Where has the FUD gone?

A long time ago, the IT industry was subjected to FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) advertising campaigns.

FUD was a marketing strategy used by IBM. When competitors announce a new product (or worse, a breakthrough product), IBM would announce a similar product, but only in broad terms. The idea was to encourage people to wait for IBM's product, thereby reducing sales of the competing product. (It also created hype for the IBM product.)

To be effective, a FUD announcement had to describe a future product. It created doubt and uncertainty, and fear of making a bad choice of technology.

I haven't seen a FUD announcement for a long time.

They were common when IBM was the dominant manufacturer for computing equipment. The FUD campaign may have ended shortly after the introduction of the PS/2 (itself a product with a FUD announcement) line of computers. The market rejected the PS/2's Micro Channel Architecture, and accepted Compaq's ISA (the old PC standard architecture) with its 80368 processors. (Although the market did adopt IBM's VGA display and 1.44 MB hard "floppy" disk as standards.)

Compaq didn't use FUD announcements to take the lead from IBM. It delivered products, and its announcements for those products were specific. The message was "our products have this technology and you can buy them today".

There is one company today which has something similar to FUD announcements. But they are different from the old-style FUD announcements of yesteryear.

That company is Apple.

Apple is the one company that announces future products. It does it in a number of ways, from its annual marketing events to its reliable product schedule. (Everyone knows that Apple releases new iPhones in September, for example.)

Apple's FUD campaign seems to be accidental. I don't think that Apple is playing the same game that IBM played in the 1980s. IBM made FUD announcements to deter people from buying products from other companies. Apple may be doing the same thing, but instead of affecting other companies, I think it is Apple itself that suffers from these announcements.

Apple announcing a new processor for its MacBook line doesn't deter people from buying Windows laptops. They need laptops, they have already chosen Windows (for whatever reason) and they are going to buy them. Very few people change their purchasing decision from Windows to a yet-to-be-defined MacBook.

But a lot of Apple users defer their purchases. Many Apple users, in the middle of planning an upgrade, put off their purchase until the new MacBook was released.

Trade publications advise people to defer the purchase of Mac Minis, based on Apple's announcements and regular product schedule.

This behavior is the same as IBM's FUD from thirty years ago -- but with the difference that the (unintentional) target is the company itself.

It may be that Apple is aware of customers deferring their purchases. Perhaps Apple wants that behavior. After all, if Apple withheld new product information until the release of the product, those who recently purchased the older version may feel betrayed by Apple. It may be that Apple is forgoing immediate revenue in exchange for customer goodwill.

I'm happy to live in a world without FUD announcements. The IT world with FUD has challenges for planning, and a constant fear of missing out on important technology. The current world is a much more relaxed place. (That may sound odd to technology managers, but believe me, today's world is much better than the older one.)

The Macbook camera may always be second-rate

A recent article on MacWorld complained about Apple's "solution" of a webcam for MacBooks, namely using the superior camera in the iPhone.

It is true that iPhones have better cameras than MacBooks. But why?

I can think of no technical reason.

It's not that the iPhone camera won't fit in the MacBook. The MacBook has plenty of space. It is the iPhone that puts space at a premium.

It's not that the iPhone camera won't work with a MacBook processor. The iPhone camera works in the iPhone with its A12 (or is it A14?) processor. The MacBook has an M1 or an M2 processor, using very similar designs. Getting the iPhone camera to work with an M1 processor should be relatively easy.

It's not a matter of power. The MacBook has plenty of electricity. It is the iPhone that must be careful with power consumption.

It's not that the MacBook developers don't know how to properly configure the iPhone camera and get data from it. (The iPhone developers certainly know, and they are just down the hall.)

It's not a supply issue. iPhone sales dwarf MacBook sales (in units, as well as dollars). Diverting cameras from iPhones to MacBooks would probably not even show in inventory reports.

So let's say that the reason is not technical.

Then the reason must be non-technical. (Obviously.)

