Back To The Mac
They’re all old guys!
While the music business is purveying ever younger acts, not only Justin Bieber, but Willow Smith, and so many are dazzled by twentysomething Mark Zuckerberg, the true king of the hill, Apple, America’s second most valuable company (behind Exxon Mobil!) is run by alta kachers!
Because you need experience to do something great.
Only in music do we think freshly minted human beings can come up with worthwhile material and throw those past thirty on the scrapheap. And what Apple’s oldsters have come up with is positively dazzling.
How dazzling?
Steve Jobs was the weakest part of the presentation. We’re getting a bit tired of the ultimate salesman persona, even though he’s so convincing, but the raw excitement in the voices of his troops demonstrating the new products was infectious. I wanted to sit down at the desk and join in! Which is exactly what people do at the Apple Store.
Not that I planned on writing anything about today’s presentation. Until Phil Schiller entered a bookshelf in the new iPhoto, selected an item and a spotlight came down to feature it.
It’s the little things that count.
Thinking about the big money, we’ve lost sight of the fact that it’s the tiniest of things that bond us to our fans, our customers.
Like the letter press cards. There’s a whole video of how they’re made. And what did I think of watching them? GASOLINE ALLEY!
For those too young, back in the days of vinyl records, the packaging was an experience. Today you get almost nothing with a CD and vinyl is so overpriced as to be a rip-off. iLife comes free with a new computer? The music industry wants nothing to be free. You’ve got to pay to park at the venue even if you arrive by public transportation.
Anyway, the second Rod Stewart album came with an embossed cover. You could feel the cobblestones in the pavement on the front. You could feel Rod’s rooster haircut on the back.
This was cool. It made me into a superfan. I bought a poster. I went to see him live BEFORE ANYBODY ELSE EVEN KNEW WHO HE WAS and I’m telling you about it FORTY YEARS LATER!
Funny in an era where you have a hit today and are forgotten tomorrow.
And we keep hearing how Guitar Hero wasn’t about real playing. Well, they’ve now got lessons in GarageBand, and not only can you learn, but you can be evaluated! And anybody can afford a portable keyboard. And I wouldn’t expect just anybody to be good, there’s no substitute for practice, but Apple is making creative tools available to everybody.
Which anybody in charge of creativity in the past decries.
Have you seen that video going around online? From 1980? With Clive Davis doubting the viability of music video? MUSIC VIDEO SAVED THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!
And all this cheap, time-saving Apple software is going to help reinvigorate creativity. You no longer need a deep pocket to make a record or a movie. You can do something pretty professional yourself. Yes, once again, the fact that you have access to the tools doesn’t mean what you create will be good, but society is not made up of 100% doctors or 100% sanitation engineers, people have a cornucopia of professions, but now that these tools are available, those with a burning desire to create will not be held back.
There are so many more cool things. The trailers in iMovie alone make you want to go on vacation and shoot video just to be able to create a trailer to show to your friends.
And it’s great to be able to e-mail pictures directly from iPhoto.
And the manipulation of audio in iPhoto is staggering and the ability to lock everybody to the same human rhythm in GarageBand is equally jaw-dropping.
Apple provides tools. That make the company rich, but truly produce a better society. You can hate the computer company, but as the statistics in today’s presentation illustrate, the tide is against you.
But the reason I’m writing this isn’t to trumpet Apple, they don’t need my kudos, the products speak for themselves, but to tell you it’s about dreams, creativity and execution. Apple is can do, not cannot. I’m hooked to the point where I dedicated ninety minutes to watching what some might call a commercial. And when some of these features were introduced I got that tingle, the same as I got when I not only felt the cover of "Gasoline Alley", but dropped the needle on the title track, the opening cut. The sound! That voice! It was like nothing else.
Apple is like nothing else and what you sell needs to be too. It’s got to be unique and great, created after years of hard practice. And love.
We love our music. We don’t really love our iPads or iPhones or Macs. Like I said, they’re just tools. But they enrich our lives, allow us to become better people, enable us to listen to all our music on the go. And yes, a lot of that might be stolen, but if you think this is bad, believe that we should go back to the past of limited access, you hate people. Why hold back music from people? It’s the most powerful art form in the world! Enable them to access it, charge them for it, don’t castigate them. Apple is constantly looking to the future, are you?
