Splitter: »Quantum Leap«; »Maximum Synergy between Hardware and Software«
14. August 2012»[…] reliability through simplicity, […] maximum synergy between hardware and software, […] companies will be out to imitate, […] will increase Apple’s reputation in the market, […] excited about the great games« – all diese Ausführungen ließen sich auch auf Apples neuere iOS-Produkte beziehen, sind aber einem Byte-Review (via modernmechanix) des ersten Macintosh-Computers aus dem Jahre 1984 entnommen, was für eine gewisse Kontinuität in Apples Produktentscheidungen spricht.
Der Autor des Artikels schloss indes mit einer Vermutung, die sich für das PC-Geschäft kaum, wohl aber für den heutigen Smartphone- (iPhone) und Tablet-Markt (iPad) bewahrheiten sollte: »in fact, to some people Apple will be as synonymous with the phrase ›personal computer‹ […] The Macintosh brings us one step closer to the ideal of computer as appliance.« Im selben Heft findet sich ein Interview mit dem Macintosh-Team, in welchem sich auch einige ›klassische‹ Steve-Jobs-Passagen finden:
»If you read the Apple’s first brochure, the headline was ›Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.‹ What we meant by that was that when you first attack a problem it seems really simple because you don’t understand it. Then when you start to really understand it, you come up with these very complicated solutions because it’s really hairy. Most people stop there. But a few people keep burning the midnight oil and finally understand the underlying principles of the problem and come up with an elegantly simple solution for it. But very few people go the distance to get there.
The first thing Macintosh will do is make the existing types of applications an order of magnitude easier and more approachable for people. Therefore the available market for this machine is going to be giant compared to the available market for the people who are willing to invest 40 to 100 hours learning to use their computers. […] Mac has 64K bytes of the tightest, most elegant code that this company’s ever written. […] What we’ve done here is take a quantum leap […]«
Um diese Sätze auf die aktuelle Apple iOS-Linie zu beziehen, muss der geschätzte Leser letztlich lediglich ›Mac‹ bzw. ›Macintosh‹ durch ›iPhone‹ oder ›iPad‹ ersetzen…