Apple is bothering me these days. What was once a wonderful producer of a wonderful alternative to a Windows computer has become a cocky industry leader forcing its users to go places they don't want to.
Personally, I do not necessarily agree with the path that Apple is planning to take me down.
I read a great editorial on Engadget saying how Apple is done with the optical drive. Yes, it was an opinion piece, but his argument was laid out well and it all just made sense. The evidence here is in two recent releases from Apple, they have gotten rid of the CD drives in their machines. With the laptops, you now have options of a MacBook Air, which I personally find pointless, or the MacBook Pro, which is overkill for most people. The Air has no CD drive, and never has, so no surprise there. But the thing is that they dropped their lesser laptop so you now only have those two options. Previously, you had the option of the MacBook. Now that no longer exists. But the one that confuses me most is the new Mac Mini's do not have CD drives. How do you get any programs on your computer you ask? Well, in Apple's world, you would buy them from the shiny App Store and simply download them. Or, you could download them somewhere else, put them on a flash drive, and get them on your machine that way, or you could buy a separate CD drive to hook up to your Mini externally. And what if someone wanted to burn a CD or a DVD? I still like to make CD mixes for my car, or iMovie projects. I guess they assume I'll just use my iPod and that I hate home movies and will watch them... on my Mac. Pretty ridiculous, isn't it? So there's that.
I am also very bothered by this because this can only mean one thing in the long-term: to the cloud. By slowly removing our abilities to use computers like we always have, they are channeling us and preparing us for these new methods. Apple made a huge push with iCloud when it talked about it at WWDC. In theory, it sounds great. [Send your files somewhere in North Carolina and have them automatically push back to ALL of your devices... what could possibly go wrong? Oh, and don't worry, no one's going to pay attention to the files you send us, either. Yeah, right.] But I am just not a cloud person; I don't like the idea, I don't want to partake in it, and dammit I don't want Apple to force me into it.
But mostly I'm upset over Lion, their new operating system. At first, Lion sounded awesome, I admit. It is very 'flashy' in its capabilities. But now, I don't really want anything to do with it.
For one, I feel that Lion is directed at laptops and laptops only. With so many functions that rely on multi-touch, (translation: using a touchpad) they would not work much for me. Plus, I don't know that I really care; I'm not sure that it matters to me if I can swipe a program off and on my screen.
But my biggest gripe, and it's a really big one, is the hoops they make you jump through to upgrade to it. My dad has a laptop, I can't remember how old, but it was some of the best specs at the time as far as what Apple offered in MacBook Pros, and he can't upgrade to Lion because his hardware is not good enough. You need so much RAM to run the darn program, and he physically can't upgrade. So he's just stuck with Snow Leopard until the machine dies.
Me, on the other hand, I have the RAM, but I don't have Snow Leopard. In poking around Apple's store, I just found this lovely little piece of information:
Total cost to make Jamie's computer run Lion and act like it always has: $210.
No thank you.
Jarrod is getting pretty pissed off at Apple, possibly more than I am, for many of the same reasons. He is really into learning Linux more and maybe we'll become a Linux household, who knows. The thing is, though, that my career depends on Apple computers, so I will always be using one whether I like it or not; the Adobe Suite simply does not work nearly as good on a PC as it does on a Mac.
I have a feeling we're not alone in our unsettled issues with the giant Apple, either. Even in Popular Mechanics' piece comparing tablets, in the "Who Is It For" description, under the iPad they said 'Anyone who doesn't hold a grudge against Apple' and for the Samsung Galaxy it said 'Anyone who wants to break free from Apple's walled garden.' It made me laugh, but it also verified how I'm feeling. So I'll wait and see where Apple tries to push me next, but I'm no longer just a blind sheep following along.
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