1984 again?

Some of you may remember 1984. Not the movie but Macintosh. As far as a computer geeks go, that was the event in the year. It took a while for me to touch the machine personally. I still remember the moment. I was a poor college student living in Tokyo back then.

In an afternoon of the day, I stopped by a showroom of a major computer dealer in Tokyo downtown (precisely say, Takatano Baba). It was sitting quietly without drawing much attention from visitors. It had to be a dream machine, since that was conceived by two Steves of Apple (well, I believed that way at the moment). Once I started playing with the machine, it was breathtaking. I could not believe how far the machine gone to. I felt like I had been living in a dark age. And this was the light for the future.

Macintosh has created our future in some sense. On the other hand, Macintosh is currently neither dominating PC market nor anything closer. Microsoft launched Windows ver 1.0 in 1985. The product was not anywhere near Macintosh. I could not believe how primitive it was. It was like a small project done by a summer intern. Around 1986, Macintosh sales were taking off. Apple had a great success. Many had believed that Apple would enjoy the success long time.

Microsoft launched Windows ver 3 in 1990 and ver 3.1 in 1992. Macintosh was still technically ahead of them. However, Microsoft was seeing a strong sales growth as they were persistent. Then, Microsoft released Windows 95 in 1995. It was the time that Netscape (founded in 1994) was changing the world by introducing the web to the world. Windows 95 sales took off with a huge demand for Internet terminal. Windows 95 was the choice for most. Apple had gradually lost their sales. They had a major business crisis in 1997. Though they could have died then, Steve Jobs comes back and miraclously they have survived.

In 2007 Apple has released iPhone. The iPhone has been sold in a brisk pace. As several experts points out, this is not yet another cell phone. This is an another breakthrough. Cell phones have been around for a while. Gradually we realized that this could be a great computing device. Some attempts were made without much success. It seems that the iPhone is changing the picture. Ok, the sales is pretty good. But what does make it a breakthrough?

Apple introduced iPhone 3G this month. Simultaneously it has released version 2.0 firmware that allows developers to write code for the device officially. This year’s WWDC (Apple’s developer’s conference) had a record number of developers (sold out first time ever since 1983 when a first WWDC was held in Monterey, CA). Obviously many new developers were drawn by iPhone. For whatever reason, many developers want to do their business on it. That is very critical for a platform business. I think this is one good indication for their success. I have not seen any other mobile phone attracting this many application developers.

Maybe Apple has made an another major leap by iPhone. The ambience around the device reminds me 1984. That is very exciting. On the other hand, we know the rest of the history. I have to wonder what we are going to remember in ten years. I strongly hope that “2007 won’t be like 1984”. Still they are not the only player in town. I am going to write some interesting observations of the mobile computing platform later.