Apple, you're killing me
I’m dying to spend money on you. Dying. But, you’re making it so incredibly difficult. Not a single day has gone by that I haven’t heard at least one new complaint about the MacBook Pro and/or MacBook, and to be perfectly frank, I think you’re in trouble and need to get your shit together before people start jumping ship. You are a hardware company, right? Start acting like it. I don’t care how fast your new machines are, if they aren’t real-world usable why would I drop 2k on one?
- I want a laptop, not a griddle.
- I want a laptop, not a HyperColor shirt (remember those?!?).
- I want a laptop, not a cow.
- I want a laptop, not a baby.
- I want a laptop, not a blow-up doll.
- I want a laptop, not a perishable food item.
All I want is a fucking laptop. If you can tell me that you’ve got a functional notebook without any of the issues mentioned above, e-mail me and I’ll buy it right now. If not, and you don’t see one on the horizon, you better start thinking very seriously about letting OS X run on non-Mac hardware because I have neither the time nor the patience to take a chance on your latest efforts and risk ending up a ‘victim’ like Daniel Jalkut.
The Penguin and I have only separated, not divorced
As much as it pains me to say it, I will go back to Linux if pushed hard enough. I’m certainly not alone in feeling this way right now and can empathize all too easily with the recent comments from Mark Pilgrim (read this and this as well), Tim Bray, and Rui Carmo. Though their complaints are centered mostly around software (making many of the same arguments and observations I’ve made in the past) and not the hardware problems I began this post with, the net result is the same, namely that some of Apple’s most influential and vocal proponents are thinking very seriously about parting ways (or, in the case of Mark, have already done so). Apple, I’d like to stay, but at some point you are going to have to get over yourself, acknowledge your mistakes, and fix them.
Reality
Let’s be honest, I’m probably not going anywhere because I need Photoshop and I’ve no desire to use Windows, so I’m kind of stuck either way. That said, were a Linux binary of Photoshop to suddenly surface tomorrow,¹ the decision would become much more difficult, especially in light of the fact that my personal e-mail and calendar are now completely web-based.