I HATE APPLE

Love that story Markers!

Only think I can't help but thinking is: these are stories that surface when someone has died.

:)

just saw someone on twitter saying something similar to yr last point

I've never been an Apple fanboy. I use macs and a iPod, but I would watch the keynote speeches or anything. But what I really dislike is how soon the backlash comes on Twitter especially. People express their awe and grief for Jobs resigning, which is completely fair, but less than 12 hours later there's also loads of people who feel the need to say "enough of Jobs already!". I don't think I'll ever understand people.

wouldn't watch

markers i would dig it if you would say somethin more abt what this stuff means/t to you, cause not having had any kind of personal identification with apple i'm just kinda agog at it all.

i don't know abt markers or any other apple stans but for me (ridic. fanboy) it's always been about Apple seeming to care about the same sort of things in tech that I do, and the fear of what it'll be like without them.

If you look at the state of computing around the 96/97 time when Apple was dying, it was woeful -- state of the art was Win 95, the operating system that warned you during installation that the installer might crash and just to pull the plug if it did. The thought of having to use that because the Mac was about to die ... brrr. Hardware is just as bad. There's been a pretty consistent pattern since about 1990 of me going "shit, I want an X that works, when is Apple going to make one?" because all the Xs on the market were hard-to-use dreck for engineers, and when Apple finally made an X it was damn-near exactly what I wanted (even if I didn't know what that was!).

X could have been a laptop, or a printer, or an MP3 player, or a phone, or a tablet. Each time, the tech industry was shoving out crap, and Apple blew it away. They have forgotten better stuff than some companies will ever make. The damn iPhone 4 is already making a better job of being a pocket digital camera than the entire camera industry could come up with. Srsly -- furiously competitive market in the world and nobody else could come up with tap-to-focus, let alone instagram?

There's a quote from Jobs which is a bit much for me, where he says that he doesn't hate Microsoft, it's "just that they simply have no taste." He might as well have said that most of the tech industry doesn't have any taste. And if you're into tasteful gadgetry instead of yet more junk, the idea of the industry without Apple is a bleak one.

(There's also the fact that when Microsoft was at its height, it was seen as inevitable that we'd have to put up with their shitey crashy will-this-do? bullshit because that was what people "wanted". You had to argue hard for the Mac way of thinking, while it had barely 3% market share, and that defensiveness (plenty of it Apple-encouraged) gave rise to a whole culture, which has weirdly infected kids who've never known anything but a totally dominant Apple.)

tldr: Jobs saved Apple, Apple make stuff that doesn't make you want to continually stab yr eyes, Apple without Jobs could be a disaster, need to sharpen my pencils again, boo.

Jobs is a modern American folk hero, a Paul Bunyan of the digital age.

PS Are there any Apple keynote speeches/presentations on youtube that are especially historic/amazing to watch? I don't mind sitting through that stuff but some of it is really long and I'd like to be pointed to the 'greatest hit' maybe. Is there a top ten list somewhere?

http://admintell.napco.com/ee/images/uploads/appletell/_NEWTON_thumb.GIF

stet OTM

at the same time, i find myself loving/hating what jobs did to the computer industry, in that he took what was one generation's ham radio (active tinkering hobby) and turned it into the next generation's boob tube (couch consumption hobby).

you can see it in the attitude of dudes like that princeton douchebag markers linked to twice: the greatest achievement of my life re: steve jobs was not doing something he might have done, but getting to the front of the line in his store. that is a little bit like writing a lee iacocca tribute that is about your excitement about winning a pinto on price is right.

but then again, that douchebag is of the generation that confuses posting lists with critical thinking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc3JzS0K3ys

Adam--

this came out today and might be good -- haven't looked at it too much:

http://thisismynext.com/2011/08/25/steve-jobs-apples-ceo-retrospective-products/

lots of stuff to dig through in these:

http://www.youtube.com/user/peestandingup#g/u
http://www.youtube.com/user/AppleKeynotes#g/u

you should also google for some of the interviews that've been done w/ jobs @ the allthingsd conferences

