Sunday, May 18, 2008

The Sublime Beauty of the Apple Aesthetic

That title may sound like I'm writing another dewy-eyed tribute to the genius of Apple.  I'm not.  This is more a story of an old friend returning to help out in a pinch.

I bought my first Macintosh in 1990 -- a Macintosh Classic with a 9 inch monitor and 4MB of memory.  Those were the days when the Mac OS had a clear advantage on anything Microsoft was producing.  Even the biggest Microsoft fans would agree that Windows was an abomination before version 3.1, and that version didn't hit the market until a few years after I bought that Mac Classic.

Things change, of course.  The story of what's happened in the industry since that time has been told in many different ways, by many different people.  Personally, over the years, I've worked with Macintoshes some, but they've clearly faded in importance for me.  Making my living as a  consultant specializing in Microsoft technologies doesn't often push me in the direction of Apple technologies.

I've never lost a fondness for Apple's industrial design, though.  Making things look as cool as they do must be harder than it seems.  I always thought that some PC maker could have a viable business by simply copying Apple's designs, and manufacturing the machines for the PC market.  But whenever anyone tries that, the result is egg-suckingly lame.

When Apple switched over the Intel chipset, and running Windows on Apple hardware became a viable option, I knew it was just a matter of time before I bought my next Macintosh.  I bought a MacBook Pro and I used it almost exclusively for running Windows.  I tried out some of the built-in Apple applications, and I played around with the new (for me) operating system. (The Macintosh OS is on version 10.5 now.  The last version I used seriously was somewhere around 9.) The experience was fine, but I had a lot more use for my machine as a Windows box.  In fact, I might be one of the few people on the planet who looked for a skin for my MacBook Pro that replaced the glowing Apple logo with a Windows logo.  (Only because I tended to get a hard time from my Windows-loving cohorts).

Recently, though, something brought me back into the Mac OS, with force.  I'm currently starting a personal project that involves delving into innumerable technologies that I have not used before. I'll be chronicling the details later, but let's just say that the leap is huge, and my plate is more than full. The amount of new information to process is astronomical.  I decided to start podcasting, to go along with the project. Setting up a process to begin podcasting felt like a big hurdle I had to clear before I could even start.

My goals were fairly simple at the outset:

   1. I didn't want my podcast to sound like I was recording in a bus terminal's bathroom stall (which many podcasts do)
   2. I wasn't interested in building a home studio, or becoming an audio engineer.  I wanted just enough to make it work.

I thought to accomplish those goals, I would have to buy a decent microphone, research the available software packages, weigh the advantages of each, go through intense machine configuration, learn the vagaries of the software package, and on and on.  This wasn't just my imagination run wild.  It's the normal course of events for addressing a technology-related problem.

I started off by taking a flyer on the microphone.  I went onto Amazon and got a microphone that seemed at least suitable for the serious hobbyist. Maybe it was better, but I had no objective basis of comparison.  I just bought it. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000H4HS72

A little later, I started my exploration of the podcasting options the same I way I begin just about everything these days -- with a Google search.  I noticed something interesting on my first page of results.  The program "GarageBand" appeared in several places.  I had heard some vague buzz about that program as a great way to record music.  This was the first I heard that it had the ability to be used for podcasting.  I was fairly certain that the program had been installed with my Macintosh, but I wasn't sure.  There is a suite of programs that come with the operating system, but there are also some programs that you have to pay for.

My first pleasant surprise was that I had GarageBand, and I did not have to pay for it.  Then I noticed that by simply launching the program, I was given a clear path to make a podcast.  How much simpler could it be?  There is a button that says "Create a New Podcast Episode" on the main screen.  There is even a link for video tutorials right next to it.  Watching the tutorial video had me productive about five minutes later.

GarageBand

I felt certain that there would be some work to configure the program to operate with the microphone.  Other than plugging in the USB cable, there was not.  The interface was clean. Having done some video editing in the past, the paradigm was utterly easy for me to pick up.

Now, there are a lot of issues I have with Apple.  Their pricing for commodity components borders on predatory.  Their smug superiority about operating system security is setting them up for a huge fall some day.  Their cavalier attitude wholesale changes for each OS upgrade means that you have no choice to but keep buying software and hardware at each revision.  But, damn.  My experience with GarageBand was one of the best I've had with software.  And I've had a lot of experience with software.

This is the kind of thing consumer software should aspire to.  Someone has a problem, and they don't want to be burdened with a learning curve or massive upfront work, before they even start solving their problem.  The program hides the complexity, and the user gets to work.  I mean, look: I know there's a whole lot more to broadcasting than what I see in GarageBand.  There's a whole scientific discipline to audio engineering that people have spent their lives working with and advancing.  Who knows?  Maybe there will come a day when my own needs or interests outstrip what I can accomplish with GarageBand, and I have to look for something more powerful.  But I doubt it.  As of now, GarageBand gives me a very simple solution to a complex problem and produces great results.

I think, in a larger context, that is why Apple is successful.  Software designers tend to get hung up on feature wars. They think that if their software does not do everything (even if the use cases are obscure), they are at a competitive disadvantage.  Apple seems to take the approach of asking how you can solve a problem without having to become a software expert.  I mean, when the iPod came out, the market for MP3 players felt like it had peaked years before.  And it had, for the tech savvy.  Apple made it approachable for normal human beings.

So there you go.  I'll keep this experience in mind.  Software isn't finished when every feature is implemented.  It's done when the benefit it provides is much greater than the effort it takes to learn how to use it.