This will be controversial, but I see some interesting things going on in the world of computing.
Those of us who use computers as tools to accomplish real-world working tasks—and especially in the workstation realm—probably already know of Apple’s fall from toolmaker to toymaker. The success of content-consumption devices such as iPhones and iPads has certainly boosted Apple’s popularity. But what has happened on the content-creation side of things formerly dominated (to a degree, particularly in the graphics arts) by Apple? It’s been almost entirely dissolved. And workstation maker Boxx is calling all content creators to flee apple and join the (dark?) side of PC performance using Windows operating systems and its vastly superior selection of software. Here are some excerpts—too brutal?
Yow, that’s bold. But is it fair?
Anecdotally, I was asked to help in specifying the best Apple workstation for a friend last fall, which was an iMac Pro. To my utter shock, the stock drive at the time was a totally-unacceptably-doggy 5,400rpm spinning drive. Not 7,200rpm spinning drive, and certainly not an SSD. 5,400rpm! Apple, are you out of your mind? For your workstation offering? For this price? This shouldn’t even be a bottom-tier option! Incredible. Maybe Boxx is onto something here.
To be fair, I’ve just checked this year’s iMac Pro offerings, and I see some improvement—sort of:
Notice that a 512GB SSD (fast!) is a pricey upgrade from the 2TB Fusion Drive that’s four times the size! Why? What’s a Fusion Drive, anyway? It’s not easy to find out, but the best I can tell without this turning into a science project is that it’s a 128GB flash drive coupled with a spinning drive. OK, I guess—several drive manufacturers offer such drives integrated into a single hardware device (and they’re NOT expensive). But what’s the speed of the spinning portion of this large drive? As best I can find out, that’s relatively unknown, but this article at Slanted Viewpoint claims the speed is only 5,400rpm:
That’s profoundly slow for today’s workstations. And expensive. I was using spinning drives at nearly 15,000rpm for my workstations a decade ago (!) Apple offers slow performance for lots of money. Why? Because Apple? Really? With abuse like this, won’t the Apple name eventually wear a bit thin? It seems Boxx is capitalizing on the idea that it will indeed wear thin, so they’re firing the first shot hoping to gain from the (apparently) deep pockets of switching Apple users who actually need to get real work done in the real world.
If you’ve read any of my other posts, you know I’m not a fan of Windows 10. In fact, it’s for the very reason that it gets in the way of my own productivity that I refuse to install it on any of my work machines, but run the more productive Windows 7. After all, downloading several 6GB Windows updates per year via DSL—and then having very little control over when it’s installed—is not my idea of productivity.
But are Apple’s offerings really any better? Certainly for those used to the Apple interface, making a jump to the PC “dark side” is a tough hit to productivity. I get that. But with Apple (at least on the hardware side), you’re simply getting hosed for the money. Apple is NOT a good value in this arena, and it’s getting tougher and tougher for productive, creative people to justify these mounting costs for inferior hardware and lack of software options. Do they care? It would seem they don’t need to care. At least not yet.
Steve Jobs, in an interview from 1995, (as reported several years ago at Business Insider) had some interesting insight as to why innovation dies out at large tech companies. The answer, in short, is that priorities of sales and marketing take the place of innovation once a company reaches monopoly status. Why? Because it pays more:
It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company’s not any more successful.
So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product.
They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about wanting to really help the customers.
No concept of a good product versus a bad product? No feeling in their hearts? Ouch. I can imagine Jobs may have had in mind Microsoft (or IBM, obviously) at the time, as Apple was certainly not a monopoly power at the time. But if the shoe fits…
It appears to me Apple’s focus is now toy design—things that help consumers consume content—and no longer on tool design, which helps creators to create content. It’s a shame, really, that toys apparently drive revenues above all else. And where revenues go, so do the large tech companies.
I’ve never been a Boxx customer, but it’s good to know there are still some guys out there making premium tools for real work. After all, life cannot consist of consumption alone—eventually somebody’s got to create something.