As you've noted it's a good business model.
I don't like Steve Jobs, I dislike his brainwashed fanatics and products but kudos to Apple for clearly getting it right.
No, see, there's a difference between something being
functional and something being
right. I could steal your wallet, and that would fulfill the function of keeping me in takeout Chinese and beer for another month, but I daresay
you would have a couple objections to it.
Or, if it's the legality of the thing, I could sell you bottled elephant piss via slick ads that
imply (but never
state, because that would be false advertising, and
that would be Wrong, and coincidentally also illegal and easily prosecuted) that it's a divine ambrosia that will make you popular with large-breasted women and the envy of all other men. There might be nothing at all illegal about it. (Assuming I paid off the FDA, anyway.)
It would still be wrong.The notion that "turns a profit" is the highest moral standard to which businesses should be expected to hold themselves is one of the biggest flaws in modern society.
Judge the company and the products, not the CEO. OSX is just Linux, Android is just Linux, IE is just Mosaic, a number of car makes have Volkswagen engines... it's certainly not something to get pissy about and needs to be put in perspective.
I do judge the products on their own merits. OSX is just [strike]Linux[/strike] BSD, yes, et cetera et cetera, and C-USA's products are just comically overpriced and underpowered PC clones in retro cases, running a skinned Ubuntu.
I
also judge the CEO, when he makes himself a presence in the communities I frequent. I don't make too many remarks about Steve Jobs because he generally kept to his corners of the Internet and out of mine, but if he'd come on here talking about OSX Lion and how Apple was going to work towards doing away with that tired, old-fashioned
time-tested desktop computing environment that they themselves were instrumental in perfecting, I'd have happily shared my exact feelings in no uncertain terms. I don't much care about a hobo ranting on the street corner, but if he shows up in my living room I'll have a few things to say to him.
Barry's company has shown that they are all too happy to provide ludicrously overpriced products, ship with significant design flaws (cooling issues, anyone?), and don't really give two shïts about customer support until a large enough number of people complain that they can't ignore it any more. Barry himself has provided ample evidence to conclude that he's an unstable huckster out to make a fast buck off people who are so desperate for
any development that they'll buy any damn thing you slap a chickenhead on, and also no small measure of an *******. I trust
neither as far as I could throw them.
