[Macworld]

Post your comments for The Macalope Daily: A wrong way and a right way here

[Dennistrator]

I think some of these pundits have an anti-Apple refrigerator magnet poetry set and they just string together words and phrases randomly. Or maybe there's an App for that

[obewaun]

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I think some of these pundits have an anti-Apple refrigerator magnet poetry set and they just string together words and phrases randomly. Or maybe there's an App for that

I'd love to be a fly-on-the-wall at Apples App Approval Process for the "APPLE IS DOOMED" App. Wow!

On the other hand, the anti-Apple refrigerator magnet poetry set might sell well at Amazon. Don't be evil.

[obewaun]

My apology to Amazon for using Googles motto at them.

[johndrake]

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How hard is it for pundits to put qualifiers like Lopp uses in? Impossible, apparently.

I agree that it is impossible for those guys to use words/phrases like I wonder. eventually, simply because it requires a bit of modesty, or acknowledging that they are not the all knowing, prognosticators they have convinced themselves they are!
In MNSHO it ain't ever gonna happen!

[johndrake]

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My apology to Amazon for using Googles motto at them.

You're OK, the Google quote/motto was : Do No Evil

[Norton]

What happened to "virtually"?

[markbyrn]

If Forstall had actually been innovative with iOS in the past few years, I'd be inclined to agree with the assessment. It seems to me that the few improvement we've seen in iOS have been despite Mr. Forstall. His obsession with skeuomorphism has come at the expense of functionality (e.g. the awful podcast app), and I'm hoping Ives will be able to move the innovation ball forward on the software end as well as the hardware.

[Rycho]

Apparently writing on the Internet means something different to writing in the press media. The Internet is a mystical place where words can sometimes have a different meaning and facts are often ignored in pursuit of advertizing revenue-generating click-throughs. Sensationalism is de rigueur du jour mon amis. Thankfully we have a skilled guide with horns who is experienced with myths and an incredibly thin Apple Keyboard.

[markkelg]

Yes, why can't hacks write better and become non-hacks? Another well-reasoned article about a major challenge to Apple: Holman Jenkins' column in today's WSJ. He qualified thusly: "Apple - like Microsoft- isn't doomed, just doomed to become less profitable."
http://online.wsj.co...0844238544.html

[TheHeeNow]

I for one am more than happy to see Forstall gone.

The Verizon iPhone 4, having been introduced in February of 2011, is just now becoming eligible for upgrades.

Yet Forstall rendered it obsolete some 13 months ago, and added new insults with iOS 6.

I hope his replacement has better customer skills.

[DWFields]

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I for one am more than happy to see Forstall gone. The Verizon iPhone 4, having been introduced in February of 2011, is just now becoming eligible for upgrades. Yet Forstall rendered it obsolete some 13 months ago, and added new insults with iOS 6. I hope his replacement has better customer skills.

Your comment leaves behind many questions.
1.) If you were so concerned about obsolescence so quickly with the Verizon iPhone 4, why didn't you simply wait seven months or so for the 4S model?
2.) If you were so concerned about upgradeability, why did you choose that specific contract type for Verizon? From what I've been seeing, with the vast number of people opting now for contracts that permit upgrading in shorter time periods, the mistake was more yours for choosing the wrong contract than any fault on Apple's part.
3.) What insult on injury is iOS 6? I've been using iOS 6 on my iPhone 4 now from the day it was made available and I've found both improved battery life and better response almost across the board.

In all, I don't see where you have any call to blame Apple for "customer skills" whereas your skills as a customer come into question. Apple does make their products easy to use for the generic consumer, but some people still insist on doing things the hard way.

[Petew]

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Apparently writing on the Internet means something different to writing in the press media. The Internet is a mystical place where words can sometimes have a different meaning and facts are often ignored in pursuit of advertizing revenue-generating click-throughs. Sensationalism is de rigueur du jour mon amis. Thankfully we have a skilled guide with horns who is experienced with myths and an incredibly thin Apple Keyboard.

Couldn't resist:
mes amis
mon ami

not mon amis :-)

[mkbilbo]

Seriously.

There are so many valid, thoughtful criticisms to be leveled at Apple. They are a for profit corporation, they can make mistakes, misjudge markets, even get petty and spiteful. Sometimes, act flat out stupid. But journalism seems to be a lost art of the ancients and we get the equivalent of 13 year old boys trolling. And people get paid for this. Yeesh.

I've been around longer than I care to admit (hint: the 512Ke was the exciting new product at the time) and have seen Apple pull some really stupid stunts. The claim there's some kind of "religion" involved sounds absolutely absurd to me. Those of us who've been the long time, strongest supporters of Apple have always been their harshest critics.

Okay, yes, there are "fanbois" out there. But they're hardly limited to Apple. I've done a kind of dual orbit around the, oh, "poles" of Apple and Unix and have run into some seriously brain dead Linux fans. And FreeBSD fans. And the things that go on in The People's Republic of Debian are worthy of a soap opera. Or bad German opera. I can never decide.

And, puhleese, the Windows fans? The ones that cling to a mediocre system that eats their data on a regular basis and for whom it seems truly an article of religious faith that one *must* give Microsoft money on a regular basis because, some day, the One True Windows will arrive and it'll be heaven on Earth?

<eye roll>

The real issues are pretty much ignored in favor of click trolling. For somebody like myself who took his first programming job in 1981 (where does the time go?) it's just... well, I'm well on my way to serious curmudgeon status. If I start saying, "Kids these days", somebody please put me in a home soonest. Thank you.

One of my greatest disappointments with Apple is how they lost what was in my opinion one of their greatest achievements when they switched to NeXT. Don't get me wrong, NeXTStep was a tremendous work for its day. Far ahead of pretty much everybody.

But.

The pre-OS X system, the "Toolbox", was one of the most well thought out, well designed systems for user interface I've ever seen. They put effort into the tiniest details. What does "OK" mean on a button? What does a color tell a user? Should it be "OK/Cancel" or "Yes/No" or what? They had people whose entire jobs were to think about user interface. The consistency across applications was absolutely breathtaking.

They're still good at it. Better than most. But the OS X and iOS era are not nearly so consistent. One thing that drives me up walls is when they switched to a *Nix base, they brought along the annoying as all get out "pop up in your face" thing a starting application will do. Start an application, switch over to continue your work, you may find yourself typing your text document into your spreadsheet because it jumped in front of everything. Or you're in the middle of tying an email and some application pops up a dialog in your face and who knows what it's going to think you mean when you take a moment to stop typing. I've had to go hunting to figure out what on Earth I just "did" because some dialog lept in front of my email and I took a tenth of a second to stop typing and the dialog took the key presses to mean something and disappeared to do what it *thought* was my bidding.

Yerk.

I could write whole tomes on how the transition to NeXT left behind some great work they'd done. But it appears that writing "Apple is doooooomed" or "Steve Jobs is still dead" to get ad impressions is the way to make money.

Sigh.

Just. Sigh.

I am so tempted to go write "Android is crap" columns, put one paragraph per page to boost ad imprints, and see if I could retire early...