“One click of my finger”
By Mark Tennent in Reader
Posted in Gripes moans and whinges on January 16, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Long-time jaded Mac users must surely be astounded at the coverage this year’s Macworld has generated and in particular the keynote speech. This august journal and it’s big sister PCPro have, along with the rest of the non-Mac press, vomited live reports, streaming blogs and wise words before the event that may seem a little foolish with hindsight. Even editor Chris and side-kick Maggie, ITPro’s terpsichoreal Torville and Dean, have been banging on about their all-singing, all-dancing iPhones and Mac toys ever since they got them.
To those of us who’ve been Macced up to the eyeballs since Clive Sinclair drove the C5 down the cul-de-sac of naff technology, the keynote always hits a bum note. And that’s not counting the whoops from the idiots in the audience, who insist on their stupid utterances like the ululations from professional funeral wailers, every time Steve Jobs finishes a sentence.
These events are Apple’s way to screw dosh from punters for the latest must-haves conveniently on sale at the Apple Store as soon as the speech finishes. Payments go straight into big bags saying SWAG on the side. Forget the pound/dollar conversion ratio, just swap their symbols and keep the digits after.
Two bucks to the quid
With nearly two bucks to the quid, Apple kit is effectively more expensive than ever before. The $229 Apple TV retails at £199 and not the £116 it ought to be. MacBook Air at $1799 should sell at nine hundred quid and not the twelve hundred Apple charge. They even don their stripey t-shirts and masks for shipping costs which is free over $50 (£25.49) in the land of the free rather than the £78 minimum here on Treasure Island. As Jobs said, with one click of his finger… he can take us for millions.
The new Time Capsule explains how Time Machine suddenly lost its ability to back up to hard drives connected to Apple’s Airport Extreme wireless router’s USB port. It was such a good idea they decided to make even more dosh by creating a whole new box of tricks with the hard drive built in, but at the same time preventing us from buying our own hard drives and connecting them to our existing wireless routers.
As it is, the Time Capsule is quite lust-worthy but at what a price. With stand-alone 500GB drives at less than £100 and Time Capsule not having an ADSL modem built in, it is as over-priced as the iPhone. Talking of which, how come iPhone users get free software upgrades but iPod Touch owners have to cough up another £20?
That old System is so last year
To make matters worse, the one big event many of us have been waiting for just didn’t happen. Leopard is still in need of some serious under the hood tinkering but the mechanics at Apple seem to have spent more time playing iPhone apps to get their hands dirty with last year’s operating system. As well as working out how to present a new thin laptop to the world at a ridiculously high price for its quite leisurely performing CPU. Especially when it can only connect to the hard-wired world via TV, USB or earphones.
But I want the new trackpad gestures, please.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Jacques Daviault - January 18, 2008 on 3:51 am
I have to agree with most of what you said Mark, with the exception of the price problem. Although I agree with the marketing error apple is making by not offering their products to U.K. buyers at the real exchange rate, I am happy to say that Canadian prices are now almost the same as American ones.
This said, MacWorld SF was possibly one of the most underwhelming in the history of Apple since Steve’s much vaunted return. Sure, the Macbook air is nice, and thin, but overly expensive. And the Time Capsule is exactly as you say, Apple’s questionable business ethics (and, dare I say. verging on the monopolistic) at work. Why shouldn’t anyone be allowed to jury-rig a made-at-home wireless equivalent? Apparently we should all see the wisdom in buying an over-priced (though doubtlessly well built) wireless hard drive with a big Apple on it. I’m a massive and blindly loyal Apple fan, but there’s something not quite right in Cupertino these days, and it smells like greed. Much more than we’ve been accustomed to of late from our once trusty favourite left-of-centre computer maker.
And i agree with your last point… Leopard is in late beta, and not encouraging me to spread the good word from Apple. It’s a great idea, but seems to be a real step backwards in terms of thoughtful GUI, and implements too many half-baked ideas to get a sterling review from me.
Good blog Mark, nice and bitingly acerbic.
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