My iPhone, it’s an amazing device. I use it all the time. But honestly, specifically this morning, I’m missing my old iPod.
I think it was watching @Bmosbacker struggle through losing access to his notes that caused this morning’s reminiscing. Having to choose between web apps or iPhone apps to run on the Mac because the first-party app isn’t up to the task. I remember when Apple’s bundled apps set the bar for third-party apps to meet.
The era of the iPod was fantastic. Apple was on the upswing, every release of OS X introduced cool new features that actually made my Mac better. I loved curating my music collection, I loved being able to bring it with me. iTunes was great, “rip, mix, burn”. There was a thriving third-party ecosystem on the Mac developing software that not only looked great but worked great. We all expected less from our computers back then, and, at least I assume, we were mostly pleasantly surprised when they could do more.
It was exciting to watch Steve Jobs in a keynote… I was always waiting for ‘…one more thing…’. The keynotes weren’t nearly as slick and over-produced as they are now. It wasn’t the executives trying to be movie stars. It was just Steve walking out on stage to talk to the crowd. We all rooted for Apple to be the comeback kid, and, with the iPhone, they came back bigger than I think any of us expected. A lot bigger than I expected anyway.
When the iPhone, and later the iPad were released, many of my favorite apps were never able to make the jump. Once we had an iPhone that could run native apps, the next logical desire was to have everything on our Mac over on our iPhone too. The iPhone was such a success that they changed the design of the iPod to match the all-screen iPhone, which was a shame because I loved the click wheel iPod. With the iPhone came the App Store, and with the App Store came the start of many of Apple’s worst aspects. The economy of the App Store favors subscriptions, and the combination of business models favoring cross-platform applications and subscriptions led us to where we are now.
The Mac hardware today has never been better. The Mac software, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. Do we want to pay an overpriced subscription for this bloated, non-native note taking application, or this other one that’s about the same thing? How much, monthly, is access to our passwords worth? And do we want to run that same app with the same feature set in Linux while we are at it? How about a core Mac application with an iPhone-level feature set and UI? How about we either make all the Mac apps ports of iPhone apps, or make them web apps and ship an entire copy of Chrome with each of them, and leave it running all the time?
I guess I’m feeling nostalgic for the way things used to be this morning. I miss Apple of the early to mid 2000’s, and I miss having application options that put Mac users front and center, instead of as an afterthought. I know that we’ve gained a lot over the past twenty years I’ve been using a Mac, but we’ve lost quite a bit too.