If it is good marketing, so what of it? How is "we think" a manipulation of words? Do you not think that the design and development departments at Apple don't in fact agree with this statement - the collective "we" being Apple? How is this misrepresentative?

One way to say it is to say "assume consumers are stupid and like shiny things.". Equally true however, would be the observation that throughout human history, people have appreciated objects that reflect certain aesthetic principles (design), are thoughtful, and reflect a high degree of precision in their conception and execution. The world's great thinkers, artists, and engineers are not simply, in my opionin, stupid consumers who like shiny things.

Their marketing machine is unrivaled, as is the steady stream of products they introduce. I'm happy to conceded that they aren't all things to all people, but no other company consistently delivers products that are as cohesive or compelling. If you disagree, name that company...

Pooh-pooh. Apple is totally frank about the fact that its products run in a closed eco-system. Google, on the other hand, waxes day-and-night about how "open" and "not evil" they are - and yet their entire profit (and its a biggie) is made, um, how? In ways that they'd never in a million years talk about. Google controls the entire world's information flow. Information is power. Google is not a democracy, it is not transparent, it is not accountable... and the really spooky thing, is that the nature of their products lend a scenario in which you don't even know what you're missing.

Both Apple and Google use "open" when and where it suits them - and not a smidgen further.

They both harbor incredibly protected secrets and "closed" information loops.

The only difference is that Apple makes no bones about it. Google makes an ad campaign of waxing poetic about "open", despite the fact it is just as closed as Apple when it comes to *the products that actually make it money*. Techies and others lap it up.

You know, say what you will about Apple and control. We all know there is ONE company that controls the world's information flow, and it ain't Apple. Nor is it a democracy, or transparent, or accountable to..... anyone.

It's only my opinion, but Wu is incredibly naive -- and all you have to do is look at the words of Eric Schmidt to know that Google sees the web of the future as a closed, authenticated platform - hardly the opentopia described be Google's many devout.

"I've talked to many students who realize that art can be part of computing; that creativity can be part of computing; that they can merge their interests in art and science." It's so obvious - but so under appreciated. I've always been skilled with computers, and fought the urge to be a geek, rather lending my efforts to more traditional creative pursuits in the fine arts all through college. One of the most critical realizations of my life was coming to understand the truth in this quote- computers are the paramount creative medium of our time. Interface designers, animators, software engineers are vastly unappreciated - not completely unappreciated, but vastly under appreciated. Society perceives many geeks as nothing more than modern-day plumbers (and I'm not insulting the plumbers of the world), and often celebrates "contemporary" aritsts as rock-stars. Not too diminish traditional arts, but moving pixels is every bit as difficult as pigment, and deserves every bit as much respect and admiration. The state of modern computers (and I use the term loosley), are an incredible testament to human creativity. *We* took ones and zeros and aligned them to be things that are not only beautiful in form and function, but allow us to realize enhanced creative expression across almost every other medium we know. Wow.

You are absolutely right about "it just works" - a lot of the IT tools just don't work, not at all. Entire buttons sit in the interface and literally do nothing when you click them. It's kind of astounding compared to their client OS. I do however run a few workgroups using pretty much just apple stuff, and in general things run very smoothly... it's the only way i could have the time to manage a handful of them! That said, most of the stuff that would be difficult to fix in os x is more or less the same as what would be difficult to fix on a linux box, just because many of the underlying services are exactly the same, with the occasional odd-ball apple selected install directory or something. But if you can run a linux server, you can run an os x server in your sleep. I have to echo the general sentiment here though and say I don't think dramatic shifts inherently present a lot of fallout. Even if you're moving to a superior system, moving sucks. MHO it's generally not worth it. If people are used to something, let them keep it. Sometimes you can introduce new solutions if there is a need, of course...

This is not something I've ever tried , but in principle, here's a simple solution: Set up one of your computers iTunes with its library stored on your SMB share. I've never run iTunes from an SMB share, but it works dandy from an AFP/NFS share, so I imagine it would work. An AppleTV can pull a stream from any iTunes on its network, so you should be then be able to connect your AppleTV to the SMB-backed iTunes and access your videos/media.

Yeah so basically Google is the new Apple and the internet is the new iOS. http://isaacschmidt.com/?p=131

Uh-huh. That's why the number of exploited OS X devices is so high compared to any other platform. Makes complete sense.

More does not mean completely.

Apple is so sloppy with their corporate operations, their retail operations, their user interface conventions, their marketing campaigns, their software and hardware engineering... don't even get me started on the app approval process. It only follows that they're massively successful in every arena they play in (ok, 'cept appleTV).

A fool is someone thinks that because any given deterrent does not achieve 100% success, that all deterrents are completely useless. Go ahead and apply that logic to any scenario you can construct in life.

It's worked quite well in the sense that Apple has built a massively successful app store by measure of revenue. But in terms of this conversation its meaningless. Bad programs will get through whether there is or isn't a vetting process. I'm inclined to think fewer bad apps would get through a market with a vetting process, but I acknowledge the necessity for a free and open market that isn't controlled by Apple as well. With regards to a unified market, make no mistake, Apple and Google are on the same page. Google is the only one of the two that has actually gone so far as to disable app's on their users devices. When Apple bans a program, it tends to ban its future sale, leaving previously purchased copies completely functional.