It could be that the MacBook project lead wants to use a specific camera for non-technical reasons. Pride, perhaps, or ego. Maybe the technical lead, on a former project, designed the camera that is used in the MacBook, and doesn't want to switch to someone else's camera. (I'm not convinced of this.)

Maybe Apple has a lot of already-purchased cameras and wants to use them, rather than discarding them. (I'm not believing this, either.)

I think the reason may be something else: marketing.

When Apple sells a MacBook with an inferior camera, and it provides the "Continuity Camera" service to allow an iPhone to be used as a camera for that MacBook, Apple has now given the customer a reason to purchase an iPhone. Or if the customer already has an iPhone, a reason to stay with the iPhone and not switch to a different brand.

It's not a nice idea. In fact, it's rather cynical: Apple deliberately providing a lesser experience in MacBooks for the purpose of selling more iPhones.

But it's the only one that fits.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Apple has a good technical reason for supplying inferior cameras in MacBooks.

I hope that I am. Because I want Apple to be a company that provides quality products, not inferior products carefully crafted to increase sales of other Apple products.

About those new Macs

Apple's presentation today talks about three new products: the new iPhone SE, the new iPad Air, and the new Mac Studio desktop (with a new display, so maybe that is four new products).

The iPhone SE is pretty much what you would expect in a low-end Apple phone. It still uses the A-series chips.

The iPad Air uses an M-series chip, and that is interesting. Using the M-series chip brings the iPad Air closer to the Mac line of computers. I expect that, in the somewhat-distant future, Apple will replace the iMac with the iPad line. Apple already lets one run iPhone and iPad apps on Macbooks; some day Apple may let an M-series Mac run apps for an M-series iPad.

The new M1 Ultra chip and the new Apple Studio desktop and display received the most time in the presentation.

The M1 Ultra chip is a pairing of two M1 Max chips. Instead of simply placing two M1 Max chips on a board, Apple has connected them at the chip level. The connection allows for rapid transfer of data, and results in a powerful processor.

Interestingly, the M1 Ultra design does not follow the pattern of the M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips, which are expansions of the base model. Apple may have run into difficulties in building a single-chip successor to the M1 Max. The pairing of two M1 Max chips feels like a compromise, getting a faster processor on an aggressive schedule.

The Mac Studio is a computer that I was expecting: an expanded version of the Mac Mini. The Mac Studio  has a beefier processor, more memory, and more ports than the Mac Mini, but the same basic design. The Mac Studio is simply a big brother to the Mac Mini, and nothing like the Mac Pro.

Apple hinted at a replacement for the Mac Pro, and my prediction for its successor stands. That is, I expect the replacement for the Mac Pro to be a more powerful Mac Mini (or a more powerful Mac Studio). It will not be like the current Mac Pro with slots for GPU cards. (There is no point, as the built-in GPU of the M1 processor provides more computational power than an external card.) It will most certainly have a processor more powerful than the M1 Ultra. That processor may be a double M1 Ultra (or four M1 Pro processor ganged together); what Apple calls it is anyone's guess. ("M1 Double Ultra"? "M1 Ultra Max"? "M1 Ultravox"?)

The new Mac Studio is a processor for specific purposes. Apple's presentation focussed on video applications, which are of interest to a limited market. For typical PC users who work in the pedestrian world of documents and spreadsheets, the new Mac Studio offers little -- the low-end Mac systems are capable, and additional processing power is simply wasted as the computer waits for the user.

Apple's presentation, and its concentration on video applications, shows a blind spot in their thinking. Apple made no announcements about changes to operating systems or application software. Another company, when announcing more powerful hardware, would also introduce more powerful software that takes advantage of that hardware. Apple could have introduced improved versions of applications such as Pages and Numbers, or features to share processing among Apple devices, or AI-like capabilities for improved security and privacy... but they did not. Perhaps they have those changes lined up for a future presentation, but I suspect that they simply don't have them. Their thinking seems to be to wow their customers with hardware alone. That, I think, may be a mistake.