I don’t know if it factored into Mark’s decision, but the stuff that’s making me think about ditching apple is just their subtle changes in attitude the last few years.
– abandoning all of their own ui guidelines,
– making itunes more and more like a popup ad for itself
– asking me if I’m going to join shittastic .mac *twice* during install
– spotlight and dashboard being just really poorly implemented
– the finder, it tastes like burning.
You know, the kind of stuff that John Siracusa writes about.
In 2001, if any other company had made an mp3 player that you couldn’t copy your music from, it would have sold about 15 units. Most everyone didn’t think about it at the time because it was so damn prettyShiny, but the ipod is A PORTABLE HARD DRIVE… THAT DOESN’T GIVE YOUR FILES BACK. That any company who claims to make user-friendly products would intentionally create such a device is Off-The-Fucking-Wall-Chex-absurd. In fact, it’s so insane that it has to have been done on purpose. I’m not privy to what that purpose is/was (I can guess), but I’m certain that it’s not a feature that I’m going to pay for. Which is pretty sad, because I think the ipod is the best mp3 player I’ve ever used.
Anyway, it’s the things like that. The sneaking suspicion that the priorities are changing for the Evil-er. And it is shame because I really like my mac, but it’s stuff like this that makes me want to just buy a ThinkPad, install some *nix, and just live with the non-lickable ui.
Am I the only one who likes the interface in classic better?