There's a quote from Jobs which is a bit much for me, where he says that he doesn't hate Microsoft, it's "just that they simply have no taste."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgOP_aqqtg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmG9jzCHtSQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rco9xujjAak

right, so what is the end result of this culture of taste? what is the measure of a man? his amazon want list? the selection of fine links and exclusive goods he curates on his blog? the tweets he retweets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu0qeb_rJYU

at the same time, i find myself loving/hating what jobs did to the computer industry, in that he took what was one generation's ham radio (active tinkering hobby) and turned it into the next generation's boob tube (couch consumption hobby).

I understand this feeling and yet.

See, I was never and have never been a tinkerer or gearhead or whatever the term/field is. That's not me, except maybe under duress or need, however limited or specific. For a user like me, I just...want something that works. That may not be very freeing -- cue the Eco distinction between Apple/Catholicism and PC-fragmentation/Protestantism -- but it's not what I've ever been after, nor have I ever really desired.

The reason I became an Apple fiend was a simple one -- back in 1987, my folks decided to get a computer of my choice for my birthday. So my dad and I go to the Navy Exchange in Coronado to the computer section, after having pondered options earlier. I remember thinking that the whole deal with tons of PC choices seemed a bit much, and the store selection wasn't helping. But we ended up talking to a clerk, real friendly and enthusiastic guy, helping us talk through our options. He figured I would really like a Mac the most and explained why, noting its simplicity and how it was designed for someone -- like me! -- who just wasn't much interested in programming. Smart call, and I've never regretted it, and I don't think it's meant to be some horrible thing to feel that way about something. Some people obsessively rebuild cars, other people just want something to get to the grocery store and back.

"we dont touch my junk"

I don't think it's meant to be some horrible thing to feel that way about something

this is true

it means more when ned says it tho cause he's not a dumbass

whereas you can't tell when jobs sounds like a visionary and when he sounds like any other salesman

tbf to microsoft's junk it has traditionally been a bit better at gaming than apple's objets d'art, so yeah i suppose the ipad is the perfect X if you never wanted to play anything more complex than angry birds

so yeah i suppose the ipad is the perfect X if you never wanted to play anything more complex than angry birds

this is stupid

no it isn't

if you spend ten seconds watching one of the keynotes where ppl are demoing games, it's obvious that an ipad can run games way more complex than angry birds

like bejeweled, for instance

apologies for saying "stupid" but seriously, that's just wrong

http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/games.html

ya i overlooked fruit ninja hd, my bad

if you're gonna troll, try a little harder to be good at it

not trolling, if you go back to stet's timeframe there's many a reason why the pc became dominant, and the failure of apple to aggressively compete in the gaming world is one of them

right, so what is the end result of this culture of taste? what is the measure of a man? his amazon want list? the selection of fine links and exclusive goods he curates on his blog? the tweets he retweets?

Yeah, I used to think abt this a bit -- if they do the same thing, what's the difference? (I think the it-works-for-me is totally valid, and leads to powerful but ugly stuff like emacs). But then I figured, if you're going to spend this much time with stuff, better it be tasteful stuff.

(And the alternative stuff was barely equivalent, aesthetics aside. It was crashy and painful.)

http://common1.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/26/0,1425,i=266507&sz=1,00.jpg

he took what was one generation's ham radio (active tinkering hobby) and turned it into the next generation's boob tube (couch consumption hobby).

This is kind of the root of most of the criticism he gets. I think it's valid, however, I think the number of people tinkering with home computer systems 70s-80s as a ratio of the total population is probably actually smaller than the number of people today programming flash games, designing apps, experimenting with electronics in general. I think by exposing more and more people to the couch consumption model, you also end up with plenty in there that look at these things and have ideas on how to do them better, or how to hack around, etc.

the quick answer for me about why taste matters (& why I've been a Mac user since 2001): because working on a computer that's beautiful makes me want to work more. I'm totally serious: every day I get on my machine to do what I do, which is mostly writing in LaTeX, the experience is beautiful. & that was never true in Windows or Linux.

