We have always been a Mac shop. For us, it hasn't just been a technological choice. It's a state of mind. There is something about Apple that feels like home. Our companies were founded at the same time, and in a sense they both grow out of the same early efforts to explore what technology could mean for content and expression. Bob Stein, one of Criterion's founders, began introducing Macintosh computers to laserdisc players in the mid-1980s, developing Apple HyperCard-based databases that allowed viewers random access to the complete works of the Louvre, for example. For a long time, we published CD-ROMs and expanded books for the Macintosh, and when I started at what was then called Voyager, the big crisis was bridging the chasm between Mac and Windows, the search for the "cross-platform tool," something that would heal the divide and allow us to make wonderful things on our Macs and still sell them to people who used PCs.
So when Apple has a good day, it makes us all happy, and Apple had about as good a day today as any company could want. If you didn't hear about the iPhone they introduced at Macworld, you should just go to the Apple site and download the presentation. It looks amazing, transformative. This is a company that is not following anyone. They are asking really basic questions and not assuming that all the good answers have already been found. They are making things that are beautiful because they make sense. I can't think of another company that is so true to its mission, and in the end, that's what makes them so good.
Categories: On Five
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