Bumped. Susan
This is a warning. I'm going to talk about something truly controversial. Yes, we've had posts on politics earlier today, and we've had a (very well done) post on abortion, but what I'm about to talk about stirs emotions rarely seen on this site. In this article, I'm going to mention Apple. A lot. You've been warned.
If you were to drop in on Earth around 260 million years ago, just before the dinosaurs began their rise to dominance, you might expect to see a world full of dinosaur precursors and primitive competition about to bite the dust. What you might not expect would be a world overrun not with the ancestors of dinos, but the ancestors of quite a different group. The Permian period was dominated by a group called the synapsids, a group that includes some truly odd looking giant reptiles with tall sails on their backs, other pig-sized reptiles with only two big tusks in their mouth, and every mammal that ever lived -- including us.
Synapsids formed a big part of a complex and rich ecosystem that stretched across the super-continent of Pangaea. Archosaurs, the group that includes crocodiles, dinosaurs, and birds, was represented in the Permian only by a few small relatives. If all you had was a snapshot of the Permian and a view of the world today, you might easily project a natural history that saw the synapsids in continuous control as the true mammals came to the fore. But that's not the way it went. At the end of the Permian, the world took an enormous blow to biodiversity, a mass extinction known as "the great dying." Following this event, synapsids began to be replaced by the rapidly expanding archosaurs.
Why? That's not entirely clear. Synapsids then probably had some of the advantages that mammals have today -- high metabolisms, regualtion of their body temperature, four-chambered hearts. But many of the archosaurs may have had most of the same tricks, plus they had another: a breathing system that expanded from their lungs into their lightweight, hollow bones. The additional area to absorb oxygen may have given the archosaurs a strategic advantage, a turbocharger, that allowed them to out race their opponents both figuratively and literally. This may have been particularly critical following the Permian, when it looks as if the oxygen content of the air took a big drop. It wasn't until another major extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous that the synapsids, who had scurried around under the feet of the turbocharged archosaurs for 180 million years, were able to gain the upper hand.
If all you knew was the Permian and today, you'd have little reason to think that the dinosaurs had ever existed.
Now suppose that instead of the Permian, you were able to drop into the world in another primitive age... say around 1990. Sure, the creatures walking the streets might look mostly the same (though you'd probably have to travel at least two blocks to find the nearest low-fat latte), but in one critical ecosystem the world looked entirely different -- the online ecosystem. The Internet backbone itself had been forming for two decades and usenet groups had been around almost as long, but the Internet as we know it today -- specifically the web-dominated Internet -- was still a year from beginning and several years from taking a central place. Instead the cyber-ecology was dominated by the great beasts of yore, commercial online services like Compuserve, GEnie, and a Macintosh-exclusive bulletin board service known as America Online. Many other services of this type rose and died in the next few years (remember Prodigy?) but the largest services dominated the landscape as surely as synapsids ruled the late Permian.
So here's a question: if some visitor to the future was to dip into the cyberverse circa 1990, and drop in for another sample in 2019... would this visitor realize that the web had ever existed? Or would he think instead that the CompuServes and Genies of the cyber-Permian had given way to the specialized client-based service of the cyber-Cenozoic. A service that carried the quaint, if no longer particularly accurate, name of "iTunes."
If you read technology news, and even if you don't, you've surely run into the rumors about Apple's upcoming press conference. This Wednesday Apple will introduce the world to the long lusted after tablet. Unless they don't. Either way, Apple's moves on the hardware front are only a sidenote to the real action. Looking at the acquisitions Apple has made in navigation, mapping, the big server farm they're constructing, the deals they're negotiating for content with magazines and newspapers...
It's not Apple vs Microsoft anymore. It's not even Apple vs Google.
It's Apple vs the Web.
Just as the web replaced earlier systems, Apple is building an alternative ecosystem that uses the Internet's backbone covered with their own cross-device platform. The early focus of that system has been on media. They've successfully built a massive presence in music even though everyone predicted their failure ("who is going to pay to download music when you can get it for free?"). They've called their entrance into television and movies a "hobby," but it's a hobby that outstrips all competitors. Even the little application store for the iPhone, which gave every appearance of being an afterthought, has turned into a revenue stream of around $5 billion a year.
Tablet or not, odds are that this week will see Apple's entry into books and magazines. The bow wave of that pending event is already reshaping everything from how much the New York Times is willing to give away on their web site to what Amazon pays in ebook royalties. When this wave has passed, there's every chance that a lot of people will make their way through the Internet without ever seeing the letters "www" again. It won't be the web. It'll be the Orchard.
What doesn't Apple have in the Orchard? You. They have a massive presence in the media realm, but they don't have anything to offer that competes with the freewheeling world of blogs and the rapidly changing social media space.
They don't have it yet. And maybe they won't. But, fellow resident of Dinoville, I wouldn't bet on it.