Apple Announces: MacBook Wheel

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Aristotle
But my absolute favorite, because it sums up the smug vanity of many Apple fanatics: "I like how the email, it automatically says 'Sent from a MacBook wheel.' That way everyone knows you have one."

They're not the only one to do that. But as to Apple smugness, I think the best demonstration is in their proposed 4-ounce-lighter next version of the Wheel. It matches the ipod history... for those of you who haven't wondered "How did Apple do that?", here's a brief history of the ipod:

* Flash memory devices for playing music begin to become popular. They are low-capacity, owing to the cost of flash memory at the time, but they work. You load songs onto them, then go mobile and enjoy music.

* Apple introduces, to great fanfare, its first iPod. There was nothing new in it; hard-disk based portable music players had existed, but this one was bigger. The ONLY real claim-to-fame that the iPod had was that it had more capacity than everything currently on the market; and it did this by using the cheapest (per capacity) storage method around.

* Developments in flash memory technology allow greater capacity in both smaller size and lower cost. The ipod advantage has been destroyed. What do Apple do? They introduce the iPod Shuffle and Nano, which use flash memory.

So wait - what's the difference between an Apple music player and, say, a Sony, Philips, or SanDisk player? Far as I can tell, the only thing keeping ipod people on the ipods is brand loyalty and interface loyalty, and somehow that keeps people paying big bucks to Steve Jobs. Apple can be completely smug, because they know that people will buy their things. Microsoft have enjoyed that for a while (although theirs is cracking badly now) - people will buy the latest Windows, the latest Office, etc, no matter what the price is; Apple have the same thing with music players. Yep, smugness goes with the territory.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Aristotle
But my absolute favorite, because it sums up the smug vanity of many Apple fanatics: "I like how the email, it automatically says 'Sent from a MacBook wheel.' That way everyone knows you have one."

I've just been reminded of this thread by an email from the director of our current theatre production (he is a "Mac person" in the very worst way... clueless about standards or protocols, seems to think that 99% of the world is dumb because we can't handle a webcal:// URL) sent an email to the committee with "Sent from my iPhone" at the bottom. Usually tags like that mean that you're using some free service; Yahoo Mail will do this, as will some AV packages. Usually the implication is "If you'd paid money instead of just using the free one, we wouldn't put our ad on the bottoms of your emails". Oddly enough, I don't think this director got his iPhone for free. Apparently it's not enough to proclaim yourself in X-Mailer _and_ Mime-Version, you have to do it human-readable as well. It's equivalent to a MUD client, instead of just announcing its terminal type quietly, proclaiming on Citizen every logon: citizen ;is using AppleMudClient 3.0!

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Rosuav
It's equivalent to a MUD client, instead of just announcing its terminal type quietly, proclaiming on Citizen every logon: citizen ;is using AppleMudClient 3.0!

-{Citizen}- Rosuav has logged on via the MacBook wheel. 
            He's trendier and more hip than you are.

[Maelgrim]

Originally posted by Aristotle

-{Citizen}- Rosuav has logged on via the MacBook wheel. 
            He's trendier and more hip than you are.

New oocemote plox?