On Jan 29, 2010, at 11:14 PM, b_s-wilk wrote:
Apple doesn't lead. They take mostly existing technology and make it better--sometimes. I worked for Apple. My cousin is an Apple engineer. Their PR is amazing, so is Steve Jobs' reality distortion field.
I think you are blinded by ideology. You only have to count the number of patents involved in this product to see lots and lots of small innovations and the whole product is one big innovation. If you were were following all the eReaders rolled out at CES earlier this month and compare them to the iPad you should be able to see that the iPad is far ahead of what anyone else was offering.
How about the white iBooks--Steve's white iBooks? They were disasters--more broken iBooks because of multiple design defects than most other Macs combined [burnt out mobos, bad displays], and almost 'impossible' to fix or upgrade yourself; have to remove 41 screws just to open it.
Almost all my clients bought bunches of white iBooks for their editors. Typically we kept them in service for 5 to 6 years, only recently switching to Intel MacBooks. I saw a few hard drives go bad. One had the magnetic switch that detects lid closed go bad (fixed by snipping 1 wire). One got dropped onto concrete and the LCD shattered. I think they stood the test of time quite well. When we retired them folks were asking if they could buy them. And yes, I did make repairs on them. I can count to 41. But it was cheaper to send them to Apple to get them fixed by Apple's flat rate repair service. I don't know why you are grousing about a very nice laptop.
Making technology so that it's not at all backward compatible is hostile to the existing customers. Making "portable" technology so that it can't exist alone is more hostile. Making most Apple products sealed so that they're difficult to open and upgrade is again more hostile to consumers. [I need heavy duty suction cups and torx bits to open my iMac, while my G5 has an easy release handle? Can't change the battery in a MacBook Pro or iPhone--good for the consumer?] They're lucky that the OS is compelling enough to make some of those purchases worthwhile.
Again you are pining for the parallel port. Very few people want to take their computers apart. Service is easy to get and priced reasonably. Apple routinely waves fees and offers huge trade-in discounts. By giving up on making some of their products easy to open Apple reduced costs, made the product much smaller, and increased battery life. I think these are very fine trade offs that benefit the majority of their customers. I see no reason for Apple to cater to the tiny minority of do-it-your-selfers.
Your futuristic nightmare isn't for people who don't have unlimited budgets to buy new toys and peripherals every year, or who don't have businesses that can deduct the toys' cost in their taxes. No ports + odd SIM card + only AT&T 3G US frequency = fewer sales.
Why should innovation stop just because you won't or can't pay for it? That's very self-centered. The rest of us want innovation. In fact we love innovation.
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