By Dan Moren
November 30, 2015 11:39 AM PT
The Back Page: Here’s to the crazy ones
When I started out as a professional writer almost a decade ago, one of my goals was to write the back page column for Macworld. The back page was always, to me, the most interesting part of the magazine, since it often contained the sort of idealistic pie-in-the-sky ideas that really sparked my imagination. So I thought it would be nice to honor that tradition with some certifiably crazy ideas of my own.
A lot of people are wondering these days about convergence. When it comes to Apple, the big source of so much hair-pulling focuses on whether OS X and iOS will remain their own separate things or whether Apple will jam these two delicious flavors together into one unholy combination.
Listen to me: Convergence is inevitable. It’s coming. And there’s no reason to fear this future, because it’s going to be amazingly magical. Because we’re not talking about some Frankenstein’s monster hybrid touchscreen Mac here, oh no. We’re talking about something totally and insanely revolutionary, something beyond this mundane everyday reality.
Because the next logical step for Apple is virtual reality. I know, I can see you shaking your heads out there. How can I see you? Virtual reality. (Actually, I just guessed, but that didn’t really work as a punch line.)
Just think… right now, Apple invests huge swaths of money in buying components, sending them to factories, assembling their products, shipping them to customers, and so on. Not only is it an expensive proposition, it’s also time-consuming and prone to leaks, so that by the time the products get to end users, everybody whines about how there are no surprises left.
But what if instead of building actual products, Apple built virtual ones? Now, rather than all those costly physical parts and that unwieldy infrastructure, you can have a virtual version of the device that’s in your hands immediately. That saves Apple money, and it gives you what you want: want a Macintosh IIfx that runs the most current version of OS X? Knock yourself out. A 16-inch iPhone? Go nuts! There’s no need for Apple to be constrained by petty limitations like physics—the topology of Apple’s design can go places its never gone before.
And most importantly, there’s no longer anything to hold Jonathan Ive back from making the Apple products of which he’s dreamed so long. Finally, he can us use all of the various paintbrushes at his disposal.
Don’t worry, though. They’re all just different shades of white.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]