I gotta say ever since I installed OSX on my dual-boot system a year and a half ago, my use of Windows 7 as an OS has dropped to about 10%.

it means more when ned says it tho cause he's not a dumbass

― mr peabody (moonship journey to baja), Thursday, August 25, 2011 8:16 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

why are you being a dick?

like, that's not an excuse to call you a dick, i'm curious why you're so weirdly venomous here.

I don't understand anybody's reactions to this! Hands! In the air!

rip markers

at the same time, i find myself loving/hating what jobs did to the computer industry, in that he took what was one generation's ham radio (active tinkering hobby) and turned it into the next generation's boob tube (couch consumption hobby).

I've heard this many times but really, Apple in no way has diminished tinkering with hardware and actually provides an ability to tinker with software that other commercial vendors really didn't. Since OS X has been a thing, Apple's provided the same development tools that they use internally for everyone's use, gratis. The barrier to entry has never been lower. Microsoft has scripting languages that are in there, and I mean.. they had qbasic back in the day, but that's about it.

I've heard this argument even up to the last few months -- I was sitting in an auditorium and these two guys behind me were trotting out the same old "who wants a computer that is like a toaster, etc etc" thing which is bullshit -- they were talking about Linux as an alternative, and that's all well and good but the majority of people out there simply don't want to futz with their computer, never really replace hardware, and just want the damn thing to work.

There are so many people in the last decade I know who used to be that type who just don't care now. It used to be that all computers were crashy and you had to fuck around with shit in order to get things working optimally. That's not the case anymore, and the ability to have something that just works and doesn't need this tweaking leads people to realize that maybe there are things to do that are more interesting than tweaking with fiddly OS settings and hardware shit.

Apple didn't lose in the gaming world by not being interested in gaming, they lost it by being interested in hardware lock-in. PC gaming originally was about all this bullshit that involved tweaking memory management, deciding if your sound card was compatible with sound blaster standards or adlib or whatever else, having to select which joystick brand you have, and whatever else. Most of this, even up to the early DirectX days, was a complete mess. Not to mention having to support every bizarre combination of hardware.

Apple's approach is a lot closer to that of game consoles, with the caveat that the consumer machines seldom have the hot video cards that gamers want or the ability to easily swap components.

To be fair, Microsoft's never really made any significant amount of money from supporting gaming!

"what is the end result of this culture of taste?"

the way to understand taste is in terms of restraint, and not chasing after short-term rewards.
for example, at microsoft it is totally conceivable that if some marketing manager was convinced that hiring Insane Clown Posse instead of Brian Eno to create the windows startup sound would result in a 0.5% uptick in sales, millions of computers around the world today would now be waking to WOOP WOOP!

I mean, sometimes you do want to put furry dice and truck nutz on a computer, but that should never be factory default.

stet's massive post otm, particularly in that, for more than a decade, Microsoft's take on ease-of-use was hassling and condescending the user about EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME. It's now safe to turn off your computer! It looks like you're trying to write a letter! It looks like you've got quite a few icons on your desktop! Would you like to clean them up now? Click here if you would like to clean them up now. It looks like you're scratching your arse! Would you like a helpful scratching stick? You just plugged in a USB stick! WAIT!! Don't use it yet, I'm off to find a driver. See? This is me, looking for a driver, and I'm telling you all about it. I can't find a driver! Wait there while I search the internet for a driver. Is it all right if I use your internet to search for a driver? It is?? OH BOY!! Okay I can't find a driver. Sorry, you can't use this USB stick. Would you like to view troubleshooting options? You would? Okay. Have you tried plugging in your USB stick? Oh, you did that? Okay. Was this helpful?

loling

there's an app for that

New Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm Thinking Printers'

PC gaming originally was about all this bullshit that involved tweaking memory management, deciding if your sound card was compatible with sound blaster standards or adlib or whatever else, having to select which joystick brand you have, and whatever else.

tbf rather this than basically nothing at all