Yesterday morning's hang at Kennedy Airport in New York City shook an old chestnut loose. I was asking myself, "what did I want 20-30 years ago that Apple has since delivered?" I can remember being a kid at the airport in the late 70's early 80's, or in a store for hours with my Grandparents or something, and feeling desperately in need of some kind electronic entertainment. This was mainly because of the fact that I had recently become obsessed with things like playing coin-op Donkey Kong [WIKIPEDIA], seeing Star Wars [WIKI] repeatedly in the theater, and learning to program bitmaps of star constellations using x/y coordinates, colors and on/off states of the 256 x 192 grid, which was displayed on my TV set, of my bleeding edge TI-99/4A computer [WIKI]. This one time, out of sheer boredom, I had decided to amuse myself by pressing the little "play" button over and over on my digital watch. See, the watch could play this digi-version of that old song "Dixie [LYRICS]"—you know the one, the ditty who's opening melodic phrase was used as the General Lee's car-horn on the Dukes of Hazzard?—well this little watch [EBAY] played the entire song... loudly and at a breakneck tempo! Talk about a portent of the ring tone [WIKI]. It guess it was meant to be an alarm or something, and I'm telling you this thing could wake up the deepest sleeper that you know. Well after few times all the way through the song, I started getting seriously irritated glares from strangers... hmm, it just occurred to me that maybe this is the reason I am totally against "ring tones" on mobile phones. I haven't thought of that digital watch in decades. This ties in to Steve's keynote here in a sec.... bear with me....Around 1980—and this was before I had even heard the word Apple in a context outside of"granny smith"—I distinctly remember wanting my media to be portable and accessible. I was only 11, but I clearly wished it was constantly available to me, so that when I was bored off my rocker, which was often, I didn't have to wait until I got home or to the arcade or to the movie theater to enjoy my favorite record, game or movie again. I wanted desperately to have my own coin-op (with free play and unlimited lives, of course) cabinet video game available to me anywhere I wanted to play it. Donkey Kong, Pac-Man [WIKI] or Moon Patrol [WIKI], thank you, very much (later on I would come to love Tempest [WIKI], Gauntlet [WIKI], Dragon's Lair [WIKI] and Q*Bert [WIKI] to the tune of many entire allowances in quarters). I wanted to listen to my own records instead of the muzak that was always seeping from some six inch speaker somewhere. I also remember believing that Muzak [URBAN DICTIONARY] was a snide pejorative that my Dad made up and didn't realize that it was an actual corporate brand [DON'T DO IT!]. At that time, I would have given anything to watch Star Wars in the theater one more time, let alone at home, let alone! on some small, sleek, one-button-and-wheel device [WIKI] of the future.
Back then, in the days before the Walkman [WIKIPEDIA] hit U.S. shelves, I never even thought it'd be possible to do things like watch movies, play music, play games where- and whenever I wanted - it was just a fantasy, nothing more. A fantasy that I'd opt to manifest in a split-second if it were at all possible, mind you, but that was science fiction. I remember a rumor circulated around my neighborhood around '80 or '81 that up the street from me, this kid's Dad' had his own full size"Missile Command [WIKIPEDIA]" game in their basement, and we all freaked imagining what it'd be like to actually OWN a video game that we could play any time we wanted. (Seems to me I never actually SAW this alleged Missile Command console...)
And now, here I sit a little over 26 years later in an airport, and I have the entire Beatles [WIKI] collection on me among two or three hundred other favorite albums, with split second access, even including the brand-new "Love [AMAZON]" release (I'm sure you heard that George Martin and son Giles reworked tons of original fab-four master recordings for a Cirque du Soleil [WEBSITE] extravaganza... which I got for Christmas from my Dad, the biggest Beatles fan I know, and I have yet to even listen to it!), I have every arcade game ever created between 1978 and 1987 right at hand in my MacMAME [WEBSITE] coin-op game emulator, all on this thin silvery device [WIKI] called a laptop. Hell, I just recorded bass tracks on this computer the other night, on a song that I'm working on. I can review that bass part right now if I want, in fact so can you: Bass Only [MP3] or Bass and Drums [MP3]. Not to mention that at the same time all of this is true, I am typing up some text that will in mere seconds be published to the entire globe on something called a blog on something else called a website over yet something else even still called the internet. Yet, here I sit, in the airport again just like that kid-me, so many years ago, and I still feel a little bored even though I have everything I ever wanted to keep me engaged. I hate to admit it, but I think I am "a wanter". I really enjoy wanting things. There's something hopeful and optimistic about it. Something creative even. Like "if I could have something right now, what would it be?" you have 3 seconds, ready go! (This is where I start to tie this in to what I hope Steve will be revealing Tuesday morning.)
Umm, ok what would I really want in my mac-centric life that I don't currently have? The ability to connect and interact in realtime, wirelessly, anywhere—without the current limitations related to service, access points, signal strength—to any person or persons I choose, with my Mac, and work collaboratively on whatever current creative project might be in development with said person or persons. I mean "work collaboratively" in an extremely literal sense. In a total access, no processor lagging or signal degradation sense. In ANY sense that we the collaborators might desire or design—free as birds. This might include whiteboardesque technologies and remote system manipulation technologies (e.g., Timbuktu or Apple Remote Desktop). Imagine being able to truly work in the same application with someone else at the same time like GarageBand, Logic Pro or Final Cut Pro. I mean machines and people working together from afar at the operating system level, not just some networked apps and chats, I'm talkin' like Peter Jackson laying on his couch in London tweaking edits on "The Two Towers" with his post production team - who happened to be in New Zealand with the actual footage.
If anyone can make this work for "the rest of us" in 2007, it Steve Jobs and Apple. Yes certainly, there are networking considerations, and wi-fi throughput and access considerations. Another big issue is the software to make it work. How do I make a change without overwriting your change, or get confused about who is doing what? There would have to be a totally new interface that we haven't seen before that creates a workgroup metaphor that we can all relate to. Remember how cool it was when Apple debuted iChat video conferencing and the three people fold back on that shiny triptych? That blew my mind because a. I hadn't thought of doing it that way, and b. Apple did. I think their capable of creating something that would make it so possible and inspirational to work together remotely in a way that we have never seen before. Total access. Total collaboration. Total breakdown of the distance barrier. I hope that collaboration and sharing will be major themes in this year's Keynote address. Maybe they'll release a newer slicker video iPod, perhaps Leopard will ship earlier than expected (which truly, would be mint!), maybe we'll see something like this iPhone come to market, maybe we'll even see something really cool in the sub-notebook or even tablet space (Newton Lives!), but It would be truly amazing to me if Jobs would sing a tune something like: OK, we've spent the last 30 years creating the best possible way for all of us to work with this incredibly friendly and powerful machine called an Apple Computer, and we've pretty much nailed it. Mac OS X Tiger rocks our socks, and Leopard will no doubt blow your minds. But NOW it's time for you to start working together with your friends, family and colleagues fluidly. You've learned how to work with your computer on stuff, now what about working with each other on stuff and let the computer glide gracefully into the background - or maybe the sideground?! This is not your father's personal computer network here - new ground, new vibe, new tools, new modus operandi.
It'd be a whole new world for me - I could truly spend the next 30 years working with those tools if they were made available to me. But that's just a fantasy, right?
