Apple vs. Microsoft

I know what you're thinking: Yawn. The internet is rife with such comparisons, written by fanatical fans from both camps. Many are pocket protector wearing, pasty skinned techno-geniuses who know more about the bus speeds of the latest internal components they just read about at their favorite rumor blog than they do about what color socks they're wearing, and will gleefully and mercilessly tear into the flesh of anyone who disagrees in the slightest with their bullet proof, sky-high opinion of their brand, which is obviously the best brand.

At the risk of attracting these vicious hordes of techno-devotees who roam the internet countryside in search of the fresh meat of someone like me who dares to post my personal opinions about the subject on an open (albeit obscure) public forum, I thought it might nevertheless be interesting to share what I see as the philosophical, rather than technical differences between the two companies.

Bill and Steve - What gets these two out of bed in the morning thirty years after they first set out? Both are billionaires many times over, they don't need the paychecks. There's got to be something else that drives them. Even a casual sifting through of the Google query results for "Bill Gates" and "Steve Jobs" uncovers some fascinating insights into their psyche's, and how they helped change the world.

apple

Why an apple for a logo? Maybe because it's something organic, natural, simple, universal, even a little anti-establishment in the age of the universally feared Big Blue. It was Adam, after all, who took a bite of a forbidden apple from the tree of knowledge. In hindsight, all are great guesses, with some potential truth behind them, but in reality it started out like this. The original logo was an image of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree, which as an ethereal concept is cool, but from a visual marketing standpoint it doesn't make much sense. It's tough to reproduce effectively and impactfully on letter head, key chains, and computer cases. The Isaac Newton/apple tree logo was soon replaced by the now famous striped rainbow colored logo of the same shape you see above shortly after the company was founded. However, the underlying spirit conveyed by the original logo refers to a subtle and simple insight into the company's philosophy - it's all about an apple as the catalyst, the spark from which Newton's earth shattering scientific, revolutionary and inspirational idea manifested itself. It wasn't about the physics behind an apple falling at a velocity of x striking the head with the impact of y resulting in a subsequent theory of gravity, z, and it wasn't about the atomic structure of the apple istelf. It was about the very moment the idea was inspired, and what inspired it.

This shows real vision at a time when computers were thought of as huge machines used primarily by corporations to crunch large piles of data, and perhaps, with a little luck, gadgets brainy scientific types might want to shell out big bucks to have in their basements to be put to work as electronic lab rats programmed to run through pointless programming mazes just for the sake of proving they could be commanded to...uh, run through a maze.



As evidenced by the example above, Apple's were indeed primitive by today's standards, only able to execute basic commands (feel free to pause, fast forward, or mute as you wish!), yet Jobs and his crew saw beyond the nuts-and-bolts hardware and software applications right into the heart of what "personal computing" (still a radical idea at the time) could allow. Almost two decades before the modern internet existed with its billions of web pages, public bulletin board discussion forums, and blogs Apple saw an opportunity to bring individuals closer together, socially, intellectually and creatively through the vehicle of technology.

The name. In the infancy of the personal computing revolution, lots of companies had flashy, technical sounding names that all focused on the hardware or at least the scientific nature of the hardware in order to convey a sense of technical wizardry, scientific wonderment, and a utopian vision of the near future where the machine itself would be king. Examples of such names still around today are IBM, Xerox, NEC, Texas Instruments, and Microsoft. Makes you think of laboratories, blinking lights, data crunching, and the constant hum of the cooling fans of these behemoths attended to by their keepers, the technorati, the elite - untouchable by mere mortals, smarter than you or I. While this strategy did in fact attract a lot of scientific types, it initially didn't do a whole lot for the average Joe, who would never buy a personal computer anyhow, so who cares? Apple, by comparison, caught a lot of negative flack at the time because according to Madison Avenue the name had nothing at all to do with computers; it didn't even make people think about technology. "This," said Jobs, "is why the name has to be Apple."

Jobs believes that technology, computers in particular, allow us to amplify our abilities, allowing us to be more creative than we could on our own. Not only that, but technology can allow us to share that creativity, that very personal truth, with a lot more people. A lot of us have something we want to do, something to express. He believed technology could accelerate that, whether it may be creating art, drawing engineering schematics for a large building, composing music, or communicating with others. Computer hardware and software were simply a means to an end, not the purpose.  As Jobs famously (and radically!) described it at the time, a computer should be a bicycle for the mind.

Apple wanted to change the world.

"I think there's actually very little distinction between an artist and a scientist or engineer of the highest caliber." Jobs once said in an interview. "I've never had a distinction in my mind between those two types of people. They've just been to me people who pursue different paths but basically kind of headed to the same goal which is to express something of what they perceive to be the truth around them so that others can benefit by it."



