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While we fight amongst ourselves and police the world India and China are poised to be the world powers in the next 10 to 25 years. It’s a lot closer then you think. Something that the United States has always excelled at beyond what other countries contribute to the world is ideas. And if one company comes up with ideas or the appearance of ideas. It’s Apple. Doubtless like any fashion person who does “it” for money. People want an iPod or a MacBook, or the latest craze the iPhone. This desire for fashionable products crosses: race, class, and religion.  With the recent release of OS X 10.5 (or the more sexy name “Leopard”) I’ve decided to give a run down of why Apple is important to the industry.

Some history

My personal history with Apple started, like most people, in college. I’d used my dad’s and my high school computers in the past much to my dissatisfaction. These were not the promise of computers that television and movies gave me in my youth.

I started off playing with a Macintosh Classic II, for hours at a time.  MacPaint and grayscale. Happy times, I assure you. I was quite captivated by the whole thing. But as my friend Chris stated to me once, drawing with a mouse is akin to drawing with a bar of soap.  This didn’t stop me from exploring the limits what I could do with it. The Mac Classic II wasn’t around long, before our school got Macs capable of color. Can you imagine 8 bit color? But this was right around time I began to see the cracks in Apple’s armor. Now it was like those old computers my father had let me use. They weren’t aspiring to be better.

As the 90s moved on, these cracks became more and more noticeable and by this time I was gainfully employed and not some college student, I had to work with Windows/DOS. Because businesses ran themselves on Windows/DOS and obviously still do. I initially thought I would stick with the Mac for home use, but then you notice the price difference between the Mac and the PC. Besides that I had become rather proficient in with Windows/DOS and realized, despite being more “work”, it had a lot more potential.  So I bought my first PC.

My job wasn’t completely PC-based, I still got to see the latest and greatest from Apple from one of the employees who insisted on working only with a Mac and was influential enough to get what she wished for. We’d even considered getting the Apple Newton as the first PDA device for the sales team. But ultimately didn’t implement the plan due to the Newton’s unfriendly cost and lack of corporate friendly applications.

The point here is even when the cracks of Apple’s product line are showing clearly, people (even business people) want to give Apple products a shot. The Newton was innovative at the time, but it didn’t do enough for people so it wasn’t a hit. The PDA market with sprung up around the same time, everyone from Sony to Microsoft were attempting to get something to stick for business users and USRobotics comes along with it’s Palm Pilot and the rest is history.

Obviously the beginning a very difficult times for Apple, Windows 95 effectively (arguably)  leapfrogged Apple’s aging System 7 OS. Introducing such concepts as preemptive multitasking and a revolutionary re-work in Windows interface design. The Key here though is that Apple influenced Microsoft to evolve their OS.

Apple’s second coming was the iMac. Not the first foray into the Monitor and Computer in one easy to digest pill, but certainly the most eye-catching one. It didn’t hurt that the “New” Volkswagen Beetle which was also similarly eye-catching, was helping set the agenda of consumer style with it’s memorable commercials. This was the future after all and it was made of candy.

The computer market soon flooded with concept PCs that emulated the iMacs simplicity and design. Computer manufacturers had received the message that consumers wanted candy, and candy they got.

Th iMac enjoyed some initial success while Apple fine-tuned the product and introduced their next generation operating system: OS X.

OS X was just a pretty face when it first came out, and had plenty of issues. The real victory of OS X is that it finally pushed the Mac platform into the future it had spend nearly 10 years avoiding.

This article continues in Part 2.

With the new year nearly upon us. I’ve been thinking about what I’m looking forward to in the tech realm for the next year.

One. Gmail/Yahoo mail/Hotmail to marry for life. I want to be able to integrate fully my various Web mail accounts. I use Google’s Gmail primarily, and it has a very nice feature set that allows you to have various e-mail accounts filtered through it’s interface. It not unlike using a locally installed POP client like Thunderbird or Outlook Express. Far more graceful though. If you have the free versions of Hotmail (or Windows Live Hotmail) and Yahoo web mail, you don’t get to consolidate these services.

Now don’t get me wrong, from a business perspective, I can understand why Microsoft and Yahoo wouldn’t be so keen on such a integration. These free web mail services are paid in part by your browsing to their respective sites, so that they can advertise to you and get money from their advertising clients like good corporate entities.

Two. Windows Vista Service Pack 2. I’m actually already running the beta version of SP1 now of this already and, of course, SP2 will be coming whether I wish it or not, but still we need it. The SP1 beta has definitely given me a performance boost, for my Fujitsu Lifebook T-series. Granted I shoe-horned Vista onto this system, before I got the proper drivers from Fujitsu and it really wasn’t running all that well until I got those drivers. But still it was pretty slow. So I’m saying Microsoft needs to fastrack SP2, once SP1 is gold.

Three. A UMPC that does everything for under a grand. I don’t travel as much as I’d like to, but when I do I still need to keep tabs on what’s going on with my network and servers. A UMPC would be perfect for this only the limitations here and there really do. Which leads me too…

Four. A corporate friendly iPhone-type thing. The iPhone would be fine, only it doesn’t have the special corporate magic that Blackberry and Windows Mobile has. I’m not so fond of the software keyboard versus a real keyboard. I have the Verizon XV6700 right now. It was a fine phone 2 years ago. It’s saved my bacon on more then a few occasions, especially with the mobile Logmein client installed.

Right now I’m looking at getting the HTC Tilt, the only downside to that is it’s on AT&T’s network. It’s always hard to decided which corporate entity I find more difficult to work with. A clear toss up between Verizon my personal account and AT&T which we use at work.

All the iPhone really needs is a slide-out keyboard, a license for Microsoft’s Direct-Push technology and the Blackberry app and they you have a nearly perfect situation.

That said Windows Mobile only needs a better media player experience, bigger storage and for the love of all that is good in the world a decent Internet browser.

Now a lot of people will suggest they only want a device that will do one thing very well, not one thing that does 5-25 things sorta well. PDA phones are generally great PDAs for mail, and quick and dirty e-mail, but not so great as just phones. Even the iPhone has this said about it’s immaculate self.

Five. USB cords that do everything. Sure it’s fine that you can connect USB for hard drives, input devices, printers, cameras, the list goes on. But some clever folks are working on a video over USB spec, and still another wants to replace HDMI for HDTVs, etc with USB. Bring it on, I say. Fewer standards in Audio/Video and computer realm is a good thing and USB is just as good as any of them.

Six. 4 Gigabit Ethernet. You read that right: eff oh you are.  Four times what the standard is now for desktops.

Seven. Smart Clothes. Sure you have Scottevest, with it’s sophisticated pockets, straps, etc, but the mainstream companies need to realize we’re all carrying a lot of gadgets these days, PDAs, phones, media players. The list goes on.

Eight. OEMs and Vista. I know everyone seems to be taking potshots at Vista. It’s schadenfreude for sure. It seems PC World agrees with me the Macbook runs Vista faster then 99% of the competition. Since we know Apple is making a very healthy profit on every metal box, I really can’t understand why HP, Dell and Sony can’t get there systems into graceful harmony with a reasonable profit.