We should be thankful for Apple (but don’t tell anyone I said that)

I have been known to rag on Apple every once in awhile for various reasons but have always tried to keep any fanboy attitudes out of the discussion. I don’t own any Apple products and chances are I probably never will manly because of their pricing structure which I consider to be too onerous for what you are getting.

Today though I was reading my morning RSS feeds when I ran across a post by felix on his blog #comments where he was ruminating over a discussion that had happened on FriendFeed about Apple. The discussion was centered mainly around the hardware aspect of the Apple product line but it got felix thinking about Apple as a whole and its effect on the technology landscape.

What felix saw was how Apple didn’t follow in markets but rather created them or changed the landscape of the market

As I was thinking about this I thought about the iMac which I believe to be the best of breed all-in-one computer, but really what competition does it have? I moved on to thinking about the iPod Touch, I think it’s probably the best of breed PDA, but again where’s the competition? The App Store? Competition? As I started thinking about these I realized that Apple makes markets. It sees opportunity where everyone else has failed.

As I thought about felix’s post I realized that he was absolutely correct but to carry it one point further I would also suggest that Apple has in its rebound managed to have a real impact on our perception of what our technological tools should look like. Anyone who has been around long enough in this business will be among the first to tell you how ugly much of our computers, cell phones, music devices, and assorted other devices were.

Apple has shaken all that up. Where once beige boxes ruled the desktop in business and home suddenly we saw that the machines we used on a daily basis could actually look beautiful; and yes even – sexy. They didn’t have to be dull bland looking boxes and monitors sitting there. They could be conversation pieces that we didn’t want to hide away in a corner.

Then we had our MP3 players that were either cheap plastic hunks of crap or overpriced plastic pieces of crap. Bluntly, they were fugly looking so it was no wonder we were willing to hide them away in our pockets. What does Apple do? they made it a piece of handheld art that we strutted around like proud peacocks showing whoever would look in our direction how cool our music player looked.

When it came to laptops we found ourselves back in the utilitarian world of blah. They were for the most part just hunks of plainness wrapped around some electronics. We would hide them away in briefcases only pulling them out when we really needed to. Apple on the other hand showed that they could be something that we were proud to display to the world. They could be sharp looking and take their place predominately in our lives. They set Dell, HP, and other laptop makers back on their asses as people lined up at the Apple store to have a piece of art.

Apple let us be proud of our electronic toys. It doesn’t matter if there are questionable hardware problems with them. It doesn’t matter if we actually never even own and Apple product because we are all benefitting from the road they have travelled. Dell, HP, Acer, and other laptop makers are busting their asses to bring art and sexy to their offerings. Mobile phone manufacturers are beating each other up in order to bring cool looking products to market. The MP3 player market is all about function and form instead of being something shoved in a pocket.

For all this we should be thankful to both Steve Jobs and Apple. Now if we could just get all these Web 2.0 developers to learn the same lesson; and yes FriendFeed I’m looking at you.