Everyone Uses a Mac Nowadays
“Everyone uses Macs nowadays”. What chance you’ll ever hear that statement?
Human nature has it that we generalize and exaggerate. So you look around, see white cars dominating the automobile landscape, and you hear comments like “Geez, everyone drives a white car nowadays.”
Can the same happen to Apple? Will it ever reach a point where enough people use its Mac devices to say “Everyone uses a Mac nowadays”?
Yes it can reach that point but no you probably won’t hear that line. And the simple reason is the invisible Mac.
Any device running any flavor of Windows is a Windows device. Ditto Linux. In fact, I’d be surprised if there’s not a majority of homes with a Linux device in them already. For example, many set-top boxes run a Linux OS. You could probably already say “Everyone uses Linux nowadays”.
What really makes the Mac a Mac is Mac OS X. So any device running OS X is a Mac device. The iPhone runs a modified version of OS X, so essentially, it is a Mac device. And in September, the iPod, biggest selling Apple device of all, joined the Mac stable.
If the iPod had been running a version of OS X from the outset, you could have long ago already said “Everyone uses a Mac nowadays”.
So, taking into account all devices running some form of the Mac OS X changes the picture. And the sales required to hear that line uttered might be it might be easier to achieve and occur sooner than you expect.
Consider, Apple now makes devices in the following markets with some form of Mac OS X on them:
- Desktop
- Laptop
- Server
- Portable media player
- Mobile phone
- Media center
Also the iPod touch and the iPhone overlap into PDA markets and that overlap could easily expand further if Apple chooses. And then throw in other new markets, such as UPCs, tablet PCs and terminals, and you see a lot of opportunity for Mac devices.
In-house, Apple only calls its computers Macs but this in itself is a change from when the computer range was splintered into iBooks, iMacs, PowerBooks, PowerMacs and XServes and financial reports were also splintered. Now they’re all Macs. Yahoo Finance reports “Apple said it shipped a record 2.16 million Macs in the quarter, an increase of 34 percent, while it sold 10.2 million iPods, up 17 percent” and “In the first full quarter of iPhone sales . . . Apple said it sold 1.12 million units, bringing the cumulative total to 1.39 million since the product debuted on June 29.”
Those figures show the iPod and the iPhone are the two devices more than the rest that will make the “Everyone uses a Mac nowadays” statement possible. But you won’t hear it, as those iPod and iPhone owners, who in many cases will have a Windows PC at home, won’t be aware their favorite device is a Mac. (Now there’s an advertising campaign for Apple in a year or so: “You know you already use a Mac?”) So in that sense, they are invisible Macs.
With Windows also present in multiple devices, it will lead Mac devices for a very long time yet. But, again, a lot more people will be using a Mac than know it. And if you want to have a bit of fun, next time you see someone using a new generation iPod or an iPhone, say “Hey, I see you’ve got a Mac. Great aren’t they.”
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Comments
I strongly disagree.
To call an iPhone a Mac is to create expectations that the iPhone can never fulfill.
While the iPhone runs a form of OS-X, the user interface is different enough from the Mac’s UI that it is absurd to call it a Mac. You can’t load a standard Mac application on the iPhone, nor would it make sense to, as the mouseless/cursorless iPhone UI is not suited for it.
I strongly agree. With Brett. On that point. There.
The big question hovering over my little computery world is: how much of what we currently do can be converted for some kind of “verbless” interface?
Indeed so,guys. But the iPhone is a Mac device. Just like any device running Windows or Linux is a Windows or Linux device.
The proper name of OS X is Mac OS X. Hence calling any device that runs a form of Mac OS X, a Mac device.
So maybe, technically, you should say to the guy with the iPhone, “Hey I see you’ve got a Mac device.” But it’s not as much fun as shorthanding it to “Mac”.
And a much better conversation starter. From there you can explain to him that (in SJ’s words), his iPhone is running the same OS as Mac computers, and if he likes it on the iPhone he should check it out a Mac computer where he can do even more.
BTW Benji, got no idea what your question is asking!
Gotta keep up with the latest interviews Chris!
The argument that the iPhone is a Mac because the differentiating feature of a Mac is the proper name of its operating system is by the lowest of low standards, rather weak.
The iPhone is a Mac in no way that is a useful designation.
So, Benji, are Windows PDA or phones not really Windows devices? And my set-top box is not really a Linux-device?
