Read This

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:42:00 +0000

For anyone interested in old-media vs new-media and the media revolution we are currently living though, this essay by Clay Shirky should be required reading. I love it when someone who “gets it” manages to articulate the situation in a such a clear (if not necessarily succinct) manner.

For those short on time Mike Masnick has a nice condensation / discussion of Clay’s piece up at Techdirt.

Why Apple is Evil

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:55:00 +0000

People always ask me why I’m reluctant to buy Apple products when they’re sooo awesome. Well, first of all, they rarely have the features I want. Beyond the admittedly very polished aesthetic sense, I would call most of their products average, maybe slightly above average. Then on top of that sort of mediocrity, they do stuff like this. Requiring a specially licensed chip for headphones is just absurd. Unfortunately, behavior like this from Apple is more the norm than exception. Sure, I still drool and get all excited when they release new products. I’m a geek afterall, and Apple is really good at geek porn. But I can never get myself to actually buy something.

Apple products are cages. They are shiny, comfortable, generally well-appointed cages, but they are still cages.

EDIT: Turns out the chip isn’t all DRM-y and evil like it initially seemed. That’s good. I still think it’s a dubious design choice though…

Feeding The Machine » drm

Read This

Why Apple is Evil