Microsoft

Founded in the mid-70's, MS was first and foremost a hobbyist's company that wrote (or bought) software code and modified it so it would work in existing machines built from kits that didn't do anything practical, the first of which being the Altair 8800. They didn't build standalone units like Apple did at the time, but rather saw there could potentially be a lot of people who would want to have access to different kinds of software at home which ran on a variety of differnet products and kit computers. They were'nt really sure at the beginning what kinds of things people might want to use a home computer for, besides hobbiest activities, but nevertheless they knew this was the future. Net net, it was more about the idea of molding software to work in different machines rather than pursing the goal of "changing the world". Gates and his partners pioneered the business model of writing or modifying code that could be used in computers, then licensing for a fee the code as intellectual property so it could be sold at a profit to companies like Altair, and shortly after that the mighty IBM.

At first blush my characterization sounds like MS was all about the money, and that's all. Not true, however. I think Gates and Co. had great instincts into the power and near limitless potential this business model held not only with regards to their own profitability, but more importantly to the potential future technological advancements their software would provide as fuel to the emerging microprocessor market.

Early on, programming language was in its essence free -- it was the hardware that it ran on that cost so much money. There were other companies that wrote custom languages for big mainframe computers, but no one had the inclination to pursue the universal microprocessor market like MS did. Obviously, their vision paid off as not only personal home users began buying more and more individual units, but as businesses ultimately would, a dozen or so years later, set up millions of work stations for every employee with generic hardware built by a variety of different companies running the same licensed copy of Windows 3.1.

So, back to the early 80's again. From a philosophical perspective, we've got Gates who realizes potential no one else sees. As time goes on his philosophy on programming becomes less cumbersome and technical, and more user friendly. He eventually learns that his competitor, a small company in California called Apple, is building some top secret new machines with a radial new approach to running the thing called "point and click", originally designed by a small group at Xerox as a side project their corporate brass gave a thumbs down to, so they sold it to Apple. The beauty both Gates and Jobs saw right away, that the Xerox brass missed, was that a user didn't need to be a computer programmer to tell his computer to open a word processing program so he can write a paper, or open a file folder with their financial documents. Gates saw that now, with a click of a device called a mouse, one could point and click on a file folder, a program icon, or any other field on the screen to make the computer work for you. Gates also saw that this approach would bring the world of computer technology to everyone, so he tried to copy the look and feel created by Xerox and perfected at Apple. He had his programmers strive to make it work for a variety of different brands of computers being sold at the time, thus opening up many more markets he never before imagined. Apple's shortfall, he felt, was in the fact that their software only worked on their machines, and they wouldn't be able to support the coming PC revolution. In short, you could say that Jobs had the vision to know how to make technology approachable for everyone, which opened up their creative and intellectual potential, and Gates had the vision to realize the market opportunity and provide a programming language that worked on enough machines to support it.

As much as the techno-devotee's would likely drop to the floor spasmodic for me saying this, neither Apple nor Microsoft would be where they are today without the other. The personal computing revolution was too big to be managed by one company alone. Had Apple not existed, Microsoft might not have seen the wisdom of steering their development towards visually oriented screen objects in their products to appeal to more than just the computer scientist or hobbyist. Had Microsoft not existed Apple would never have been able to physically produce nearly enough machines to accommodate the hyper-demand of the early 90's.

Today, Microsoft enjoys a far greater market share than Apple. As Jobs puts it when asked about this seemingly troubling fact, "Mercedes Benz and BMW also have a small market share when compared to GM, but they still make a better product." Even today, the market can't be supported by just one company, yet, because of the ongoing fierce competition between the two we all benefit from Apple machines that run Microsoft Word and Excel, and PC's that run video and imaging editing software.

As technology continues its forward progress, it will branch out beyond the stand alone personal computer. Already devices like phones contain functionality to organize our lives, shirt-pocket sized personal music and video players are becoming as common as the living room television, and portable notebook computers can easily connect to the internet wirelessly while sitting under a tree enjoying a sunny Fall afternoon thinking differently and dreaming about where we want the computer revolution to take us today; what the next big thing will be. The scene has the potential to be very Isaac Newton like.

Wow, that gives me a great idea for a logo...

Sensory overload

Disclaimer: I have chosen Fox News as the subject of this discussion only because I believe they edge out the other 24 hour cable news networks in their use of graphics technology, but truth be told every dedicated cable news channel is guilty of leveraging the same strategies, just not as effectively as Fox has.


It was my Mom who theorized recently that the reason these 24 hour cable news networks rely so heavily on splashy, strobe-lighting graphics is to keep the human eye focused on the screen. By its very design, the human eye is genetically predisposed to flick towards a flash of light or jerking motion instinctively, a skill probably honed early in our species' history to keep our distant ancestors away from danger, and alive to see another day. It still comes in quite handy while driving our vehicles down the eight lane 65mph mega highway that for many parts of the country is the new Main Street, USA.

