Is Apple Getting Complacent?

Whatever happened to the Applelution?

Remember the iMac? THE iMac? The Bondi Blue translucent all-in-one may have impressed some. The iMac G5/Intel all-in-one is impressive. But they are both ho-hum when compared to the iMac G4. Computers reached the pinnacle of design and usability with the iMac G4. No one, not even Apple, has been able to return to the summit of that mountain.

In early 2002, with the release of the iMac G4, Apple provided us a machine that was more than an evolution and more than a revolution. It was a machine ahead of its time. In reality, the design of the iMac G5 should have preceded the iMac G4. I wrote at the time there was only one suitable adjective for it—applelutionary. In an applelution, at least one step in the evolutionary process is jumped but at the same time, an applelution presents a revolution in how we understand a commodity, or use it.

If you think about PCs in 1982, they didn’t look much different come 2002. Whereas if you compared a 1982 Apple computer to a 2002 iMac, you’d go “Wow”. But if you showed people in 1982 what the 2002 iMac looked like, they’d be impressed but not surprised. In 1982 we expected computers of 20 years into the future to look a lot different. It took an applelution to get there though.

But is Apple still applelutionary? Certainly as far as ice skating on the Styx goes, Apple has almost started a revolution among the loyalists on several occasions, but has any product itself been up to the evolutionary and revolutionary design of the iMac G4. Has any Apple product since the iMac G4 skipped a step of the evolutionary process?

The Mac mini? Laptop with bring your own keyboard, mouse and monitor.

The iMac G4? Yawn. Laptop with the keyboard ripped out and a screen stuck in its place.

The Mighty Mouse? The what? Is anyone still using them? Mine’s gathering dust somewhere.

iPod nano? Every manufacturer’s got one of them.

In fact, the iMac G4 was so applelutionary, that not one other manufacturer was able to successfully copy it.

Is anyone applelutionary in 2006? Unless you’ve been too occupied with Hades bid for the next Winter Olympics, you’d know the answer to that question. One company is launching upon us this week its own applelution. That company of course is Nintendo with the Nintendo Wii and it’s applelutionary new controller.

Nintendo in 2006 has picked up the baton that Apple dropped—and it’s a very interesting baton at that. Time Magazine has areview of the Wii. The article says in part:

Nintendo has grasped two important notions that have eluded its competitors. The first is, Don’t listen to your customers. The hard-core gaming community is extremely vocal—they blog a lot—but if Nintendo kept listening to them, hard-core gamers would be the only audience it ever had. “[Wii] was unimaginable for them,” Iwata says. “And because it was unimaginable, they could not say that they wanted it. If you are simply listening to requests from the customer, you can satisfy their needs, but you can never surprise them. Sony and Microsoft make daily-necessity kinds of things. They have to listen to the needs of the customers and try to comply with their requests.

(Maybe Nintendo dropped the Revolution name because it knew the controller represents more, that it is an applelution.)

Is Apple listening too much to its customers? Apple has afterall given us many things various users have been clamoring for for years—a multi-button mouse; Intel inside; dual boot with Windows; flash based iPods; and iPods with video playback to name a few. Is this a dangerous path Apple walks? Is it headed down the Microsoft road where customer opinion dictates too much? Apple innovated itself through the recession, but does it now need to innovate itself through the good times?

Will Apple pick up the applelution baton again? Does Apple need another applelutionary product?