An Apple Too Shiny To Bite.

Hello, intarwebs. I have been asked to guest post!
(i can see my sub-lebrity status growing)

My issue now is, what to rant about, for there is so very much that annoys intrigues and fascinates, I believe the best course of action is to go off on all three, and being a newly converted fanboy of Jedi Master Steve Jobs I think i'll start here

(i accredit the title of 'Jedi master' as an honorarium, much like the "Dr." in Dr. Phil)

Apple is a unique company of dreamers and visionaries or as most would have it, idiots. and I do not wholeheartedly disagree, there have been instances where the company has beguiled the masses and created such a reality distortion field around itself as to appear flawless, and most of the early 20 somethings do not remember the laughable attempt at portability that was the Newton.

• Dial up networking on a 'portable' device? oh yeah.
• Ugly assed green to black screen ala Gameboy circa 1989? check.
• A 6 inch screen with a resolution of 320x240? Aw hells yes.

While we laugh let's remember that,

• It defined the term PDA.
• You wanted one.

On the other hand a product that most users wouldn't remember (though the readership of this blog may differ)

The Apple Pippin was intended to be a game console, basically a Phillips CD-i gone Mac. Five years after the amazing failure that was the CD-i, Apple, in it's infinite wisdom, decides to do the same exact concept and somehow expects a different result. (to the LOLs of technological historians)

We are living in an age when security is king because fear is rampant, which may be the reason Apple has decided to stay the course of "sell the hardware, don't worry about protecting the software" and that may go a good way to understanding how a New York Times columnist got away with advocating the purchase of the 29 dollar upgrade to snow leopard for users who do not qualify. (A violation of the DMCA… speaking of DMCA violations, George H.W. Bush's iPod + Beatles = violation)

But as a fan of the operating system this annoys me, if only for the fact that it isn't available as an operating system for a broader range of machines, while yes, I got Leopard 10.5.6 running on an HP Pentium 4 beautifully, it wasn't without hoops most users couldn't jump through.

Simplified, my message is this.

Sell the OS as an OS, protect it, profit from it and sell the expensive, shiny machines to those who can afford it.