Golden Apples

The Mac is a superior product. So why does it seem destined for market oblivion?

Your typical preacher at a religious revival speaks of the resurrection of the dead -- the crucial instance of which, he'll tell you, occurred two thousand years ago. Every half-hour on the half-hour, the revival preacher at the Macworld trade show at the Javits Center in Manhattan also spoke of a resurrection, but one that was occurring that very moment. The young man with wild eyes and a white polo shirt stood before a motley group of the Apple Faithful (as the New York Times has called them) to offer cheerful tidings of the resurrection of Apple Computer, and good news of iMac.

A modestly priced new desktop, combining display with processing unit in a single sci-fi - influenced chassis of milky white and translucent sea blue, iMac is meant to be the deus ex machina for financially troubled Apple, rescuing it from destruction by Microsoft. The preacher was rallying the convention-goers to their savior. "The new iMac looks great from any angle!" he cried out. (Applause.) "And talk about speed! The iMac destroys the Pentium processor! How many of you have tried the iMac?" (Shouts of "Yeah!" and "Me!") "So whaddya think of iMac?" (Vigorous applause.) He threw iMac T-shirts at the crowd, who grabbed for them like Somalian refugees straining to catch food tossed off a relief truck.

The news is indeed good, up to a point. Apple and its operating system have always had two advantages over IBM-type machines -- and iMac, due in stores August 15, has both in spades.

The first is ease of use. Working with Windows is like dealing with a child. You never know what stunt it will pull -- freeze up, detect some obscure software conflict, announce that a mysterious "error" has occurred and abruptly shut down -- which you'll have to figure out how to clean up after. Macs, on the other hand, do what you expect them to do. Apple's other strength is aesthetic. Although the company's business difficulties are often ascribed to its "arrogance" in refusing to license clones, the decision had more to with maintaining artistic control. Visually, IBM clones range from forgettable to hideous. Apple strives for beauty.

As for iMac, the elegance of the thing is impressive: no wires except the one to the keyboard. With nothing to hook up, it will be easier to get started on than any other desktop available. And in the Mac tradition, it has been designed to look cool from the front, the sides, even the back. At Macworld some Japanese visitors thought so highly of the iMac's posterior that they spent several minutes filming it with a video camera.

Why all the intensity? Last year, Apple's survival was in doubt. More recently, with the return to the helm of the company's gifted founder, Steve Jobs, the threat has subsided. Still, with its market share down to 4 per cent, Apple faces a long-term crisis. It may or may not continue to exist. At Macworld there also hung in the air a more profound question: Will the market choose between the two big computer paradigms based on earned merit -- that is, in religious terms, on the basis of works? Or will it employ some other, mysterious criterion -- unearned election, as a theologian might put it, or in other words, grace? The former would favor Mac; the latter, Windows.

Though the religious metaphor isn't exactly right, Mac obviously draws on some source of passion that other pricey consumer goods do not. Believers connect with it at a primal level. My guess is there are two archetypes at work here which go deep into the back of the psyche, or anyway back to intermediate school.

Users who feel strongly about computer brands tend to be people who in seventh grade fell into the categories of nerds and mama's boys. Nerds were pimpled, awkward, indifferent to girls and beauty in general, and very keen on puzzles and games requiring mental exertion, like chess. While equally uncool, mama's boys were secretly in love with their mothers and as a result shared a sensitivity to beauty that nerds lacked. A Windows machine is a nerd's dream: powerful, ugly, always a puzzle. The Mac was designed for mama's boys. It is an object to contemplate rather than a mystery to solve, and, like Mom, supremely dependable.

Pity the poor mama's boys. In no parallel case of competing and incompatible technologies where compatibility matters -- as in CD players or video recorders -- has more than one paradigm survived. And on resuming the leadership at Apple, Mr. Jobs made a shocking deal with its arch-competitor. Microsoft would buy $150 million worth of Apple stock and resolve a longstanding intellectual-property complaint, paying Apple an undisclosed sum and implicitly recognizing that Windows was imperfectly ripped off from Mac's classier operating system. In return, a quasi-partnership was declared, with Apple the junior partner.

Which means that, some way down the path through the Apple orchard, the two corporate cultures will merge, with whatever remaining differences to be resolved as Microsoft prefers. What separated the brand names was the entrepreneurs behind them. Steve Jobs undoubtedly is a mama's boy. Microsoft's Bill Gates, a nerd, has triumphed.

Conservatives like to believe that the market invariably favors the superior product. The story of Mac and Microsoft seems destined to prove them wrong. Sometimes, as the Mac Faithful will tell you with a sigh, the market is governed by grace, which now and then means the defeat of gracefulness. o