Ashtrays always remind me of cemetaries, so I feel like it might be an appropriate picture to commemorate the possible death of Apple.By death, I mean that they have started doing a bit well in the past few years, and now they are kind of turning into the "other guys". What was always cool about Apple was that it seemed like a kinder, gentler, and often easier to use approach to computing. But it seems that they are kind of ruining it.
What happened to Apple? I was wondering what their approach to the Vista release would be and I must admit that I am pretty disappointed. On their website that has daily news from Apple two of their last eight entries have been basically "vista sucks" comments (granted, from "others"):
1. http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/17992/page1/
2. http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/living/16555680.htm
This seems basically to be following the plans of whoever it is that controls American business and politics and has decided that the best offense is a good defense. I forget the precise statistics but the percentage of political campaign ads that are making NEGATIVE comments about the competitor, versus POSITIVE comments about what the candidate actually plans to do if elected has grown insanely in the past decade.
This is not endearing.
And now APPLE of all people is doing it. The best policy would be to not have said anything at all. Ignore Vista. Hardly anyone can run it anyway. It is a non-issue. Everyone is already set to complain about it - let them. Just don't get involved. Focus on your own products.
This is of course not entirely out of the blue, what with the insane amount of money iPod has made them and the whole DRM kafuffle. Apple just seems to be in bed, all of a sudden, with exactly the same people I once felt (perhaps naively) that they were kind of separate from. Another victim of success.
