Hiking, the cure for all that ails me 

By Chris Gulker

I was reading DaveNet last night, and came upon a passage where Dave Winer describes his conversation with a venture capitalist. The VC pronounces Apple dead.. he's not interested in funding a Mac software startup. 

I've been wrestling with this since starting the new job. Apple is a great place to work, has lots of brilliant people (you can
almost see sparks flying off their heads as they roam the corridors). But something's amiss.. the great technology, the brilliant
ideas (the Insanely Great ideas) just aren't capturing the world's attention, the way Microsoft has. 

When I get too confused, burdened, blitzed, I go go hiking. Spouse Linda is good at finding great hikes in the Bay Area.
Today we hiked up a 2500 foot hill called Mission Peak in the East Bay (check out the view!) 

The weather's been perfect for the last couple days. We crossed the Dumbarton Bridge on our way to Mission Peak, part of
the East Bay Municipal Park system, above Fremont (where Apple has a Mac factory). 

                                                 Hiking is like free CPU time for me. Linda and I chat, and
                                                 amuse ourselves looking at the flora and fauna and commenting
                                                 on our dog's antics, but inevitably we fall silent and each turns to
                                                 her own thoughts. 

                                                 On a long hike (we walked for about 4 hours today, up and
                                                 down a 2500-foot peak) you can spend a good piece of time
                                                 turning over an idea. 

                                                 Anyway, Linda, Cassie and I started up the path to Mission
                                                 Peak. Cassie almost immediately managed to catch the attention
                                                 of a cow with a calf who didn't want her baby being herded. 

                                                 After escaping the blitzing bovine, and meeting a couple of
                                                 bloodhounds, we hit a long stretch of slogging up the
not-unsteep slope. My thoughts turned back to Mac vs Microsoft. 

Why isn't the Mac the dominant computer? My current working theory is that most people don't expect much from a
computer: the real-world workforce uses a computer as a glorified typewriter. They don't need a computer to be genuinely
great, intuitive and easy to use. 

In contrast, people single-handedly doing, say, color publications do need a great computer - they've got so many problems to
overcome the computer has to be great.. which is why most publishers are using Macs. 

But, the rest of the world can get by with Windows.. a theory that may explain why most analysts say computers have
brought no net productivity gain to the workplace. There's also the theory that most MIS departments like the fact that
Windows can be a giant pain to configure and run.. no trouble, no jobs for MIS people. 

It could be that everyone in the Mac camp is deluding themselves, Emperors-clothes style. I don't think Apple is without
delusions: but I think the notion that Wintel computers are easy to use is an even bigger delusion. 

                                By now we'd arrived at an umarked fork in the trail. A nice guy who was familiar
                                with the area stopped and helped us figure out the map. We later sat and talked to him
                                about good hikes and where to get good hiking maps. 

                                At the summit, Cassie scared up a snake, and scared us when Linda realized it was a
                                baby rattlesnake. Fortunately, she emerged unscratched. 

                                The Mission Peak summit has a pole drilled and fitted with pipes that are pointed at
                                various sites. The pipes are numbered, and a bronze plate explains the numbers. You
                                look through a pipe to pick out an area in the panorama below. It's sort of like a
                                real-world mapped graphic: peek instead of click to learn what you're looking at. 

                                I was thinking how nice it would be to have a life navigator like that; you'd go to a
                                place, look up the number for, say, solution to my biggest worry, and look through
                                the pipe for the answer. 



                                                                     The summit pole and viewing pipes,
                                                                     left. The wildflowers were out in
                                                                     force, like these California poppies,
                                                                     above. 

                                                                     Chris Gulker cg@gulker.com