Why I write about Apple
by Volker Weber
I could not have said it better than Stephen H. Wildstrom, BusinessWeek:
No one questions the viability of BMW, to take an example from another industry, or doubts its ability to influence car design, just because it has less than 3% of the car market.
When co-founder Jobs once again took the helm of Apple in 1996, he promised to return it to a tradition of making "insanely great products." Despite the skepticism of the industry and its observers -- myself included -- he has, to a remarkable extent, delivered on that pledge.
So Apple will go on driving me crazy with obsessive secrecy about its products and its common refusal to make executives available for interviews. And relatively few of my readers will ever use the Apple products I write about. Yet as long as Apple continues to push the envelope and turn out remarkable products, I'll continue to give them a degree of attention that vastly exceeds it minor market share.
And yes, there is one more thing.
Comments
Why I use Apple products is different from why I might write about their products. Very different thing, at least here in the U.S., where Apple has a long history of being difficult for journalists to deal with.
And I don't mean simply that they don't return phone calls. (Though they don't. Not mine, at any rate. That's reserved for big names, and I've never had more than a middle-sized name.)
When I was Technology Editor at ZD's Sm@rt Reseller, I once managed to convince them to give me a demo of the latest-and-greatest while I was in the Bay Area. Ahead of time, I carefully explained that the magazine was for solution providers -- people who made their living by solving other people's technology and business problems. So please don't show me consumer stuff, no matter how cool it might be.
They spent a half hour showing me iMovie, complete with a demo of a parent using a video camera to record a kid's first bike ride.
Cool stuff, sure, but not what I'd asked for. And particularly irritating since I had an uphill battle to cover Apple at the time -- not because of bigotry but "they're only for home users." Nothin' for Apple-centric resellers. Grrr.
I love Apple's products, truly I do. I'm eagerly tracking the order of our new G5, Airport setup, and iSight (the latter purchase of which I blame Volker). I'm also writing a book about an Apple software product for Que Publishing. (Details available via e-mail, I should be circumspect in public.)
But I don't love writing about them.
