Happy 21st Birthday Mac!

You may not realize it, but today is the birthday of the Macintosh computer. Now, you may not be a Mac enthusaist like I am (hurrah if you are), but this is actually an important day for all computer users. It was on this day in 1984 that the flood gates for the GUI interface and the MOUSE were opened to the masses. Before this date it was only the R&D people at Xerox and Apple and the few eliet that were able to get into a Lisa machine who could experience this liberation of the point and click. For the rest of us it was still C colon this and backslash that---just to pull up a simple word processing document. Although, IBM style business machines would be slow to follow, we can thank this initial offering to the demise of the command line prompt.

Watch the famous commerical here to celebrate. It still sends shivers, doesn't it?

And as if to mark the occasion, Pepsi and iTunes are teaming up again to give away free music! Starting on January 31 I start collecting bottle-caps again. And this time they're giving away iPods to boot. Life is good.

Also, the reviews are coming in on the iMac Mini and iShuffle---and both are getting glowing reccomendations. The main criticisim that I hear is that neither are a remarkable new technology. And my response is, "Well, duh!"

Ok, forgive me if that is harsh, but here's the thing. Apple has suffered for years bringing out bold new technologies that were hailed as inovations and lauded by the critics, but went on to be complete flops because they couldn't move them. The pubilc wasn't ready. But then they saw thier ideas get repackaged by other companies who tweaked them a bit and marketed them brilliantly and had a smashing success. Examples that come to mind are the GUI (of course) that became Windows, the Newton (1993) that came back from another company as the Palm Pilot, and they were also one of the first to market with a consumer grade digital camera---and that market is exploding with no Apple branded camera in sight.

Now, I'm not going so far as to say that these ideas were stolen. What I'm pointing to is that very similar products brought to market at very different times and marketed differently, had very different results. And I'm saying that it looks like Apple has learned thier lesson well. They are now taking known technologies, combining them in interesting ways (with steller design), and marketing them in such a way as to excite the imagination of a buying public in ways no one else has. Maybe they didn't invent the ship, and they might not even be the first to sea, but they're sailing over the horizion in ways no one else has.

And I'll admit that Steve Jobs is a bit of P. T. Barnum, but the dude is the only showman in the tech sector and that group of geeks needs him. I for one would buy a DVD set of the last 21 years of Steve Job's product announcements. C'mon, the guy knows how to stage an event. Couldn't you just see it, the DVD menu would list all the Keynotes and then at the bottom, it would have a link labled "And one more thing. . ."---and it would be the special features section where they would have all the Apple T.V. ads for the last 21 years. Ohhhhhh baby, where do I sign. I'm in line already.

I love this company because of where they have come from and where they are going. It's always exciting and interesting and unpredicitable. That and because thier stuff is truely just so much fun to use. And it looks like they are just getting warmed up. To me, it's like watching Rocky 1 & 2 back to back. Only it takes decades to play out. Ride the wave and enjoy the view---Apple is bringing the you the digital future!