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It's simply stunning to me to see how long it's taken the computer geeks to work this out. Apple stopped making toys for you over a decade ago and you are only

It's simply stunning to me to see how long it's taken the computer geeks to work this out. Apple stopped making toys for you over a decade ago and you are only just realising it now? I guess this is another consequence of the filter bubble. As all we read on the internet is the opinion of other geeks, we forget that geeks are hopelessly outnumbered by normals and they are the ones Apple is targeting and reaping the rewards. This was always Steve Jobs vision and it's not like it was a secret. However, the most ludicrous part of this post is the suggestion that Apple would be best served as a company making servers again and trying its best to grab back that lucrative desktop linux market. This, in a nutshell, is why Apple was revolutionary. The geeks just simply didn't see normal people and made hardware and software that suited their own needs and behold, it sucked mightily. Apple made the step of putting the normal person first and, shockingly, normal people decided to pay good money for their products. All of this should be obvious to anyone who reads HN and witnessed Apples meteoric rise. It's a bit disconcerting to discover that apparently it isn't.

tolmasky 14y ago
The article isn't saying Apple should go back to making servers, he is just saying they are no longer serving him in particular anymore, which is fair. I will however contend that MY main issue with Apple now a-days is that its actually becoming worse on the "normal person front" (at least when it comes to OS X). Messages for example is a complete disaster. I regularly have to help family members with their Macs (many of which originally moved to the Mac on my insistence ages ago), and I can tell you that they are still quite confused (increasingly so) about how to use these machines. Here is an article that touches on this: http://blog.davidchartier.com/post/36634783567/im-getting-sick-of-making-excuses http://blog.davidchartier.com/post/36634783567/im-getting-si... However, I am still pretty happy with iOS/iDevices. I have not been as happy with an Apple product as with the iPad mini in a LONG time. I do agree with others though that if they don't get their act together with "services" (Maps, Sync, basically anything that isn't judged on a purely client side "niceness" scale), it may be an issue for them. However my opinion is that they just shouldn't be bothering with this at all, but that's a whole other story.
danieldk 14y ago
There is also a contingent of UNIX users who use Mac OS X pragmatically. I have never had the illusion that Apple wasn't a consumer device company at heart. But Macs have been great UNIX workstations for the last decade or so. Once they make more serious attempts to turn their laptop line into 'iOS computers', I'll switch back to Linux or BSD. But for now, it is good hardware with a good UNIX operating system.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  When I was at CERN, back in 2004 they made a session at the IT building showing us how great it would be to use Mac OS X as UNIX workstation. Those days are long gone it seems.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    How so? Nothing is changed.
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      Now Macs are being sold as iOS development stations.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        They still do everything they've always done.
- demallien 14y ago
  I just bought a MacBook Air last week, after a 2 year break without a Mac laptop. I had been using Lion and Mountain Lion on a Mac Mini, but the last week or so have been a revelation for me. Crazy battery life (about 9 hours of normal programming), full screen apps with swiping to switch between them, fast fast fast at everyday operations thanks to the SSD, the whole thing is at the same time a major turn towards iDevice-ification, and a giant leap forward in usability for laptops. I wonder how many people worrying about iOS-ification are: a) running Lion, where the transition was still in mid-course, or b) using a desktop, where the design decisions aren't so obviously right (my Mac Mini for example has a huge monitor, hence I'm less inclined to use full-screen apps) In case a), there were definite weakness in Lion. Full-screen apps hadn't yet made their near-global appearance, and Spaces was ... weird. These problems have been shaken out in Mountain Lion. For b) it seems to me that OSX has been optimised for the laptop environment, where screen real-estate is limited. If you aren't using full-screen as your standard app config, you're missing out on some of what makes Mountain Lion a great experience). When I compare all of this to the laptop I use at work, a Dell running Fedora, there is no comparison. My Mac is a far, far better development machine (well, aside from the fact that brew is weak sauce compared to a full-blown yum, but then this is not news). It's not a question of there being pros and cons on each side, my Mac is simply better for pretty much any metric I care to imagine. Which is not to say that some people may not have genuine grievances with the current Mac platform. I just wanted to add my own personal experience - going from being mildly disappointed by Lion to completely wowed by Mountain Lion.
greedo 14y ago
Please stop with the "geeks and normals" meme. It does nothing but make you sound elitist.
- shimfish 14y ago
  Is it the terms you object to or do you fundamentally reject the premise?
  - greedo 14y ago
    It's obviously the premise; that people who are proficient in computers (whatever that may mean) are abnormal. Computer/tech savvy is obviously a continuum. Lumping people into binary categories doesn't help the conversation much.
    - shimfish 14y ago
      They are abnormal in the sense that they are a minority. It's not a value judgement. Do you accept that those with enough proficiency to be creating commercial software have different modes of computer usage to the majority that don't?
      - greedo 14y ago
        Words have meaning. Being in a minority doesn't mean abnormal. You may not intend it to be a value judgement, but it clearly is when you're referring to a group of people. Perhaps in a clinical setting normal/abnormal doesn't have any perjorative qualities, but in normal day to day use it does. Your question is also a non sequiter. Computer usage patterns aren't always correlated to either proficiency in programming or computer experience. For example, I know many commercial programmers who have the most simplistic understanding of their OS, be it Linux, OSX or Windows. They don't understand the difference between CISC/RISC, nor do they exhibit a greater facility with various application than non-programmers. As I've said before, computer knowledge is a continuum, and trying to pigeonhole users into neat categories is foolish. There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. Neither are better than the other, and calling some normal with the subtext that they're inferior to computer geeks is elitist.
smacktoward 14y ago
We forget that geeks are hopelessly outnumbered by normals and they are the ones Apple is targeting and reaping the rewards. This was always Steve Jobs vision and it's not like it was a secret. Nah, Steve Jobs' vision wasn't to make computers for "normals." That was Jef Raskin's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin) vision. Steve Jobs' vision was to make computers for Steve Jobs.

