It Pays to Buy Quality

Well, my year-and-a-half wait is finally over...almost.  When I saw my first Retina MacBook Pro last year, I knew I had to have one, but just didn’t want to lay out the money at the time. I’ve been completely spoiled by the retina displays on my iPhone and iPad, so my 2009 17" MBP's 1920 X 1200 display just wasn't doing it for me any more. It's a bit like having Flounder Almandine for lunch then coming home to fish sticks for dinner. But it's more than just the display showing signs of age. In a little over four years, Apple (and the rest of to computer industry) has progressed light years beyond the Core2 Duo, USB 2, no Thunderbolt seventeen-incher that was top-of-the-line in July of '09. Like back then, as soon as Apple refreshed the MBPs last week, I ordered the most powerful model available with all the options.

The shiny, new 15.4" Retina MBP should arrive Wednesday with the fastest Intel Haswell CPU, discreet graphics, as much RAM (16 GB) as Apple will install and a full terabyte of flash storage. It's not because I'm spoiled. Well, maybe a little bit, but after 30 years in this business I've come to understand that the only way to get four years use out of a computer is to buy the latest model stuffed with as much speed, memory, graphics and storage as you can get. This strategy is even more important today given Apple's propensity to make fewer and fewer of their laptop's components user-upgradeable. This latest MBP model has no user-replaceable parts and iFixIt.com gives the new Retina MacBook Pros a score of 1 out of 10 for ease of repair (with 10 being easiest). In other words, don't buy what you need, buy what you think you may need four or five years from now. Another take-away from all this: Buy quality. It's worth it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my current MBP. It has served me well for 51 months, but it’s getting just a bit dated for my professional needs. I plan to give it to my wife who will likely be very happy with it for three of four more years given her more typical use demands. After all, it does have 8 gigs of RAM, a 512 GB SSD and I just updated it to Mavericks with all the new iLife and iWork apps and it runs them all great. You can never expect to do that with a "BestBuy special" PC. This example speaks volumes in favor of buying quality. Mr. Shawn Blanc codifies this philosophy quite succinctly.

Yes, I’m spending what some PC people would think is an eye-popping amount for my new MacBook Pro. A similarly-equipped Dell or HP would cost 15 - 20% less, but after adding Office, a good photo manager and movie maker (like what comes included with iWork and iLife) the savings are much less and you still end up with a Windows computer at the end of the day. In my opinion, that fact alone makes it inferior.

Tweet

California, Here I Come!

Lots of tech journalists have already buried Macworld.  Apple’s decision a year ago to nix participation in all trade shows probably didn’t mean much to anybody except the Macworld organizers and those of us who make the annual pilgrimage.  Conventional thinking would seem to dictate that a conference and trade show devoted to the use of Apple products would suffer if Apple wasn’t there, but I’m not sure we Macheads bow to conventions.  It looks like the number of vendor participants is down a bit and this year’s attendance is still TBD, but I get the feeling all is well.  Sure, there’s no big keynote presentation to get everyone all worked up.  Apple made their splash last week with the big iPad event, so there certainly won’t be any earth-shattering press releases, but those things are really for the rest of the world.  While we really enjoyed being part of the big keynote announcements (as evidenced by the 4 AM queues), us Macworld attendees really enjoy being around each other.  NASCAR fans have Daytona, Harley-Davidson riders have Sturgis and we Apple geeks have Macworld.  We really are fans in the truest sense of the word.

I, for one think that IDG (the company that puts on Macworld Expo) has a real opportunity to make this expo all about us fans. In fact, it will be interesting to see just what type atmosphere they foster with no worries about offending Apple.  You know, when the cat’s away…

I’m traveling to San Francisco tomorrow (Monday) to attend the conference that begins two days before the expo opens.  I’m signed up for a couple of labs Tuesday and Wednesday and they look like the normal fair.  Maybe they’ll add a little extra to the curriculum like say, iPhone baseband modification or how to crack wireless encryption with an iPod Touch.  There’s no reason now to keep a lid on that type of thing.  What’s Apple going to do, boycott?  I for one would be first in line for a lab called “OS X on a Dell Mini 10” or “Running Snow Leopard on Your iPad”.  These are exaggerations, of course, but its not hard to imagine how constrained things can be with Apple looking over your shoulder.  In fact, I’m certain that not pissing off Mr. Jobs was high on IDG’s priority list for past expos.

