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Derrick Story, the Mac DevCenter Managing Editor, writes in a recent newsletter:

bq. “First, I want to point out that as cool as the iSight is, it’s
only the tip of the Mac iceberg. The reason why it’s so powerful
is because your OS X computer is this amazing digital media
machine. As you will see, the iSight tricks are enabled by Apple
technologies such as QuickTime, FireWire, and Mac OS X. Plugging
the iSight into your Mac is like plugging a simple telephone into
a wall jack. It’s not so much the phone that’s incredible as it is
the infrastructure enabling it.”

I think Derrick highlights one of the fundamental advantages the Mac platform (and I mean platform in the all-inclusive, not-just-the-CPU sense) still maintains over any other hardware-OS combination. Because Apple maintains a level of control which each part of the platform, they’re able to ensure a really flexible, powerful infrastructure.

Or, put simply, “everything just works.”

And the value inherent in that simple statement is all to often overlooked and underestimated.

On a side note, it’s been very interesting and cool to watch Apple transition the way in which they control every part of the platform. In the past, it was through proprietary means. Nowadays, it’s through rigid standardization within the industry. The end result of this is that Apple is able to leverage innovations that occur elsewhere in the industry, but still ensure that “everything just works”.

written by Kyle