The Macintosh Ecosystem

A pictures says a thousand words, so here’s the picture first.  From it, you can see the idea is that the Macintosh community is made up of groups of people who are unique and distinct and play a certain role relative to the other groups. The arrows reflect the most obvious, public direction of products or services, but of course communication goes both ways, in all directions. You have every right to communicate to Consultants, Developers, Suppliers, Resellers, etc.

What you can’t see from the picture is that this is from a Keynote presentation of ten slides w/ white text on a blue background, that each group is on its own slide, and as we transition through the slides, each group fades in as follows: • Apple — creates both hardware like the iMac, iPod, Cinema Displays, etc., and software like Mac OS X, AppleWorks, Final Cut Pro, etc. • You — could be an individual, a photographer, a musician, a filmmaker, a business, or any of the over 25 million people using Macs today • Resellers — help sell Macintosh computers and software through schools, physical stores, mail order cataogs, or even online like Amazon • Developers — create hardware peripherals like digital cameras, printers, scanners, etc., and software, a.k.a. applications, including shareware • Media — publish how-to books, glossy magazines, up-to-the-minute newssites, quarterly financial analysis, and daily stock values, etc. • Consultants — offer seasoned, specialized expertise in setup, support and training to get the most out of your hardware, software, and network • User Groups — provide social, business and technical camaraderie in the local community, on campus and in corporations around the world • Suppliers — create the individual components that make up Macintosh computers, like processors, flat-panel screens, hard disks, etc, and • Shareholders — are people w/ a direct financial stake in Apple, like its executives, Board of Directors, employees, and, of course, stockholders The left column — Suppliers, Developers, & Consultants — make up a techie nuts & bolts focus, where the center column — Apple, Resellers, & You — make up a sales & marketing focus, leaving the right column — Shareholders, Media, & User Groups — to make up an educational & informational focus.

See the Keynote presentation as a 2 MB QuickTime movie, or if you want to print out the last slide, but w/o using all of your blue ink or toner to do so, download the 24 KB PDF w/ gray text on a white background. Simply clicking on either of the icons below may just load the file into your browser for viewing, so to be sure you actually download them to your HD, you may want to Option-click (or right-click Save As...)  Enjoy!