearest ears every time your phone rings, or b) try to ignore their stares and honestly pretend like you didn’t notice them there.

Having been interrupted or annoyed by your ringtone, associates start cracking jokes and making fun of it, so you get pretty good at telling the story of why you chose that song, via one of two tactics, either you try to make the song sound emotionally meaningful to you, or you try to paint yourself as a fun, free-spirit who is just so fun and, well, free-spirited that having a silly song on your phone is just a sign of how fun and free-spirited you are. No matter your story-tactic, ultimately you’re just hoping your sincerity will convince these people to no longer think of you as somewhat dim and immature.

You find yourself changing the song choice often in an ultimately futile effort to find one that does not result in all of the above. Through this process you spend a lot of money.

You occasionally have to remind yourself that everyone else uses music ringtones, so yeah, it’s totally cool and there’s nothing wrong with you doing it too. At some point you realize that you’re reminding yourself of this more often than you would if it were true.

And finally, as music alone, the song sounds like crap on the phone’s scratchy, tiny, treble speaker.

Did I miss anything?

Are we so desperate for customization that we swallow any half-baked business plan the carriers spoon feed us?

Maybe not. Some people use online tools to side-step the carriers and convert their songs into ringtones – on purpose. Which must mean that those users actually want music-based ringtones. We think the more sophisticated of those users are just too busy to explore the landscape enough to find cooler alternatives.

There are even music-based ringtone hawkers on the net who write custom songs – specifically to be used as ringtones. With lyrics and everything. I’ve never met anyone who actually uses such a thing, but assume someone does.

Then you have the adults among us, the sophisticated, mature set, who choose “classical” music as ringtones. As though somehow appreciation of these classic sonnets by kings over the centuries makes their beepy midi better than the latest Baby Mozart puppet show. Spare me.

Yes, music has a place on a phone, in a media player app.  And someday users across the globe, who have insanely stylish alerts, will look back at this time in history and softly chuckle at the music-based ringtone users of today.