(Egads, now up to 76 pages)
Apple charges a premium not for being cool; not for being Apple; not for something flushing out of Steve Jobs.
Apple charges a premium for the ONLY LOGICAL reason it can in a market in a depressed economy; because Apple products are supposed to be BETTER by being CUTTING EDGE.
Being cutting edge means you give people what they need BEFORE THEY EVEN REALIZE they need it.
Being cutting edge means you give people the latest technology BEFORE ANYONES ELSE DOES.
Unfortunately, you've committed a logical fallacy in assuming that the only way to be
'better' is through technology (with an emphasis on hardware).
There's other definitions of 'better', such as something being more reliable.
Not a single item of iCrap is, or has ever been, CUTTING EDGE. What it is is rehashed old fads and reworked versions of failed product.
Another defintion of 'better' can be easier (ease of use).
The iLife products are actually an example of this: you call them iCrap because they're not cutting edge in terms of geeky technogical standards, but the counterpoint is that they are generally stable and very, very easy to use. As such, they have a very nice learning curve which fosters adoption and acceptance.
And of course, this is threatening to the techno-elite, who find their lofty Guru status is being threatened because their previously esoteric skills becoming more accessible and thus commonplace.
Why do HDTV's continue to advance in picture quality if the normal mass market does not care about quality?
Perhaps it is for the same reason why the Windows PC marketplace is defined by differentiation based on hardware features at various price points, even if the hardware differences aren't particularly meaningful or significant? When consumer doesn't have much anything else with which for him to base a purchase decision upon, seeing a 100Mhz refresh rate on a Spec Sheet will be perceived as better than a 99MHz refresh rate, even if the difference can't be noticed.
Steve doesn't care about the video or audio quality. Because he does not care he doesn't think anyone else should.
YMMV. I suspect that Steve very much recognizes quality, but he also recognizes the application of the saying,
"Better is the Enemy of Good Enough".
Specifically, let's each think about ourselves for a moment, and some of the things that we routinely do around our own homes? Do we run the vacuum cleaner? How about the lawn mower? Hedge trimmers? Leaf Blower? Various power tools? Recreational shooting?
For most of us (especially over age 30), the answer is probably 'yes' to many of these, if not all. This observation on its own appears to be irrelevant...
who are these people that can tell and don't care about the difference in quality? more likely than not, they are people who haven't seen one...
But now here's the relevancy: for which of the above devices do we wear suitable hearing protection?
If your answer isn't 100% of them faithfully 100% of the time, then we've already incurred permanent hearing loss. Its typically an amount that is more than adequate to obscure the "golden ear" differences between the highest quality audio and a merely high quality version that implimentated some form of data compression for the same.
Logically, when one can't literally hear the difference anymore, is it worth paying more for it?
Similarly, there's also background ambient noise conditions which will drown out the subtle differences even for the Golden Ears. When our Use Case doesn't consistently afford us the optimal listening (and viewing) environment, doesn't this also change the value paradigm and ultimately, the decision to "how much is good enough?"?
Yes, if one is setting up a soundproofed ubermedia room, it makes a difference. But for the other 98% of the time, its cognitively indiscernable.
Would you like to know why Mr. Steve Jobs is pushing mobile so much?
Who says it was Jobs who pushed it? Over 50% of new PCs (including Macs) are laptops, and this is despite them giving you less hardware Oomph and costing more. As such, who is to blame for that change in consumer buying habits? Has 50% of the entire world's population of PC users been somehow brainwashed?
Mobile doesn't give life; it sucks it up like a succubus.
But it sure makes more money for Apple...
...as well as every other electronics producer today. But by some stretch of logic, only Apple is to blame for this trend.
Check.
Of course, those damned desktops WOULD be updated more frequently if Jobs and Apple KEPT THEM CUTTING EDGE.
Given how much more stable & predictable OS X is versus the Windows alternatives, and how frequently the OS has been udpated, Apple has kept their products to be 'Cutting Edge'...of course, the difference here is in our consumer definitions and value paradigms: you're begging for the latest & greatest hardware increments - - but Apple hasn't really been in that part of the market space for roughly a decade.
I'd just like to see Apple have a division that actaully CARES about their COMPUTERS instead of just their gadgets. OSX has a ways to go yet to beat Windows in every regard and they will NEVER get there if they keep this attitude of "Maybe NEXT year we will concentrate on the Mac". That should NEVER happen... The sad thing is that those of us that actually care about the "Mac" and OSX proper can see the writing on the wall. It may take years, but unless something changes, the Mac just isn't going to be competitive much longer...Apple cannot afford to just sit idle for a year and push phones...
Well stated on the big picture. I'm concerned too.
The first punched card programmable machines are from 18th-century France.
And analog computers go back much, much further.
So basely Mac are using generic sound cards where PC are using HD sound.. SO again the Macs are not using the best..
Not anything new. Try reading up on graphics cards for the Mac Pro ... and the PowerMac before it. Regardless of what people like to believe, Apple has generally not been on the cutting edge for such stuff, except as very select cherrypicked cases: the A4 CPU, the MBA CPU, the Retna Display, etc.
There is a pattern that can be discerned if you know what to look for, but it isn't one of
"Technology for Technology's Sake".
Thief. Artists cannot grow and prosper when you steal their work. The infrastructure that surrounds them and performs vital necessary services for them cannot grow and prosper when you steal their work.
As a content creator, while I do believe in Intellectual Property rights, I find that it is increasingly difficult to ethically justify their protection when we look at the IMNSHO insane ~100 year period of protection for copyrights today in context of how comparatively short other forms of IP protection are, such as a hardware Design Patent.
Perhaps its time to roll back US Copyright law to the Copyright Act of 1790: a period of 14 years, with a single +14 year extension (if requested).
Given that typically 95%++ of the revenue is made on IP within its first few years, why should the content owners be clearly so self-servingly greedy for that last few percent in the 'long tail'
Particularly since (and here's the contemporary relevancy here) it is only through the form of no-physical-media distribution ... ie, downloads ... that a positive revenue business model really can exist at all?
However, I'm not an expert. I go by my gut, and my conscience, to tell me what's right and what is wrong.
YMMV, but my moral compass clearly tells me that a ~100 year protection on IP is absolutely wrong when this protection is descriminatory because it only applies to for select IP material (ie just copyrighted stuff) and not all IP.
Feel free to disagree ... but while doing so, be sure to rationally explain why the period of protection for this type of IP material is justified to be increasing when its barriers to marketplace entry are decreasing. Good luck.
-hh
