Is Apple becoming the new Evil?

I just bought a new 27″ iMac a couple days ago. It’s fabulous. The screen’s too shiny, and the disk is surprisingly loud (…) So I bought it, but I bought it, for the first time, with misgivings. I felt the way I’d feel buying something made in a country with a bad human rights record. That was new. In the past when I bought things from Apple it was an unalloyed pleasure. Oh boy! They make such great stuff. This time it felt like a Faustian bargain. They make such great stuff, but they’re such assholes. Do I really want to support this company?

Sooner or later this had to happen, it’s striking the resemblance’s with the fact that we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of wall in Germany. Apple has been building a walled garden with the iPhone/iTunes AppStore, but as any bridged wall, it will come down eventually, one thing it’s for certain it will fall by the hands of those that helped build it, it may take a while, but you can’t really ignore the signs..

Apple is great! I love it as I’m sure a whole lot more people does! But things aren’t looking good and it feels as if they’re becoming those that they used to criticizes in way more front’s that they should.. Apple needs to correct their path, otherwise in a decade or less, they might see themselves in a rather ackward position, if for now they still sell the best, shiniest and prettiest of them all…

Sounds a crazy idea? Read Paul Grahams latest essay about Apple and his commentary to the bashing on the broken app store approval process…

Excellent Design by Dieter RAMS

We all acknowledge Apple as one of the iconic brands of our times, if not for anything else, for being the brand behind inspiring products like the Cube, iMac, iPhone or the just release MacBook Air. Objects that make up our dreams, objects that, subtly, crafted and enriched our collective sense of design and style, objects that used to to be designed aiming their function, rather than the pleasure or value of their use. By introducing design in such objects some brands like Apple have obviously managed to capitalize on and progressively enriched our experience in their products use.

Good ideas and in particular good design tend to foster new, better designs. Yet I’m sort of surprised to realize the influence Dieter Rams work have had on the Apple products line (especially if put together side-by-side) while reading a Gizmondo post about them:

Braun T3 and the multiple generations of iPods:

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Loja Apple Portugal Online..

SAPO CODE BITS

Well, SHiFT isn’t happening this year… and yeah, believe me no one’s more sad about it than myself, well may two other crazy guys! But we couldn’t stand still so we’re helping SAPO in an astonishing event:

and trust me, we’re all aiming high, as high as we’re allowed to get all the Portuguese developers an amazing event, party and mash-ups contest!

The event is obviously inspired in the Yahoo Hackday which totally contagious us back in May in London when some of us managed to attend it. Since not all Portuguese can afford traveling as far, SAPO decided to recreate it!

We’re trying to include everyone that wishes to go, but since the seats are limited, I urge everyone who praises for his/her geekiness without shame to register at:

Time as come for all of you geeks in the closet to come out, so I really hope we can all meet up in November in Lisbon!!

30 years from Apple

This banner got me curious:

any ideas?

37 Signals & Apple

Talking about impressive videos, having met David and Jason on Copenhagen in 2005, during their “Building of Basecamp” workshop, I can assure you, these guys are as much mac addicted as I am, so it comes with no surprise this video at Apple site, a mix of interview with a first person explanation why Macs helped their business, in these case the products developed by 37signals.

Its nice to see some well made software get its share of support from a company like Apple, a company that always search for simpler ways of working too it kind of fits in, doesn’t it?

Skype for Mac with Video

Skype has just released an “official” preview of its new version with Video, which is a major thing, at least for me, since that a fully compatible mac/pc video conferencing system didn’t exist up until today, and believe me, I’ve tried quite a few of them! What exists don’t actually classify for multi-platform!

Well it’s still a beta, but sure seems great!
Great timing also… It wasn’t a completely new to me, for some weeks now I’ve had access to a non-oficial preview… but as all the betas it had problems… and for the sake of my address book I’ve kept my old version running.

One of my favorite Apple movies so far…

I’ve just returned today from some well deserved (short) vacations, some days spent offline with a lot of interesting stuff to be made. Today while going thru the tons of emails that were waiting for me in my inbox, one from a friend pointing a serie of videos from Apple, one of which is for now one of my favorite so far:

Check the remaining ones here.