Originally Posted By: altman
Originally Posted By: Dignan
Originally Posted By: Cris
Let them be smug, they deserve it.

And you might be surprised to hear me say this, but I agree. They do deserve to be smug.

I don't have to like it, though.


Seriously, people at Apple aren't smug. It's a lot of people working their asses off to make the best product - and I do mean that. Yes, it's expensive stuff but if you saw all the thousands of decision points through a design's evolution where there were "do it cheap/well enough or do it right" questions, the only answer is always "do it right".

When I was at Rio I'd often tear apple stuff down and wonder what the hell all this extra circuitry was for that we wouldn't have put in (or been able to afford to put in) at Rio. I've never seen anything in consumer electronics as thoroughly engineered or exhaustively tested as the stuff Apple makes.

If the marketing goes on and on about how good it is, that's no different to, say, BMW's marketing. They are justifiably proud of the premium product they've made.

My personal opinion, obviously.


There's a difference between how I perceive the technical folks and the marking/PR/decision makers. The iPad looks cool to me and I'll bet the engineering of it is really solid and well done, but it's hard for me to swallow that the decision to not support browser plug ins (on a device for which web browsing is a primary function) was made in an effort to make the best product possible. Even if what Jobs says is true about this decision (to steer people toward HTML 5), this sounds more like strong arm tactics to control the industry than an attempt to make the best product possible. Which is a shame, because I really want to root for Apple.

I love my iPhone, and I even love my Apple TVs (despite the fact the Apple TVs require a factory reset once a month), but I don't love it when companies limit my options. I never wanted to root for MS because I've never really loved anything I've owned by them. With Apple its different because I do really like a lot of what they do.
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.