Why Apple is unprepared for the future

I'm a big fan of my Mac, but when it comes to thinking about how we'll live and work in the future, I rarely think of hardware or software from Apple. Unfortunately, Apple has repeatedly proven that they'll expend massive time and effort reinventing the look and feel of technology that is antiquated, at best!

Take the laptop for instance. Right now, I'm highly focused on allowing my users to work from anywhere, anytime. I'm spending my time and effort developing infrastructure that allows users to use inexpensive, small, lightweight devices to access my systems. The MacBook Air is the only product remotely capable of fitting this bill, and it doesn't even compete on the same plane of existence as the netbook. No, I don't want to use a netbook for everything, but if I'm working in the cloud anyhow, I don't need a full blown laptop. Strike one for Apple. I'll buy my users five netbooks for every Air I could buy.

Now for software. I love the Apple "experience". It's simple, slick and beautiful. But it's based heavily on local resources. All of the "i" products (iTunes, iLife, etc.) are great products for what they do. Virtually any user can jump right in and, as long as they only do it the Apple way, get right up and running. However, and this is a big one, woe be to the user that doesn't rely on local resources! Remember, I just said I live in the cloud, right? So, even within my home I have a server where I keep my music and pictures and files and so forth all on my server. I've got five computers in multiple flavors that all need to get to the same resources. The "i" stuff doesn't like that. Of course many of these products will work with the Mac cloud... but I'm not paying that kind of money for online storage that I can get for free or cheap from anyone else.

Within five years, I expect I'll be supporting a user base made up of mosly low power processors that simply connect to my infrastructure and let all the processing happen there. Further, "my" infrastructure may not even be "mine" but simply reside on someone elses infrastructure. Where will Apple fit into that? The iTouch and iPhone are GREAT devices, but at the same price as a netbook, and no ability to RDP they are quickly being exchanged for other, more flexible, devices. The real irony of this is that Apple chose to move to a UNIX environment; an operating system that is arguably best for supporting the sort of infrastructure I'm bulding!

I'm not going to rant on. Suffices to say that if Mac wants to play in my park they're going to have to step up their game in cloud computing support. I hope they do. I'll surely miss them if they don't.