Qion
Uber Nothing
I've had a lot on my mind recently, I thought I'd put some of it into words.
I've been very, very impressed with both Apple and Intel over the past eight years. Throughout all the whining done by both fans of Apple and the mostly self-conscious visceral Vista holdouts, I've had faith in the ability of both companies to work synergistically in a way no corporate Borg meeting could culminate into. I knew Apple was making an incredibly good decision when Paul Otellini stepped onto stage with Steve for the first time, it was like watching the intellectual rebirth of an old friend. I watched the stock rise with the sales of the iPod, the Macintosh, and the incredible iTS Apple created for them. And after what seemed an eternity, Apple released the best cell phone I have ever owned, and I knew it was time to put my money were my heart has been.
Consequentially, I am a proud owner of both Intel and Apple stock, even in this analyst-driven recession we're facing. I'm not scared of losing money, however, and this is due to the way I inexorably feel about our competition.
Microsoft has done nothing but fail my ideal of how a company should behave, how it should treat its clients, and how it should work with other businesses. I believe we are so blinded by the ignorance of Microsoft's product development strategies, PR, and marketing that we inherently hold them to lower expectations than we do practically anybody else. Because of their early stranglehold on the desktop PC market, people of yesteryear's generation are all but brainwashed into thinking Windows is the way of the world, that the stress of computer ownership is a simple fact of modern living. Those of us that have seen past the blinding darkness of error messages have bought Macs already, and for years we have tried to convince our friends, enemies, coworkers, acquaintances, and clients to see the beauty of a UNIX-based operating system. We're not crazy, we've been enlightened, and we're damn right to be smug about it.
A perfect example of what I'm getting at is the purported iPod killer, the Zune. I believe I posted months ago about the disturbing website MS had created for their new music player, featuring crudely drawn fantasy characters dancing about to eclectic indie music, complete with shooting rainbows and squirting music from their cyclopean countenances. While I'm rather progressive, new age, and tofu-eating, I knew from the off that this wasn't the right way to forge a new product lineup in an already saturated market. I sought refuge in the glossy black sanity of my 30GB iPod, and monitored the progress of Microsoft's strangely marketed brown box. Sure enough, after billions spent in R&D, the player featured a shoddy UI, the useless DRM'd battery-wasting feature of Wi-Fi sharing, terrible ID, limited music selection, no video playback, a pixelated screen, and a service fee. Not to mention being more expensive than its competitors, this literal piece of crap was not much more useful than a theft-prevention iPod case. Aware of its massive failure, Microsoft went about what it does best: lying to consumers. They created websites pontificating about the greatness of the Zune, astroturfing the hell out of everything from blogs to the WSJ.
I have no fear of the next decade. Steve's recent open letter to his shareholders couldn't hold more true to my beliefs in the companies I trust in.
I've been very, very impressed with both Apple and Intel over the past eight years. Throughout all the whining done by both fans of Apple and the mostly self-conscious visceral Vista holdouts, I've had faith in the ability of both companies to work synergistically in a way no corporate Borg meeting could culminate into. I knew Apple was making an incredibly good decision when Paul Otellini stepped onto stage with Steve for the first time, it was like watching the intellectual rebirth of an old friend. I watched the stock rise with the sales of the iPod, the Macintosh, and the incredible iTS Apple created for them. And after what seemed an eternity, Apple released the best cell phone I have ever owned, and I knew it was time to put my money were my heart has been.
Consequentially, I am a proud owner of both Intel and Apple stock, even in this analyst-driven recession we're facing. I'm not scared of losing money, however, and this is due to the way I inexorably feel about our competition.
Microsoft has done nothing but fail my ideal of how a company should behave, how it should treat its clients, and how it should work with other businesses. I believe we are so blinded by the ignorance of Microsoft's product development strategies, PR, and marketing that we inherently hold them to lower expectations than we do practically anybody else. Because of their early stranglehold on the desktop PC market, people of yesteryear's generation are all but brainwashed into thinking Windows is the way of the world, that the stress of computer ownership is a simple fact of modern living. Those of us that have seen past the blinding darkness of error messages have bought Macs already, and for years we have tried to convince our friends, enemies, coworkers, acquaintances, and clients to see the beauty of a UNIX-based operating system. We're not crazy, we've been enlightened, and we're damn right to be smug about it.
A perfect example of what I'm getting at is the purported iPod killer, the Zune. I believe I posted months ago about the disturbing website MS had created for their new music player, featuring crudely drawn fantasy characters dancing about to eclectic indie music, complete with shooting rainbows and squirting music from their cyclopean countenances. While I'm rather progressive, new age, and tofu-eating, I knew from the off that this wasn't the right way to forge a new product lineup in an already saturated market. I sought refuge in the glossy black sanity of my 30GB iPod, and monitored the progress of Microsoft's strangely marketed brown box. Sure enough, after billions spent in R&D, the player featured a shoddy UI, the useless DRM'd battery-wasting feature of Wi-Fi sharing, terrible ID, limited music selection, no video playback, a pixelated screen, and a service fee. Not to mention being more expensive than its competitors, this literal piece of crap was not much more useful than a theft-prevention iPod case. Aware of its massive failure, Microsoft went about what it does best: lying to consumers. They created websites pontificating about the greatness of the Zune, astroturfing the hell out of everything from blogs to the WSJ.
I have no fear of the next decade. Steve's recent open letter to his shareholders couldn't hold more true to my beliefs in the companies I trust in.