Earlier in the era of television advertisers and programmers relied on keeping someone's attention through the use of engaging dialog, whether the topic was a televised debate about McCarthyism or a game show host lauding the wholesome properties of Minute Rice via an hourly live read. To be fair, those were the days before remote controls, 498 channels, High Def TV and DVD players, so the practice of keeping an attentive audience who is still getting used to the idea of tiny people living inside the wooden and glass box in their living room was easy as, well, Minute Rice. Are cable news channels, who are by their very nature striving to blast past all the glitzy distractions of modern daily life to pin viewers to their couches for twenty four hours at a time using a variety of advanced graphics technology to leverage our ancient instinctive nature to glue our overloaded eyes to the sweeping, colorful movement and periodic alarming strobe lights on the screen? Will this result in a sort of "Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf" syndrome whereby legions of glassy-eyed news junkies, instincts numbed from sensory overload stare straight ahead and fail to spot the flashes of light coming from that fire truck barreling down across their field of vision?

Curious to test the theory, I conducted my own ad hoc experiment. Yesterday my beloved Car and Driver magazine arrived, perfect timing. I kicked back, tuned in to Fox News, opened the magazine, and attempted reading about the latest 0-60mph in .3 seconds street legal Corvette. True to Mom's theory, the movement and flashing definitely made it hard to focus on anything but the screen. I lost my place many times, and must have inadvertently re-read the bit about the Vette's cornering capabilities at least five times. So, the graphics do definitely grab one's attention away from whatever else is in their field of reality and pull it magnetically to the screen. Check.

But maybe the same would happen on any TV show? Perhaps intense graphics have little to do with distracting me away from my magazine article? Maybe I was being too hard on cable news networks. I tuned in to PBS to see what would happen. "News Hour with Jim Lehrer", perfect.

Big difference. I not only got through my Corvette article, but also the article on the new Mercedes Benz luxury Hybrid concept, and even a few pages of the Letters section without so much as a glance at the screen. I was listening, and the same basic format was had there -- same big stories, same roundtable debate, albeit with less yelling and infantile insults flung at the participants from the newscaster. So, it appears as though graphics, flashing lights, bells, and whistles definitely do have a significant, measurable effect on viewer's attention when compared to a less, entertaining medium.

But what about sound? I switch back to Fox News, but this time I mute the cacophony. It's pretty interesting, you should try it sometime. Same flashing lights, Old Glory waving bravely in slow motion in the background behind the laid in boxes of talking heads. Same corporate news logo spinning like a lethargic top in the bottom left, reminding me what time it is in all four time zones, and of course -- The Crawl. That ever present, bite sized spoon fed meal of nourishing mush at the bottom of every screen on every cable news network.

The image of a chubby, cute infant having tiny spoon after tiny spoon of mashed bananas gently pushed into it's cute little mouth by a cooing mother popped into my head.

But, I noticed something else, too. The flash-bang impact of the news was significantly less with the sound muted. I was able to get almost all the way through the Mid Priced Sedan Comparo before an explosion, literally, of color and corporate logo blasted its way -- complete with animated bits of..wherever the Gibraltar like logo burst forth from before fading mercifully to the perfectly groomed face of the newscaster. The crawl cooed temptingly at the bottom of the screen, but with the sound off, it was easier to turn away.

Conclusion: Mom, you were right. The bright lights do absolutely have a real effect on us humans. Probably our pets, too, on some level. But looking at the whole picture, the psychologists and computer animation artists have gone one step further by introducing the siren to the lights, so to speak. Listen to a cable news cast tonight. Years ago, while watching Cronkite you'd have heard an important sounding, one note repeating little ditty, almost like Morse Code sending us the important news from the front lines, before the lights panned up on the master himself. But today, that won't fly. Today you've got loud swooshing, explosions, dramatic orchestral, almost rock and roll like, crescendos, another swoosh sound or two (like jets buzzing about above our heads), which eventually settles into the heavily emphatic up and down speech of the actor reading the teleprompter.

Thanks to the technology of highly advanced video production equipment behind the scenes at every newsroom on the dial (that's quaint, isn't it? A "dial", on a TV?), we can remain at a state of perpetual alertness, like being in a never ending parade of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks all blaring and blinking at full tilt, all day, every day. Exploding logos and waving American flags: the lights. Swooshing, explosions and electric guitar riffs: the sirens, horns and buzzers, warning us of...of....impending danger? Nay, of impending silence and solitude, and perhaps the moment alone to enjoy the beauty and joy of personal thought.

I then did something that felt counter intuitive, I turned the TV off and sat in the silence and listened to my own thoughts, devoid of lasers, lights, explosions and sirens. Technology is great, it lets us tune in to get caught up on the news, the sports scores, the weather, or watch an entertaining movie, any time of the day or night. But it can't begin to touch the value and importance of a moment alone with one's own thoughts.