Apple's brand new thing, probably a tablet Mac, a piece of hardware that has already been around since Windows XP, but it is an Apple product so clearly only they can draw this much attention to it, is being announced today. Yes this does sound like a *sarcasm* great new age of computing *end sarcasm* but sounds like the same old Apple "magic."
The iPod has revolutionized the mp3 player. Every company out there tries to emulate what they have done. But they were far from the first, just the first to make it super easy to do. But I have no problem with it. I have had many of them, I have loved every one that I have bought or received as a gift, and I think it is a great piece of hardware. Also the iTunes software to go along with the iPod makes it a great one-two punch for them, and I good way to start making money again, and everyone needs to admit they didn't start making money until the iPod became compatible with Windows. But then there are the other things that Apple does that bothers me.
The first thing is the attitude that Apple seems to carry with it, or at least the fanboys out there. This is extremely pertinent to the announcement that is coming later today. If you look over any tech blog or website the past few weeks there has been massive speculation over what Apple is going to announce. All signs are pointing towards a tablet. Now when Dell, Acer, or Gateway came out with tablets years ago it wasn't the biggest thing in the world but it caused a bit of a stir. But now that Apple is releasing one, the entire tech community has come to a standstill waiting for Apple. It took them at least 6 years to come out with a tablet machine, and from what ever mockups I can see it doesn't have a hard keyboard, so that will be stuck onscreen, isn't the biggest gripe on the iPhone the LACK of any hard buttons? That it all depends if you can navigate a touch screen that even the most tech savvy people can have troubles with? (I concede the biggest gripe was the lack of copy and paste but they fixed that...3 years later) But it doesn't start with table, or iSlate, iTablet, whatever they call it, it starts a few years before.
Anyone remember the Macbook Air? Yea that is what I thought, you don't really, but it is there in the back of your mind. It was lauded as a great machine before it was released to the public. It was light, it was thin, it was fast...ish, the next big thing. Too bad for Apple it didn't revolutionize the world like they thought it would, or even just the laptop market. The connections weren't laid out very well, you couldn't charge it on a flat surface, and it was before digital distribution really took off so you need to buy an external optical drive to install anything. It just didn't live up to expectations.
The iPhone was the next big thing to come out from Apple. Again I have to give Apple credit, they have designed a great product, but it is far from a new idea. It is just they were able to sit back, wait for others to try and make a phone/media player, and then take the best attributes from all that are out there and throw it into one sleek looking package. It just really frustrates me when Apple doesn't even acknowledge that it isn't a new idea. If you look at other phone makers, they all say, Phone A did something great that we are trying to incorporate, and Phone B had a nice keyboard and we are trying to improve upon it, Apple just thumbs their nose at anything else that could have been an inspiration.
To be honest though, it does really boil down to the annoyance that Apple fanboys emanate. That Apple is the be all end all product. If it isn't apple, it sucks, truthfully. Worked with a co-worker, good guy, smart, funny, like him as a person, but he just couldn't stop showing what Apple did better than Windows. One main point he had was the lack of malware for the Mac. I agree it doesn't have malware, but it is the fastest machine hacked at major hacking conventions. There have been viruses before for the machine, it is just the market share isn't enough for hackers. If someone is going to write a worm, they want it to affect the most people possible. So if Mac even has a 10% market share of all computers in the world, why would you only want to affect 10% when there are 9 times more people out there you can annoy?
OK you can go back to your iPhones and iPods and walk on your merry way now. But just remember that Apple is a niche. It has a price premium, cheapest laptop is 1000$, you can get a good windows laptop for half that. So before you try and show the world how Macs are better and push it on people, most people don't want to spend the money. And even if it is a tablet that is coming out, it will be overpriced for what it can do, and it has been done before, except with a full OS that you can use...rant over.
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