That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

The problem is that everyone is commenting not on what he said, but what Apple is "really thinking." People really need to stop thinking that corporations think like people. They are composed of people, of course, and this one happens to comprise over 115,000 people, each with their own individual opinions.

Yes, some of them are elitist jerks. Some of them are not. I find lots of things Apple does offensive and other things I really like. But I have no illusions that there's some kind of corporate hive mind that speaks its hidden agenda through executive avatars.

I'm not surprised that there are parts of Apple that are focused on sustainability and other parts that couldn't care less. That's not contradictory, that's collaboration. I'm glad the ones that care about sustainability work in that department, and if engineers keep doing their jobs and make long-lasting products, whatever their opinions on old hardware happen to be, everything will be fine.

The idea that an entire corporation should share the same opinions on everything is just scary. I know plenty of them have been trying to push that kind of message, but we're smarter than that, aren't we?

My parents bought me an iPad 2 about 4.5 years ago. I never found much use for it, and it too collects dust now. I'm not even certain it can be charged any more, as those 30-pin connectors are always breaking.

It has been a white elephant from day 1. I got stuck with it mainly because my Dad is an Apple fanboy. In contrast, the laptop I spent $300 on at around the same time has been used every day since I got it.

It isn't just the tablet form factor. Using the iPad feels like I'm diddling around with someone else's locked-down, crippled, coin-operated Internet kiosk, rather than working with my own computer.

If you stuck it in a laptop shell, it would still feel like someone else's computer. Mostly, that's because of the walled garden OS. Using that iPad is one of the major reasons why I prefer Android devices now, even though they also have some issues. But even the iOS/Android phones and tablets in the house still feel like toys with just the touchscreen input. They feel even more toylike than a Nintendo DS or WiiU touchscreen controller, because at least those devices have some actual, pushable, tactile buttons on them.

That's the problem I have with tablets. The interface stinks. I like buttons that I can push with just my fingers, rather than my fingers and my eyes, with my eyes getting frustrated because my fingers are opaque.

Put a multi-touch sensor on the back of the device, and put a tactile "display" over it--like a touchscreen for blind people. Bonus points if you can get a "click" feel out of it when you press. Then I might reconsider giving up mouse and keyboard.

I'd been exclusively with Apple since 1989 when I bought my first Mac (an SE with dual HD floppy drives and a whopping 400 MB external hard drive). I stuck with Apple through the difficult years and then even became the editor of a multi-title Mac publishing operation. Apple loved me so much they gave me a loaded iPod for my birthday one year. I don't know how many people they've done that for, but not many, I'm guessing.

But things started to change with the success of the iPhone and then the iPad. We Mac fanatics used to say that any success for Apple was a win for the Mac platform. But in reality, it hasn't played out that way. The Mac is languishing, and it's languishing in ways that I can only attribute to intent. It's becoming more frustrating to use. Files that you see right in front of you don't come up in a search. Software updates bring rapid obsolescence. Simple things like "Save As" have been changed in Apple's apps so that now Shift-Command-S, for example, is the command to "Duplicate" a file, which you then have to Command-S save. Then when you close out, you have the additional step of dismissing a save dialog on the original document. The hardware, obviously, is not being built to last. (Apple's laptops were always frail things, dating back to my PowerBook Duo and PowerBook 520c, but their desktops and workstations were always bullet-proof; they are not anymore.)

It's a bunch of little things and big things combined to make a very frustrating experience.

This December, I decided to jump ship. I bought a Surface Pro 4. The hardware is awesome (Core i7 with 16 GB RAM). The software needed some manual intervention, but it's coming along. (Microsoft didn't include the WinTab driver, for example, so there was no pressure sensitivity for some apps. And there was no documentation available for it. And frankly Apple's keyboard shortcuts for special characters are better than Microsoft's, but I've been able to emulate those.)

I don't even think about what platform I'm on when I'm working now (except when I use Dreamweaver CS6 because Adobe is freaking horrible and can't deal with Microsoft's trackpad and wants to force me to rent CC, which I will never do).

I never considered an iPad or iPad Pro for a second. They are useless to me. When I get a unit in, it just gathers dust. There's nothing "pro" about it unless your profession is typing e-mails and visiting Web pages. Plus, I actually like computers. I'm old enough that they are still like science fiction to me. I still have dreams about them. And I like to be able to get into the software guts of my computers and mess around in there.

I also refuse to consider the iPhone. Not as long as there are Android phones that have expandable storage and a removable battery. Plus every time I have to deal with one of my kids' iPhones, especially when I have to deal with iTunes on top of that, I want to punch Apple so badly.

And most importantly, I don't want to be at the bottom of the food chain in Apple's iTunes ecosystem. And that's all Apple's customers have become.

I basically stopped using my iPad2 a couple of years ago because it's too slow, interactively. I do leave a weather radar app running on it in the kitchen, just as a display. If I had to interact with it, it's painful.

Or they try to project image to differentiate themseves from the social class just below. It's ok for super rich to dress like a college student but not alike to upper middle class person as then the plan could backfire should people actually believe the projection. I remember a great essay about the phenomenon:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new-left/