Excellent article! I love the way you guys bring up stuff like this, because it not only gives food for thought, but forces us to look at implications of current actions as well.
Couple of comments:
"positive" referring to Apple as a company, not the world as a whole.
I totally agree with the problem of clones. many of the problem with Windows machines are not prolems with the OS (though those are abundant enought), but rather issues with inferior or conflicting hardware/drivers. The fact that Apple controls EVERYTHING inside of a new Mac gives them a level of QC that no computer running Windows can attain. Sony machines are some of the most complete as far as QC, and they are some of the only ones that don't have hardware issues frequently. I think that if Apple limited who it licensed OS X to, and maintained a strict level of control over the parts that were run on its cloned machines, the clone problem might be limited. It might also be prudent of them to force the hardware manufacturers to shoulder some of the tech support issues for hardware and software. Anyway, thats just my two cents, and please, keep writing stuff like this!!
One comment on the battery swapping, foresmac. The powerbooks already have that capability, at least in the 15" and 17" lines. I'm not sure about the 12" line, but if you put the 1" to sleep(close the lid), you can take out the battery, and you have 90 seconds to swap out the battery before the reserve power is drained. I have used this on numerous airplane flights to finish watching a movie or playing a game.
The things I would like to see:
2 buttons on the mouse(of course) I'm used to the single button, but I love my mighty mouse. I really dont mind the 2 finger scrolling though.
Longer battery - 8 hours would ROCK
Better graphics on the 12", or a 13" WS if that replaces it.
2 open RAM slots on the 12"
DDR2 RAM like the new iMac
Digital audio on the 12"
Support for Front Row and the remote
DL DVD support
Gigabit on the 12"
PC card slot ont he 12", or CF and SD/MMC slots for those of us with digital cameras. Thats all I use the PC card for anyway.
Basically, I want the 12" to have the same capabilities as the 15", because I really want the portability of the smaller one, but I don't want to give up all of the cool stuff that my 15" has.
As an Apple Solutions Consultant at CompUSA, I resent that comment about CompUSA not doing their job. Not really. Actually, getting them trained in Apple stuff is extremely hard, and I encourage you to help out the CompUSA staff as much as possible, and also your local Solutions Consultant. My job becomes much easier when customers are aware of what the Mac platform is. Half of my job is to make sure that the CompUSA people are aware of the capabilities of the platform, but many of the employees there are Mac haters, so I have to work twice as hard to get them to realize what they are missing in the platform, and many of them are completely close-minded when it comes to new ideas in computing, which is very sad. However, every new iPod convert I get brings one more potential user into my section, and helps me get the foot in the door with one more potential convert. If you would like to change/help the state of affairs, please, either sell the computers as a favor to me, or heck, get a job at your local CompUSA, and convert more users. On a side note, There is an opening for an Apple Solutions Consultant at the Las Vegas CompUSA. Let me know if you are interested.
Dustin
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