It’s not for the rest of us.
But of course we will be more than happy to use it as well.
That means it’s the computer for everybody, the computer that everybody will want!

When Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh in 1984, it was marketed as the computer for “the rest of us”.
Thats was supposed to be the people not willing to use a command line interface. Some, because they were tired of it, as they had to use it against their will (and because there was nothing else). Some, because they didn’t want to learn these boring interfaces.

It was sure fun and easy to use for some of us. But even in the ’80s, I’ve always been aware that most Mac users were using no more than 10% of the capacities of their computer and had difficulties understanding and remembering the relation between menus and keyboard shortcuts, how the file system was workin’, this and many other things.

1) Constatation: “The PC wars are over. Done.
Microsoft won a long time ago.”

Steve Jobs in Fortune (1996-02-19)

When Steve said that in early 1996, before the corporate guys in charge of Apple called him to the rescue, I remember very well (and I’m sure I’m not alone) that I was very puzzled. Would that mean he accepted the victory of mediocrity over quality?

Of course, absolutely not! And what he has done since he returned at his place, chasing corporate America out of Apple, has proven that he never accepted the defeat.

2) Consolidation of Apple

Steve worked hard to try to correct the past, to correct all the nuisance the felon Sculley had caused (probably the biggest mistake Steve Jobs ever made, at least in his public life, was to hire that guy). That is, the domination of the computing world by Microsoft.

Under his direction Apple has gone from beleaguered to the absolute and uncontested leader of the technology world. New line of Macs have been built. NeXTSTEP was adapted to the Mac with the help of the transitional Carbon, giving to people an exceptional system that very few had experienced before. It’s now in full swing and powers incredibly powerful machines. The last iMac is a real workstation. The rest of us is in paradise.

3) The Switcher strategy (starting in 2001)

In the same time, a new strategy was elaborated by using new devices that Apple never built before to make Apple known by the rest of them. The iPod came first in 2001. The sales went incredibly well and many new people got that way their first Apple product.

The Apple Store came also in 2001, to show Macs to people who had never seen one or even never heard about them, an immense success.
Then the iTunesStore in 2003, a success story again.
Add to this a new campaign of very popular advertising.

In spite of all this success, the switchin’ rate is not fast enough. It seems impossible to the Mac to reach 20% of the market. It would take years at this rate. It is quite clear now that there are other reasons than the ignorance of the masses.

1 – file systems are not understood by the majority of people et usual systems (including Mac OS X) are too complicated for the rest of them.

2 – many PC users are so used, by years of wrong doing, to make simple things the complicated way, that they don’t get how the Macintosh interface works!

3 – most PC users really don’t find the Mac that much better than Windows. The copycat work done by Microsoft is good enough for the masses. They can recognize that the Mac is better but not to the point they would care to switch and learn new things almost as complicated as the ones they already know. They will never have the impetus to switch to the Mac.

So it seems that what Steve Jobs said in 1996 is still true in some ways.

4) Plan B: Build a new paradigm

One of the revolutionary aspects of the Macintosh was the way you could manipulate the file system with the Finder. That pleased very well the rest of us.
But the rest of them don’t get the file system. So they don’t know what to do with the icons. The application layer they use still don’t hide the file system. You still have to know where to put the files you create. You have to remember where you put them last time.

It’s then that Apple began to give some applications the power to manage all the files needed so the user has no need to open the Finder. It’s the case of iTunes and myself I’m very pleased with that. I give iTune full control and I like it! Upgrade to a bigger drive is now a very simple thing: let iTunes do the trick! It was a nightmare with the first versions.

But something really new appears with the Widgets: a new paradigm is then tested by Apple. The widget layer is one level upon the application layer that we know since 1984. At that level you don’t need to know anything that happens under the hood. After all most car drivers never open the hood. They want to do the same with computers. The interface of the iPhone is based on this experiment. A button is an application and you want to do the thing that you know this application is able to do. You just push the button. If necessary a list will be shown to you but you never know where it’s going when it’s closed and you don’t care. That’s the most important new thing that brings this new interface.
There are also no windows that you can resize and can hide other windows. Windows are a thing of the past (and copycats are dead!)

The success of the iPhone has opened a royal path for Apple to build a more powerful interface.
We will be delighted to learn about it in a few hours.
And yes the “Tablet” will do what most people want to do with a computer. I won’t extrapolate any longer.
It’s really the computer for the rest of them!

Of course I would like it to have a webcam so the dream of a videophone that symbolized the future for all of us when we were kids (and that for any generation alive) would finally happen thanks to Apple. But if it’s not for the first iteration, it will be for the next one. Only Steve Jobs and Tim Cook knew if it was possible for Apple to afford that financially (of course it is possible technically). And people would be very excited by this. Me, I don’t care!

I would add that the secrecy of Apple is a good thing: Steve Jobs sure remembers very well that Bill Gates had a solid access to the Macintosh for months before it was unveiled to the public. We all know what happened later. This time no risk anyway: nobody will be able to copy Apple for a long long time!

It seems to us that the correction of the past is in a good way!