Walled gardens make more sense when it's an AI-lligator infested swamp outside
OPINION When the first M1 Apple Silicon systems sprouted at the end of 2020, we loved the tech but not the walled garden it grew in. Apple had complete control over all its platforms and could set its own rules, but only to become more Apple-y. There was a whole world outside that area where Apple Silicon would never tread, even if Cupertino could iterate fast enough to keep up. Plus, Apple's appliance sensibility limited its expansion options, especially with performance dependent on its own silicon.
More than five years on, that remains true. Yes, the architecture can iterate at least as fast as anything else in its class. It turns out that gigabit Wi-Fi, 10 Gb Ethernet, and high speed expansion is not such a problem anymore. Otherwise, if you ignore embedded niche cases that nobody cares about, Apple is still where it started, in desktops and laptops. It has even lost one form factor. And ironically, the most exciting new machine for years, the Macbook Neo, doesn't even have an M-type SoC in it.
And yet, that Macbook Neo has given the Windows world the fear, precisely because of the Apple Silicon walled garden strategy. A simple equation has reached a critical point, and it may be irreversible. Every year of Apple Silicon, the experience of using a Mac has gotten better. Every year of Windows 11, the experience of using a PC has gotten worse.
Right now, with supply chains choking critical component costs everywhere except Cupertino, there is no Windows laptop that can duke it out with the Macbook Neo at the same price point on two vital points - the quality of the hardware, and what happens when you switch it on. There are lots of things that some Windows boxes are better at than any given Mac, but you really have to need them to cope with the custard pies the OS keeps flinging in your face.
MacOS is very far from an ecstatic experience. It breaks UI rules about consistency and accessibility, it can be nightmarish to unravel malfunctions, and it looks and feels middle-aged.
However, where it absolutely shines is in comparison with Windows 11. The cavalcade of unwanted actions, diversions and suggestions that get between you and work on Windows are almost entirely absent on MacOS. You can even turn off all the AI, what there is of it, in Settings. It is a wonderfully quiet place to work and, heaven help us, be productive. Walled gardens make more sense when the alternative is Times Square.
Those with more tree rings in the trunk may remember the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" ad campaign. It distilled the experiences of using Windows and MacOS into a set of wicked burns, at a time when a lot of computer advertising was about hard disks, RAM and CPUs. So far, completely in keeping with the 'Computing for the rest of us' Macintosh ethos, but there was more to it than that.
The campaign kicked off in the mid-2000s, just as Apple's previous CPU transition from PowerPC to Intel was getting underway. This was an era where Apple was losing the price/performance race just like Detroit was losing the automotive battle to Japan. Apple had painted itself into a corner with PowerPC as x86 progress was funded by an enormously larger market. The ad campaign marked the beginning of the march back. It was funny, vicious and convincing. Provided you didn't care about price and performance, when the digital lifestyle it promoted was as achievable as the carefree fantasies of Friends.
But today, price and performance are more than at parity. It took another change in processors, this time leveraged by an architecture receiving heavy development and a much more diverse, competitive and capable fab industry. Apple is printing some of the best mobile and desktop chips, with total control over binning parts to product categories — effectively boosting yield and crusting costs in a way nobody else can match. It has an OS that does not suck, an ecosystem that is coherent and, at last, affordable, and it has not gone insane pushing products that actively repel customers. If you doubt this, show a Windows laptop to a Mac user, and vice-versa.
If you are a Windows OEM right now, going through another round of sourcing and supporting disparate components, compromising on build quality for the sake of sales, and counting revenues from bloatware bundles, you must be praying that nobody in Apple marketing remembers that ad campaign. It's truer now than it's ever been, only this time, when you've finished laughing, you can start buying.
Microsoft could produce a Windows Neo variant, one that did all the things users want and none of the ones they don't, and it should, even if just out of corporate shame. An OEM or two could make mid-tier laptops that don't ship with a ton of stickers on the front and awful nagware inside. It's not that you can't have a good experience with this technology, but it's questionable whether the business models of all the players can support it. Apple has no such qualms, and there's no telling where it will feel the need to stop. ®
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