You're not the fake Tim Cook - you're the real one!

COURAGE!

Exactly, I have a degree in cognitive science and this is what we are taught. So much of the language of computers has crept into psychology it's unbelievable. And most of it is wrong and misleading. Hundred years ago the personality was being modelled in hydraulic terms (the new cool tech of the age) and even physical models were made. All wrong of course.

that's why I never have moved from Snow Leopard on my old Mac Pro. iTunes is still sweet on that one - they ruined it later.

This is right. Its the hallmark of a totalitarian regime. Shows that Apple are rotten and will continue to decline.

Yes, yes, yes.
I've worked with Apple machines for 30 years, the last 15 in Mac support and solutions. This is another indication of something very wrong at Apple - it's becoming totalitarian and suppressing things it doesn't like instead of dealing with them as problems, finding solutions and moving on. I've become convinced that all they care about is fashion - and like any fashionista all the want is to be thinner with the option for different colours. The leadership is clearly hopeless, at this stage I think I could be doing a better job. Honesty and hard work is what's required not this weird self-referential cult denying dissent.
Virtually nothing any good has emerged since Steve's death and they are destroying confidence in the brand every day. Terrible shame.

Do you know that is exactly on it. It's in love with an image of itself but has forgotten it used to deliver amazing software and hardware for the money. Now it just wants to look like Vogue magazine. That too is obsessed with thinness. Is it a gay thing\?!! I jest.

Rest of your post was very accurate too.

Totally. I think we are heading to the big one. Currency collapses, all sorts of bad things coming.

There was the one industry they could have revolutionised and they knew it too: cars. But they had a good look, spent a lot of money (immaterial to them), and decided they weren't good enough and withdrew to a software only model (and it looks like they'd purchased the general infrastructure for China anyway). To me that is confirmation that they've peaked and they lack leadership. They have resources to die for and all that can do is make things thinner or buy (overpriced) things? It's such a shame.

Up until recently I was using my iPhone 1 (the 2G first model). It could always do 2-3 days on a charge and I ran it since 2008 happily. Have now upgraded to iphone 4s and struggle to get through the day. This is a major problem that is ignored by many.

That keystroke has got to bounce to the NSA and back again buddy. That takes time.

The geek tends to see himself as anarchic-libertarian. But technocratic and elitist would be closer to the truth.

That's brilliant. Should be the footer on every slashdot page.

I shouldn't say they can't -- I should say they are unwilling.

I totally agree with the MS problem but I think they can't. Ten years ago they should have got away from everything that Windows had become and start again but they were too scared they would lose their base customers on the way. It shows they were insecure about their product and thought that it was a success they couldn't repeat again - too dependent on a naive market. Instead they came up with the compromise way forward (fix it - let's make Vista) and got terribly stuck as the complexity of the task overwhelmed them.

I used to work for xxxxx many years ago and we had a massive joint project with Sony to create an open reel digital multitrack standard. It failed ultimately but I did learn of the prejudices of the Japanese engineers. Even then (late 80s) the word was that Sony was making deliberately short-lived consumer products which reflected the extremely fast turnover of their domestic market. In the rich parts of Tokyo you could (apparently) retrieve fully working VCR's etc from trash - things discarded for the latest model. Sony I think built this planned obsolescence into their products as they thought consumers were not interesting in having a VCR work for say 5 years.

Probably the peak of Sony design was late70s to early80s and since then it's been laurel-resting and marketing. I too miss the old Sony but I guess Apple have taken that now.

Yeah absolutely. I'm an audio engineer for over 20 years now and when I started Sony owned the broadcast equipment market. Then some time during the nineties we began to realise that this stuff was going wrong *a lot*. Their DAT players although standard in many ways failed like no other brand. Panasonic took over that one and I changed my preferences to only buy Trinitron products - which in the CRT days were the best. Then they started failing quite badly too - but not before they'd mugged me for a large multisync CRT that died after about three years. Something very wrong with Sony and has been for years.

I was writing apps for the Macintosh in the late 80s. They always were called applications on the Mac, even then.

I think app is pretty cool actually and seems about right for what it is.

Lawn, etc.