May Kasahara's Journal: 1997

I just wrote this entry for my "regular" blog, but I thought it might interest some people here. And yes, the iBook I just bought is the first Mac I've owned.

I bought a new Mac this past weekend, a fact that I've been gushing about to various friends since I've gotten it. It's a 700mHz iBook, a recently discontinued model which I managed to get at a good price (and with extra RAM for free!). Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to mess around with it yet, as I've been busy with tidying up this place and working on that animation piece; by the way, I don't think I'll be doing any more updates to my site until the latter is done (or at least, very near completion). Wish me luck!

The first issue of Wired I ever bought was the June 1997 one, with the "101 Ways to Save Apple" cover story. I had bought the mag at Robin's in Philadelphia-- a great place to get magazines when you're on a budget, as they're all remaindered, and (as such) all 40% off the cover price. Besides Wired, I'd also pick up Res (digital filmmaking mag) and CMYK (a graphic design and illustration mag for college students) during my visits there... but I digress. Anyway, last night I picked up this back issue and started flipping through it, rereading much of the cover story, and skimming the other materials (articles and ads) throughout the rest of the issue. My, how times have changed.

The most timely ads are the one for Apple's Newton Messagepad 2000 (the Newton doesn't exist anymore, plus the layout of the ad is sooo "old Apple"), iomega's Jaz disk (worst iomega product ever; the Jaz is practically nonexistant these days), Silicon Graphics' O2 Workstation (I remember being blown away in 1998 when I saw one of these puppies in action... it was running Maya 1.0. Ahh, memories), and Compaq's Armada 7700 laptop (166 mHz Pentium processor? Were computers really that slow in 1997?).

As for the cover story, Wired recently ran a 10th Anniversary special (April 2003) covering all the hits and misses they've made in past years. Among the hits were four of the suggestions they'd made to Apple in the June 1997 issue. They were: 19. Get rid of the cables and go wireless (they did with AirPort); 50. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development (which really helped Apple a lot); 59. Build a computer that doesn't crash (the G4); and 98. Testimonials. Create commercials featuring real-life people in situations where buying a Mac (or switching to a Mac) saves the day (the "Switch" campaign).

Looking back on the other suggestions, some of them also seem prophetic: 83. Develop proprietary programs that run only on Macs. Crow about them (they did this with Final Cut Pro, the sweetest editing suite since Avid); 14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack (the iMac, aqua G3, G4, titanium PowerBook, iPod, etc. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of copycats-- Compaq's [?] rip on the new iMac was probably the worst, especially considering their commercial. Compaq's iMac competitor couldn't really hop around like that! Comparitively, in the iMac commercials [with the guy making faces at the computer], there was more of a stop-motion feel... more grounded in reality); 23. Create a new logo (still an apple, but now all shiny and plastic-y and shit. The rainbow scheme has been done away with!).

There are also some ideas that seem unthinkable six years later, the main one being the very first suggestion listed-- "Admit it. You're out of the hardware game." There's a reason Mac hardware is Mac hardware; it has to do with a tight integration between machine and software that you can't get from a PC.

On a related note... from Wired's current issue: DeLong on Apple and the law of increasing returns