Plotting the Future of the Mac’s Hardcore Creative Center

Back in the olden days, before iPhones, MacBooks, and even iMacs, Apple made cute, teensy, easy-interface computers beloved by guys who made rave flyers and grrls who published ‘zines. Some things never change: Apple’s still beloved by hipster artists. They’ve just been joined by hipster bloggers, journalists, musicians, and, well… you get the 1280x960 JPG.

But in those early days—when Apple really was just a maker of computers for the digital-design renaissance—had there not been Adobe PageMaker, Illustrator, and Photoshop, Macs might have gone the way of Betamax. Adobe products have always been the abdominal core of Apple’s creative chi, and Adobe continues to develop software with graphics-focused computer users firmly in mind. With the advent of OS X, Adobe saw a Quark-sized hole, and ushered in InDesign to dominate print publishing—along with the rest of Creative Suite, which helps skin the entire Web.

So that’s the past. What lies in the future? Designing that layout is the job of John Loiacono, senior vice president of Adobe’s Creative Solutions Business Unit. “Apple and Adobe are similar in our target markets,” Loiacono says. “Creative professionals, knowledge workers, and people who want their content to stand out. We’re both aggressive and creative. We also have areas where we overlap and where we’re competitive—neither of us shy away from that—and the yin-and-yang scenario creates magic between the two companies.”

So what lies ahead? Well, a pretty hilarious spoof of how Photoshop CS3 would work on the iPhone made the rounds in ‘07, but Loiacono does have big aspirations for the wee computing platform: Flash support, the iPhone’s most glaring omission, save for maybe cut-and-paste.

“Flash is going to require Apple giving us more than just the SDKs that they provide for emulation,” Loiacono says. “Apple plays it very close to the chest on sharing its technologies. They’re not shy about that, and we understand that. We’re still working behind the scenes very diligently to try to make [Flash] happen—but we’re not there yet.”

Sentry at the App Store Gate

Victor Wang—if that’s his real name—became an Internet meme when he signed a rejection letter that informed the software developer behind Pull My Finger that his app was of “limited utility” and would thus “not be published to the App Store.” Sure, the app was fartsy, and most everyone would agree that smartsier and artsier software is more essential to the human experience. Nonetheless, when Victor Wang kaiboshed Pull My Finger, he caused a minor uproar among developers, because if usefulness is a criterion by which apps are judged, then a whole mess of cocktail napkin sketches need to be revised. Even more significantly, Mr. Wang’s rejection served as a reminder that he who decides App Store–worthiness wields unusual power—power that will only grow as the iPhone and touch become full-fledged computing platforms.

Erica Sadun of The Unofficial Apple Weblog (www.tuaw
.com) wrote that “Mr. Wang has become a near legend for his rejection letters,” but we’re not convinced of Victor Wang’s existence. Apple wouldn’t confirm that it employs anyone by that name, and, reflecting the experiences of all the developers we spoke with, Justin Morgenthau, creator of the automotive data-logging app Dynolicious, told us, “I never had any interaction with Victor Wang. The App Store approval process is a bit of a magical black box.”

Regardless whether he’s man or myth, we’re not ready to assign overwhelming significance to any direct role Victor Wang might play in the app-approval process. For us, he serves as a proxy for whoever (or whatever) stands sentry at the App Store gate. This person (or people or thing) not only influences which apps we get to use, but also determines which software developers get to benefit from the App Store’s bounty of business opportunities.

"The App Store approval process is a bit of a magical black box"

Given that the App Store could bloom into anything from a $416 million to $1.2 billion marketplace by the end of 2009 (so proclaimed stock analyst-cum-Apple fanboy Gene Munster last June), we have to ascribe immense influence to one Victor Wang, or to whoever actually grants admittance to the Apple app bazaar. And we also hope that Victor Wang—be he man or construct—becomes more public soon. As Eric Métois, developer of the top-rated iChalky app, told us, “I would be a bit reluctant to dive into the development of a real business application unless I had a more direct line of communication with Apple—and some assurance that a large investment wouldn’t simply fizzle through Apple’s mysterious review process.”

Next, Arnold Kim and Hollywood