On 16-Oct-2007, at 18:46, A. Pagaltzis wrote:
He always does that. If he dumps on an idea, you know he doesn't
like it. However, if his position turns from "that sort of thing
sucks and no one would want it" into "no one has done these
well", then you can assume that such a product is in the works at
Apple. Until it is finally release, his rhetoric will gradually
turn toward specific flaws of existing examples of that kind of
product. The iteration of the cycle eventually ends when he gets
up on a stage and says "everyone else's sucks so we have done
this right."
Yes, yes, I know all that, that's the conventional wisdom. But that
really sounds more like Palm than Apple... Jobs will shortcut the
whole thing... in the case of the iPod mini - iPod shuffle thing his
position went from "no one would want it" to "we've done this right"
in one year, without any intermediate steps. He didn't say 'nobody's
done flash right', he said 'flash is a stupid idea, because for $50
more you can get a hard disk'. In the case of the Mac mini there
hadn't been any comments to imply that "no ugly monitors on nice
macs" was going down even up to the month before.
By "cares about similar things" I meant they pay attention to
aspects of their products that matter to me as a user of products
of that kind.
They don't do that for me. At all.
Some of the stuff they pay attention to makes their products more
hateful. Some of the stuff they don't pay attention to they
desperately need to.
Some of the stuff, *Microsoft* does a better job. Like keyboard
shortcuts. And even the old Windows 3.11 File Manager is a better
file manager than Finder.
Seriously. They are not all that good at picking a course. They're
good at sticking to one. TOO good at it, sometimes, for my liking.
I think you are saying exactly what I was saying, not finding a
contradiction at all.
Except how they don't actually do for me any of the things they seem
to do for you. Isn't that a contradiction?
Forget it. Apple's an enterprise, maybe not an evil one like
Microsoft or (at least the old) IBM, but they're no wellfare
organisation and aren't going to care about you or me unless
it directly affects their bottom line.
Um, how exactly did you get the idea that I thought they cared about
you or me? I'd have thought pointing out that their decisions really
sucked some times would have implied the opposite. My point isn't
that they're in it for my good, but that they're consistent about
what they're in it for.
That's just reality.
Yes, they're just another company. Those three blog entries you
quoted all seemed to imply some preternatural cunning that I just
don't see.
Conventional wisdom reads all kinds of stuff into The Steve, and he
plays up to it, but really, there's a whole lot less there than
conventional wisdom thinks.
I've gone right over to just looking at what they DO, not what the
Steve Show looks like, and hold my nose when they obsess about
something hateful, because as long as they're obsessive about
everything I've got a reasonable expectation that the bits I like are
included in "everything". So while I've got my exit strategy in
place, I don't think I'm going to need it.