The pre-expo buzz seems to be as prolific as ever, just minus the rumors and guesswork about what Apple may announce at the keynote.  For me, I’m OK with Apple having already shot their wad last week.  Now we can turn our attention to the rest of the show and not worry about Apple’s overshadowing.  The Apple portion of the expo was never much to see anyway.  They put on a few good presentations, but for the most part it amounted to little more than a great big Apple store staffed with employees who rarely knew as much about the products as the average expo attendee.  I’m sure the biggest hurt for IDG will be the absence of the check Apple used to write for renting almost half of the south hall.

Sorry, but no time to continue, gotta pack.  If this is the last Macworld Expo as many have predicted, I’m gonna get my money’s worth.  With Apple being more popular than ever, there must be a good number of hard-core zealots like myself to keep this train rolling.  I’m guessing there’ll be an Expo 2011.

Tablet, Shmablet. Will Steve Jobs Make History? Again?

Growing up in Houston as a huge baseball fan I was privileged to watch Nolan Ryan pitch for the Astros.  There was always a possibility of witnessing a no-hitter whenever he was the hurler.  Watching Mr. Jobs walk out on stage is a lot like that.  Any Apple announcement he presents is a potential history-maker.

If January 27th doesn’t get here pretty soon I fear many of the Apple technorati will suffer aneurisms from the anxiety and anticipation.  Whatever Mr. Jobs has up his sleeve, his company is the beneficiary of millions of words of free press speculating about it.  I’m continually amazed by Apple’s ability to virtually hypnotize its customers and tech pundits alike.  It’s hard to imagine any device living up to the hype of the past few weeks, but that’s what I thought before the iPhone was announced.  One thing is certain.  If any company is capable of exceeding the expectations of us mere mortals, its Apple.  Do they have one more home run in their bat? Are they capable of producing another industry-changing product?  If so, it would be number six.  Don’t believe me?

1. In 1984 Apple announced the Mac and changed the way people interacted with computers.  Before that, nobody knew what a mouse was or even an icon.  Operating a personal computer through a graphical user interface with sound and text-to-speech was completely foreign to PC users running DOS and ASCII-based applications like Wordstar and Lotus 1-2-3.  I know.  I was one of them.
2. In 1997 the first Bondi Blue iMac shattered everyone’s “beige box” concept of what a computer should look like and how easy they could be to set up, get on-line and operate.
3. 2001 was the year of the iPod.  Five cavernous gigs of storage, a unique click wheel and a UI that redefined how we consume digital content.  Yes, I know it wasn’t the first digital music player, but I’d argue it was the first good one.
4. October 16, 2003 is the real birthday of iTunes.  It was released in January 2001 for the Mac, but it languished in relative obscurity until Apple released version 4.1 on the Windows platform.  At the time, Macs only occupied about 1.5% of the personal computer market.  Releasing iTunes for Windows launched the iTunes/iPod ecosystem into the stratosphere where iTunes now enjoys the enviable position as the worlds largest music retailer with iPods controlling greater than 75% market share of digital music players.
5. 2007. The iPhone.  Enough said.

Great companies are built on just one accomplishment the size of any one of these.  Apple (more precisely, Mr. Jobs) has knocked five out of the park!  Rumor has it, he’s excited about this thingy he’ll announce on the 27th.  If this new product gives him a woody it must be something really special.

Maybe the press is justifiably chatty.  If any one of them had been this giddy about the iPod in 2001 they’d be considered a modern-day Nostradamus by now.  Back then CNET’s headline read “Apple’s iPod Spurs Mixed Reactions”.  No matter what Apple reveals in a couple of weeks, it will probably be a commercial success.  There are more than enough fanboys out there with $1000 tucked away who’ll buy anything Steve tells them to.  I would almost put myself in that category and my wife would certainly count me with the fanboys.  Right now, I can’t think of one reason why I might want some sort of tablet computer, but like everyone who isn’t Steve Jobs, I’m limited by my lack of vision.  The reports I read from this week’s Consumer Electronics Show indicate I’m not the only myopic.  Las Vegas seemed awash in prototype “slate” computers from a variety of companies all trying to jump the gun on Apple, no doubt.  Obviously, none succeeded or we’d all have pictures of their new device burned into our LCDs by now.  Apple, by comparison, is not satisfied to simply fill a perceived need, but tends to invent a new need (and a new market) by devising original and creative ways to utilize technology.  I guess we’ll all find out what we’ve been missing on January 27th.  It will be interesting to see if Mr. Jobs brings his “A” game.