[NPMUG] "Is There An Apple Community Anymore?" by Zac Bass

[Fozard]

        Zach Bass


  back to cake 
<http://seekingalpha.com/article/114341-is-there-an-apple-community-anymore?source=yahoo#> 


I have lived just south of Boston all my life. Every year I would wait 
in great anticipation for the Macworld Expo to come to the Bayside Expo 
in the summer. Some years it was so big, that it spilled over to the 
World Trade Center. When Apple (AAPL 
<http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/aapl>) decided to discontinue the Boston 
Expo, I was saddened because I felt a part of the Mac community was now 
dead. And my fear was that as the community became marginalized, that 
Apple would lose market share, which it did by the way.

Back in the early days of Mac, mid 80s to early 90s, there was a 
definite community. In fact I participated in that community in a 
material way. I belonged to, and was an active member in, the Boston Mac 
Users Group (BMUG <http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/bmug>), and I ran the 
MacMentors Bulletin Board Service, or BBS. For those too young to 
remember, BBSs were the precursor to the Internet. It was a dial-up 
service that was interconnected with tens or even hundreds of other like 
services. My BBS had four 2400 baud modems attached and over 2,000 users 
from all over the world. It was truly a community, with a self nurturing 
culture. I was also a speaker at several Macworld conferences and some 
of the New York City based conferences, and consulted in the field of 
electronic publishing.

The Boston Macworld Expo was a critical part of maintaining that 
community culture because it gave us Macophiles a chance to meet face to 
face, and to share the unique experience that was Mac, the computer for 
the rest of us. Back then Apple was barely a $1 billion dollar company 
and losing ground under the uninspiring leadership of Scully, Amelio and 
then Spindler. Apple needed the community to hold itself together and 
survive.

And how ironic was it that Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple because the 
board of directors didn't believe he had the ability to run a billion 
dollar enterprise. So, they tried their hand with corporate veterans, 
like Pepsi man John Scully. What does a guy hocking soda know about 
personal computers?

Anyway, Steve comes back and re-injects his vision, takes Apple back to 
its roots by recognizing the customers that got it to that point, and 
then proceeded to expand that customer base. But that's when the 
community started to fade. Apple was outgrowing the need for a 
community, and also outgrowing the need for regional expos, because it 
was interfering with the natural product cycles and marketing plans that 
were bringing the company back to life. Apple, under the leadership of 
Steve Jobs, was growing up, and turning into an efficient machine that 
embraced the purist forms of capitalism. The faithful were still there, 
and always will be, but Apple expanded its base by delivering products 
that people wanted, and by knowing who those people were.

The vision that launched the Mac initially was a closed system, it was 
simple and elegant, and made computing fun and easy. Apple accomplished 
this through total control over every aspect of the design and delivery 
of the product. When Steve left, this vision waned. When he returned, so 
did the vision. Jobs recognized that in order to rekindle its success, 
Apple needed to control not only the supply chain, design and marketing, 
but also the sales and support end too. So, that's why it opened the 
Apple Stores. The mom and pop shops and the big box retailers weren't 
cutting it. They were unable to deliver the level of support and the 
total experience that was encased in the Steve Jobs vision.

The most recent implementation of this vision was shedding the shackles 
of Macworld. Apple no longer needed Macworld, in fact it was becoming a 
ball and chain to their future plans. And while some Mac fanatics feel 
that Apple has dissed them, and snubbed their noses at what was left of 
the Mac community, what these fanatics failed to realize is that the Mac 
community died many years ago. The new pseudo community is a bit more 
sterile. But the brick and mortar Apple Stores, the Apple online store, 
and the iTunes and App stores, provides a much more efficient and useful 
experience for the customers, and that's the bottom line.

Apple can no longer be bound by the timing of Macworld. Early January 
simply doesn't work for it. This became amplified as Apple started to 
switch major product announcements to the World Wide Developers 
Conference (WWDC), and other ad-hoc venues. Apple's VP Phil Schiller 
expounded on this point to David Pogue after his Macworld keynote, 
explaining that having to come up with another dazzling show every 
January--a huge production, starring knock-'em-dead new products every 
year--was unsustainable. Speaking to Apple product cycles: the holiday 
season (Novemberish), the educational buying season (late summer), the 
iPod product cycle (October), the iLife development cycle (usually 
March), the iPhone cycle (June). January doesn't fit ANY of them.

So it's clear, the community aspect of Macworld is no longer needed or 
wanted by Apple. And there are far better, and more efficient ways for 
Apple to move product. Maintaining a community isn't one of them. The 
Apple community is dead, long live the Apple community.
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