As a darksider (Windows user) in the content provision field (web dev, audio production, and a bit of video), I am in a position to watch the travails of my iBrothers and iSisters who work the white side as they struggle to keep their systems — often heavily dependent on a broad mix of software from Apple and a number of third parties — updated — if they haven’t already decided to “lock down” their current, working system so that Apple’s numerous, non-backward-compatible updates and system changes don’t upset the precarious ecology of those systems.
I understand the basic thinking — as well as the economy of scale and development structure (Apple often shifts key dev teams from one task to another in such a way that problems in one sector ripple into delays in addressing another) – which seems to steer Apple through these continuing dramas.
What I don’t always understand is the at-times Eloi-like docility of frequently vexed high end users as they contort themselves, their practices, and even their business planning around the latest Apple issues.
To be sure, on occasion, there is a widespread revolt, as there was over the extraordinary dumbing down of Final Cut Pro to what many professional video editors — dependent on the previous FCP versions’ broad and flexible support for Apple and third party productivity and collaborative work flow enhancements that made FCP a staple in many multi-seat video editing facilities — derisively now call “iMovie Pro.” And, even in the audio world, which once sneered at Windows as a platform for serious audio production work (sometimes foolishly in the view of someone who has been carefully observing that tech milieu since the mid-90s and who was impressed when Win XP ended up being a stable, efficient platform for heavy duty audio production that typically outperformed OS X on equivalent hardware) there has been a real sea change in the attitude of many.
Of course, fears that Apple will abandon the more extensible, if quite pricey, MacPro — fears that look increasingly realistic — and that Apple will follow their own lead on Final Cut Pro X and turn their audio production flagship, Logic, into “GarageBand Pro” play heavily into grumbling, open discontent and platform-jumping.
And, of course, the availability of cross-platform tools whose Windows versions appear in many/most cases to outperform the OS X versions is also a big factor in that growing discontent. Whether the creative communities’ restlessness and frustration will spread to the consumers that the now not-so New Apple increasingly focuses on is anyone’s guess.
But as a long time observer,I have found much that perplexes and bemuses me in the odd thrall in which Apple holds many of its customers.
[posted earlier today as a comment in this PC Magazine blog article's comment thread.]
