Thoughts about Apple

This post in Wired last week got me to thinking...

I'm no Apple fanboy (perhaps I would be if I had bought the stock when Laura wanted me to - about fifteen years ago), but I do feel a bit of the legacy.

My first "Apple" was a II+ clone that me and the other guys at Northern Telecom put together over a winter's weekend in cold, cold Saskatoon. We ordered motherboards, disk drives, chips, cases and power supplies from a company called "Parts Galore" in Toronto. I remember this vividly as Paul, one of the engineers that was putting together an Apple clone for himself, had a brand new American Express card. His first transaction was to order these parts for all of us - I think the total came to $18K. He got a phone call from Amex at work in about 30 seconds.

My second computer was an Apple IIc - no faster than the II+, but it had a sexier case. It was amazing that back in the days when we had almost nothing - a rented apartment, a rented TV, mom and dad's pots and pans - I still could find $1500 for a new computer. Guess that tells you where my head was at.

Anyways, after Apple came Atari for me, and after Atari came HP's first foray into the PC business. But even then I was interested. Mike Devall and I skipped out of work one Friday afternoon so we could get a look at the new McIntosh computer on display in downtown Edmonton (he would take orders, but you'd have to wait for delivery).

I've long since left the Apple computing world behind, although I've had my share of iPods and still use my iTouch daily. Both my kids are Apple fans, and they both drive Macs of some description (Kathryn is on her third, I think - Dave is on his first).

So on to the question of the day. I was at dinner last night and John thinks that the Apple franchise is about to go the way of every other company that preceded it ... Xerox, Wang, IBM, HP. They get run by committee, and the vision is gone. Their products become evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Steve Jobs has long been the vision of Apple. He's famously adopted the role of tyrant and chief decision maker, and has created this image (I don't really know if it's true) that he will veto any product idea that doesn't meet his criteria.

As everyone knows, Steve stepped down as CEO of Apple last week. The elephant in the room is that he's dying, and he knows it - so this is his way of peacefully transitioning the company to new leadership.

Many, like John, would say that marks the end of Apple. I initially thought this as well. Now I'm not so sure. Jobs has had lots of time to get the transition in order. And the pipeline. And the culture. And the vision.

If Apple can successfully keep the culture of "insanely brilliant" alive and thriving, the company will do just fine. For the next decade or two anyways.....

Hang on for the ride .. it may be a long one

AP Photo/Kyodo News

Back in February I wrote about pretty much what's happened (happening) this week. Markets collapsing and staying collapsed (may be too soon to tell) and rioting in the UK are symptoms of the problem - but not the problem itself.

The problem as I see it is the unsustainability of the "Western World" life we've created. You cannot build a society that depends on growth for it's survival. Growth has to stop somewhere, and the magnificent thing about our natural laws are that, whether we do something about it or not, the growth will stop. Just like gravity, we can defy it as long as we want, but in the end, gravity wins. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about capitalism, debt, resources, people, food, whatever. If our current system relies on everything increasing infinitely, it will fail.

Our planet could care less whether we're here or not ... and perhaps everything would be much better off if we weren't. Until we learn to accept that growth is not all good, and we become OK with the idea of "enough", we're doomed as a species.

That's quite the extrapolation from recent events, huh? I think this is only the tip of the iceberg, and we're in for a long, rough ride. A ride that doesn't really care how we feel about it - we're on it anyways. We've had plenty of opportunity to change our course, but we've refused. Now it's out of our hands.

Grouse Grind

This photo of The Grouse Grind is courtesy of TripAdvisor

For the last 15 years or so, I have pretty regularly done the Grouse Grind or the BCMC trail in North Vancouver. I still have a faded T-Shirt from the Grouse Grind Mountain Run in 2001. For a few years early last decade, I would do the Grind two or three times a week, and my times continually got better ... I tried to break 40 minutes, but could never reach that mark regardless of how much I "believed" I could get there. My best time was 40:35 somewhere in 2001 or 2002. Up until the stroke, my times were in the 45 minute range.

If you've ever done this insane climb, you know there is no training for it ... except to actually do it. Bike riders seem to do better than most, probably because of the cardio and the heavy leg exercise involved. I've been able to walk since December 2009 - about 20 months - and I have been able to hike our local hill - Minnekhada Park - with Bruce leading the way. Minnekhada is about a quarter the distance and elevation of Grouse Mountain, but it's a good warm-up for the main event.

As part of a ruse to get my brother Rob out of the house for the day (his surprise 50th Birthday Party was this Saturday) I asked him to come with me up the Grind - which he does it pretty regularly in the summer. Besides, I needed someone to spot me and make sure I didn't kill myself. Two other friends, John and Grant, as well as my nephew Alex, joined us. I have been pretty apprehensive about trying this again, as I didn't know what I'd do if I got half way and couldn't go any further. Oh well, damn the torpedoes.

As it turns out, my lungs and heart felt good the whole way up. Only my right foot gave me some problems - sometimes foot placement wasn't exactly where I wanted it to be. I had said to myself "if I could do this thing in under 90 minutes, I'd call it a success". I did it in 72 minutes. Pretty proud of myself....