tolmasky 14y ago

The article isn't saying Apple should go back to making servers, he is just saying they are no longer serving him in particular anymore, which is fair. I will however contend that MY main issue with Apple now a-days is that its actually becoming worse on the "normal person front" (at least when it comes to OS X). Messages for example is a complete disaster. I regularly have to help family members with their Macs (many of which originally moved to the Mac on my insistence ages ago), and I can tell you that they are still quite confused (increasingly so) about how to use these machines. Here is an article that touches on this: http://blog.davidchartier.com/post/36634783567/im-getting-sick-of-making-excuses http://blog.davidchartier.com/post/36634783567/im-getting-si... However, I am still pretty happy with iOS/iDevices. I have not been as happy with an Apple product as with the iPad mini in a LONG time. I do agree with others though that if they don't get their act together with "services" (Maps, Sync, basically anything that isn't judged on a purely client side "niceness" scale), it may be an issue for them. However my opinion is that they just shouldn't be bothering with this at all, but that's a whole other story.

danieldk 14y ago

There is also a contingent of UNIX users who use Mac OS X pragmatically. I have never had the illusion that Apple wasn't a consumer device company at heart. But Macs have been great UNIX workstations for the last decade or so. Once they make more serious attempts to turn their laptop line into 'iOS computers', I'll switch back to Linux or BSD. But for now, it is good hardware with a good UNIX operating system.

pjmlp 14y ago
When I was at CERN, back in 2004 they made a session at the IT building showing us how great it would be to use Mac OS X as UNIX workstation. Those days are long gone it seems.
- rayiner 14y ago
  How so? Nothing is changed.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    Now Macs are being sold as iOS development stations.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      They still do everything they've always done.
demallien 14y ago
I just bought a MacBook Air last week, after a 2 year break without a Mac laptop. I had been using Lion and Mountain Lion on a Mac Mini, but the last week or so have been a revelation for me. Crazy battery life (about 9 hours of normal programming), full screen apps with swiping to switch between them, fast fast fast at everyday operations thanks to the SSD, the whole thing is at the same time a major turn towards iDevice-ification, and a giant leap forward in usability for laptops. I wonder how many people worrying about iOS-ification are: a) running Lion, where the transition was still in mid-course, or b) using a desktop, where the design decisions aren't so obviously right (my Mac Mini for example has a huge monitor, hence I'm less inclined to use full-screen apps) In case a), there were definite weakness in Lion. Full-screen apps hadn't yet made their near-global appearance, and Spaces was ... weird. These problems have been shaken out in Mountain Lion. For b) it seems to me that OSX has been optimised for the laptop environment, where screen real-estate is limited. If you aren't using full-screen as your standard app config, you're missing out on some of what makes Mountain Lion a great experience). When I compare all of this to the laptop I use at work, a Dell running Fedora, there is no comparison. My Mac is a far, far better development machine (well, aside from the fact that brew is weak sauce compared to a full-blown yum, but then this is not news). It's not a question of there being pros and cons on each side, my Mac is simply better for pretty much any metric I care to imagine. Which is not to say that some people may not have genuine grievances with the current Mac platform. I just wanted to add my own personal experience - going from being mildly disappointed by Lion to completely wowed by Mountain Lion.

greedo 14y ago

Please stop with the "geeks and normals" meme. It does nothing but make you sound elitist.

shimfish 14y ago
Is it the terms you object to or do you fundamentally reject the premise?
- greedo 14y ago
  It's obviously the premise; that people who are proficient in computers (whatever that may mean) are abnormal. Computer/tech savvy is obviously a continuum. Lumping people into binary categories doesn't help the conversation much.
  - shimfish 14y ago
    They are abnormal in the sense that they are a minority. It's not a value judgement. Do you accept that those with enough proficiency to be creating commercial software have different modes of computer usage to the majority that don't?
    - greedo 14y ago
      Words have meaning. Being in a minority doesn't mean abnormal. You may not intend it to be a value judgement, but it clearly is when you're referring to a group of people. Perhaps in a clinical setting normal/abnormal doesn't have any perjorative qualities, but in normal day to day use it does. Your question is also a non sequiter. Computer usage patterns aren't always correlated to either proficiency in programming or computer experience. For example, I know many commercial programmers who have the most simplistic understanding of their OS, be it Linux, OSX or Windows. They don't understand the difference between CISC/RISC, nor do they exhibit a greater facility with various application than non-programmers. As I've said before, computer knowledge is a continuum, and trying to pigeonhole users into neat categories is foolish. There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. Neither are better than the other, and calling some normal with the subtext that they're inferior to computer geeks is elitist.

smacktoward 14y ago

We forget that geeks are hopelessly outnumbered by normals and they are the ones Apple is targeting and reaping the rewards. This was always Steve Jobs vision and it's not like it was a secret. Nah, Steve Jobs' vision wasn't to make computers for "normals." That was Jef Raskin's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin) vision. Steve Jobs' vision was to make computers for Steve Jobs.