With two words it says what I believe to be the Macintosh experience; the meaning of which I plan to explain through the venue of my new column which the staff at MacDiscussion.com has so graciously provided. In writing this inaugural article, it is my goal to articulate the meaning of this simple phrase in the context of the world of Macintosh.
I can recall seeing the original Macintosh for the first time and immediately fell in love with it. That affair has never left me in the 15 years since, though I had numerous flings with other platforms in between. I bought my first Macintosh in 1992, a Mac Classic with which we intimately did great things together for the next three years. Although it was black and white while PC's were all color, it was like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, dancing gracefully and elegantly, intuitively interacting. Classics, though black and white, never die.
I've since moved up to a PowerPC but the same essence of innovation that inflamed a passion for the Macintosh in 1984 still burns brightly today. More important than innovation, creativity or style, what the Macintosh does for the user is enable him/her to do powerful, great things Ð simply and easily.
After the iMac rollout at Sears, I stopped in to see what our local experience would be. The salesman told me that the iMac is a great computer if you want to do basic things. I bit my tongue against launching into a pro-Mac diatribe but it revealed something about the mistake that many make - equating simplicity with less power. In fact, when it comes to computers, the exact opposite is true. It requires incredible power and ingenuity to make difficult things simple to execute. It requires sheer genius to make it intuitive.
And that's what the Macintosh is about. Making ordinary people do extraordinary things, simply. It makes heroes out of us in everyday situations. It is the reason why the "Think Different" campaign was so successful with Apple, because it made us think and feel that we can make a difference. And since then, many have begun to "Think Different" with the very computer that did change the world.
Powerful Simplicity.