The iPhone and iPod are now part of the Mac family. Just because they’re functionally different, doesn’t lessen the fact they’re Mac devices.
A couple of years ago, PowerBooks weren’t seen as Macs because they didn’t bear the Mac name. You could get into a right barney on forums arguing they were.
Apple saw this idenity crisis, and for the sake of the pedants who couldn’t see that all the computers running Mac OS X were indeed Macs, changed the names to include the “Mac” moniker. (Yes, there were more reasons than that)
Apple could have just as easily called the iPhone the “MacPhone” and then everyone would think of them as Macs.
But they already are because they run the same OS that makes a Mac a Mac. It has a different front end and different applications, but it’s still a Mac.
I do agree with Brett that “To call an iPhone a Mac is to create expectations that the iPhone can never fulfill.” (Although I wouldn’t say never.) But that’s just when you’re talking to the average man in the street.
The reality though is the iPhone is a handheld Mac that specializes in a few specific tasks. (Although that could all change when the SDK comes out.)
Windows PDAs and phones are not useful examples because they rejig the existing UI paradigm of pointing and clicking, merely putting it in a smaller box and allying it to certain radio communication hardware.
The iPhone is not a Mac because the only important definition of “Mac” is as a device that allows you to achieve certain tasks in certain ways. It is a subset of Personal Computer.
The iPhone’s central guiding principal was a different mode of interaction with such machines.
The reason we have more than one word for all the things in the universe [mip-mip?
] is that there are certain features of different conglomerations of matter and activity that have certain features that warrant their discrimination.
Why do we call a Mac a Mac, and not a PC? Because it is differentiated by attributes we consider important and thus defining. These things are not that it consists of a certain set of types of microchip, nor even that certain code enables those chips to do what they do. It is purely and simply because fundamentally Macs are differentiated from PCs in the ways that matter. To argue that the iPhone is “actually” a Mac is to say that what matters is that it runs a certain set of code with shared ancestry to what runs Macs. But all things share “ancestry” of attributes with other things. At some point we differentiate between them, giving them another name, which is merely a value judgement that they are different in some way that is important.
Definitions are only good in as much as they are helpful. To say that the iPhone “is” a Mac is in every single way unhelpful.
So, Benji, are Windows PDA or phones not really Windows devices? And my set-top box is not really a Linux-device?
To clarify, there’s no denying a PDA runs something whose name contains “Windows”, or that a linux-running set top box is running linux. But for all useful purposes, a PDA is not a PC and neither is a DVR. And definitions are only EVER as good as they are useful!
By the way I don’t mean to disparage the point that our general purpose hardware platform has now shrunk to the point where we now carry it in our pockets in things that are not at this stage usefully described as PCs. It’s quite a milestone.
That’s right, Benji, and why I say my theory is based on what I expect in a couple years hence, not today.
I reckon in a couple of years hence you just might find yourself using the iPhone 3 more often than your desk Mac for some tasks, the obvious ones being web and email, but others, which might seem unexpected now, will follow, maybe even iWork apps.
I also look forward to the day when the iPhone *is* your desk Mac.
In that scenario, when it’s at your desk, it will automatically dock (using bluetooth) to your monitor, keyboard and mouse, and it will have all your applications and data on it.
And one application that’s going to help make that viable is Time Machine, since the risk of losing your iPhone, and thus everything, is much higher than even losing a laptop. So people won’t make that commitment until they have a simple, safe, and guranteed backup.
Imagine that? You won’t just be buying a phone with media and internet features, but your computer.
What will that do to the computer market?? Suddenly all those iPhone 4s will be counted in Apple’s computer marketshare.
Thing is, the device will then be operating in two distinct modes which would mean it had become the two different things, which you acknowledge are different.
Which is to say, that device is not best described as a Mac, in opposition to something else, but best described as something that is both those things. Something which is not not either of them.
That device is my best guess at the future of personal computing, too.
The Wii can run the Opera web browser. The Xbox runs a modified version of Windows 2000. Are the Wii and the Xbox personal computers?
A Mac—or, as I prefer, Macintosh—is a personal computer made by Apple. Yes, the iPhone runs a modified version of OS X; but a Dell computer can run a modified version of OS X too (see the OSx86 project). Neither are Macs.
In Mr Howard’s scenario the iPhone replaces every function of the Macintosh. The iPhone 4s envisioned would not be Macs, though they might herald the end of the Mac. : - /