This was an interesting article. Dave Winer—the father of blogging and the RSS—has published this article on Apple's current situation. His prediction: The Reality Distortion Field bubble is "about to burst" and Apple is going to suffer the ugliest shitstorm you've ever seen. Apple's Brewing ShitstormI've been lucky to be in the middle of a number of Internet shitstorms in my life. They've been absolutely surreal, unfair, cruel. No one will listen to your side of the story. People you thought were friends join the pile-on. Etc etc. And then it passes, and eventually you go back to life as it was. I don't want to re-litigate any of them, please — but I just want to say I know what it's like. Now Rex Hammock, who I admire as a friend and as a pundit, wrote a piece about Apple and the crazy situation with the iPhone 4. He's right, but he doesn't quite go far enough in his analysis. I don't think the problem is with the iPhone 4. I think what we're seeing is Apple's charm wearing off. The Reality Distortion Field bubble is about to burst. Their run as the Exceptional Company is about to end. And they're going to be the last ones to figure it out. And it's going to be the ugliest shitstorm you've ever seen. Why will it be so ugly? Because Apple's hype has been steadily inflating since 1997 when Steve Jobs returned, and it's never taken a dip. They've risen from being written off to being worth more than Microsoft. Apple's Brewing ShitstormIt's also going to get ugly because we're fed up with corporations. It was remarkable that there were no ads for oil companies on the World Cup broadcasts (at least the ones I watched). Can you imagine listening to a pitch from Exxon or BP saying they are working for our energy independence, or to clean up the planet or all the other lies they were telling us while they were taking huge unnecessary risks with the ecology of the oceans? They're smart enough to know now is not the time to be spouting bullshit at us. It will be ugly because Apple is going to let it get ugly. Because unlike the oil companies they have no experience with PR disasters. When I read their first public response on July 2, the one that said the problem was the meter measuring the strength of AT&T's signal, I couldn't believe this was meant to be taken seriously. It's the kind of story The Onion might have written on a bad day. Or Jon Stewart. That a corporate PR team wrote this says how unseasoned their people are. That they thought this answer was going to satisfy anyone says how out of touch they are with the world they are in. "We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising. "Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place." Apple has no concept of what's it like to be disbelieved, untrusted, seen as an American corporation and nothing more. I wonder how Apple is going to deal with their first serious virus. Microsoft, when they had to deal with malware, was in denial for years. They thought it was the users' problem. Until they finally saw people switching to Macs (as I did) just to get away from all the crazy shit that was attacking Windows users. Apple's Brewing ShitstormIn 2007, I couldn't believe Apple, a company that was selling itself as the more secure computer, wanted to keep my failed hard disk, one I had paid full price to replace, insisting it was theirs to refurbish. I couldn't accept that they would let all my personal information fall into the hands of who-knows-who, but that's what they proposed to do. Apple is a company that desperately needs to grow up and wipe the smile off its face, and roll its sleeves up and start to appreciate that they're no longer the upstart, the underdog, the Crazy One in the Richard Dreyfus ad. They are The Man, the Boss, the one who, from now on, everyone is going to be taking shots at and shits on. I use Macs. I'm typing this on a new 27-inch iMac. I stood in line to buy the iPhone, in the sweltering summer New York heat. I was pleased when Apple people came out to bring us bottled water. More of that Apple. More care and concern for the people who give you not only their respect and adoration, but also their money. The rules that apply to The Rest Of Us are about to apply to you. Time to get ready for it. BTW, I am an Apple shareholder. Dave Winer is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.
Yea this should be a good one :stirpot: Anyone who camps out overnight :campfire: to purchase a $600 cell phone, in my book is a loser :roll:
Funny thing is there is nothing in the world in my book worth me camping out for. Simply put there is nothing that important that I have to be the first to have.
here is a vicious circle: Apple-Iphone,Cisco Systems has "rights" to that name was used to name their line of house hold phones. Forgot the finer details but Cisco gets royalties/cut for Apple use that name...
Apple has historically been a step ahead of the game with all their products. I see this blowing by, and Apple staying on top. I personally use Apple computers in my house, and for my business. They're pretty darn bulletproof. My iPhone isn't the best phone ever built, it drops calls, and acts funny sometimes, but it's one of the most pleasant phones to use. I don't ever see myself buying anything different. John
I am tired of everyone taking a shit on the PC. I run a tower and three Windows-based laptops at the house. Two of them are running Windows XP, and my work laptop is running Windows 7. Let me tell you, Windows 7 is the shit. Love it. My wife, on the other hand, just bought her second Apple. She got one of those Macbook Pros in addition to her regular Macbook. She's been bitching and complaining about her regular Macbook for a while, so hopefully the Macbook Pro will do what she needs it to do. We have iPhones in the house, two of them. And about 4 iPods. All works great. Love them to bits. One of my very favorite toys is the AppleTV. Wouldn't get rid of it for the world. So, in a nutshell, I believe that people cannot WAIT to bring whoever is at the top down to their knees. After we are finally seeing the light of the tunnel after a bad few years of economy, we have come to distrust large corporation. Myself, for example, I never eat at chain restaurants. Only local restaurants that are owned.
I agree with you. Everyone in my family runs Windows on their computers...my parents have Windows 7 on their new laptop and love it, and I have XP on my 5 year old laptop and I love it as well. My brother can't tell the difference, but he has Vista on the desktop...which admittedly sucks. But we also have a couple itouches and an ipod nano kicking around, and I love them too. For me I guess it's just what I'm used to...it takes me forever to get used to something new so I just stick with Windows for ease of use. I've always had an ipod, once again it's what I'm used to and it's a great product as well.
