Like when the raised the bar by making a sleek, good looking phone that can't multitask and it took 2 years just to get cut & paste? Or how about all the ports they have elected to leave off of their computers. Or how they made glossy-only screens on some iterations of their laptops? Or the stupid one button mouse? Oh, yeah they are the end-all and be-all product manufacturer all right. gimmie a break. They value form over function and that translates to good looking equipment that almost always LACKS COMMON FEATURES.
The first Touch didn't have a frickin' volume control button or speaker, for crap's sakes! Wake up and stop drinking the Apple kool-aide. Not everything they make is as wonderful as you've made it out to be. That's not to say I don't own a bunch of iPods, but I recognize that Apple has a long way to go to make a product without glaring omissions.
Since you've just proven how anti-Apple you are, let's consider your arguments:
"Like when the raised the bar by making a sleek, good looking phone that can't multitask and it took 2 years just to get cut & paste?"
And yet despite these so-called lacks, it sold in the millions during its first year. 'Cut and Paste?' It's more an annoyance to me than a benefit. Now the thing wants to cut and paste everything when all I'm trying to do is scroll up on the page. If you want my opinion, Apple should not have listened to the few noisy ones that thought they know what everyone else wants.
"Or how about all the ports they have elected to leave off of their computers."
I said "All New." Modifying the laptops does not qualify. And honestly, the Macs really don't have significantly fewer ports than any other machine; they just consolidated them. After all, how many of you carry 8 different devices with your laptop everywhere you go? With the 4-, 7, and even 11-port capabilities of USB hubs and the daisy-chaining capabilities of Firewire, you really don't need more than 1 of each type of port on the computer itself.
"Or how they made glossy-only screens on some iterations of their laptops?"
Personally, I prefer the glossy screen. If you don't like the reflections, just use a static-cling-type screen protector. In my own case, it's easier to see through the reflections than it is to try and squint through the glare caused by matte screens.
"Or the stupid one button mouse?"
Aside from the fact that Apple hasn't made a one-button mouse in years, you seem to think that that was the only kind of mouse Apple computers
could use. Get with the times, man; I've been using 5 or more buttons on my mice since even before OS X was released!
"The first Touch didn't have a frickin' volume control button or speaker, for crap's sakes!"
Nor did their predecessors. I mean, really -- why have a cheap one-channel speaker in a device that plays in stereo? You don't need a physical volume control if you don't have a physical speaker. The iPod Touch doesn't need it and I can't really understand why Apple listened to you and put one in! The only time you need a speaker on an iPod is when you want it to alert you to something like an iCal appointment or some other alarm.
But again, I said "NEW PRODUCT." Apple's iMac MADE USB the standard; all the other companies had essentially ignored it prior to that. Apple's iPod MADE MP3s the must-have music format; the Creative and other earlier products just couldn't create a demand. Apple's iPhone MADE Smartphones a consumer device. No other company could even envision using such a device outside of the enterprise. And yes, if you go far enough back, Apple MADE the GUI the standard computing environment; Microsoft released versions of Windows before '95, but it wasn't that much better than working in a command-line interface. Microsoft's Win95 was released almost immediately after Apple lost the 'look-and-feel' lawsuit, which put Windows '95 10 years behind the Apple GUI from the outset... a lag that Windows has only just been able to close significantly with Win7.
I'm not saying Apple is the greatest company in the world; what I'm saying is that Apple has changed the existing market
EVERY TIME they've released an all-new product. That's not Kool-Aid, that's documented fact.
