You think Apple ignores the cheapskate customer? Hmmm, not sure about that. What of the entry-level iPod Nano and the iPod Shuffle during the 2005-2008 era? This crushed the competition. And what of Apple TVs? How will this affect the way people watch the boobtube? Gonna be interesting to see that play out...
Your average power-user (let's say programmers, Apple fanbois, Android users, and me) would say, "Umm hello? Obviously!" But your legions of average regular iPad users (grandmas, and your average college students) might not agree. But if you asked them what an iPad was, if it was a computer, they couldn't quite be able to tell you. "Umm, yes? But wait, it can't do so many other things."
This means, as a society, Apple has forced us to rethink the question: "What is a computer?" and "Is the iPad a computer by this definition?"
This is what I think motivates Steve Jobs: His insane passion for consumer computer electronics. Juicy and illuminating supporting fact: Jobs's first job was at the HP factory in Palo Alto at age 12. <http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-steven-job...;
"I remember my first day, expressing my complete enthusiasm and bliss at being at Hewlett-Packard for the summer to my supervisor, a guy named Chris, telling him that my favorite thing in the whole world was electronics. I asked him what his favorite thing to do was and he looked at me and said, "To fuck!" [Laughs] I learned a lot that summer."
Every day he works, he energizes that little kid inside him. Not a bad life.
Learn from this. Piracy offers valuable lessons to the budding entrepreneurial programmer. You learn about: consumer behavior, the nature of black markets, iOS piracy tools and techniques.
Quick story: A friend of mine, Carl Lydon, created www.chamberofchat.com, which is an 3D chat-room for Harry Potter Fans that became popular in the early 2000s. This chat-room was promptly infiltrated by a nefarious hacker who assigned himself moderator status and began spewing filth, casting elimination spells, and harassing innocent chatters. At first Carl freaked out but got a hold of himself and re-built a few key modules of his multiplayer log-in code. By the end, the hacker went away, and Carl learned more about security than he ever could have from any one else. A gold-mine of lessons. A fine-art school graduate, he now makes a fortune programming multiplayer online games. Piracy is a gift.
This is a distinct possibility. I believe Jobs is on a secret mission to destroy the hated cable tv box remote, the curséd one-thousand-button behemoth.
Does it matter? Hmm. That's a good point -- it may not.
But ZAMM and Atlas Shrugged certainly felt to me a bit dishonest in that these works are primarily delivery devices for the authors' philosophical ideas. Other authors inject philosophy and ethics into their "straight" fiction, such as the philosophical rant-free work of Tolkien (LOTR = a treatise against fascism) and Stephen King (The Stand = a treatise against organized religion), but their philosophies never smack you in the face. [edit: grammar]
The cornerstone of originality within this book is how Pirsig introduces his philosophy of Quality. Yet, if you read ZAMM carefully, he never defines this term. Overall, a frustrating and thought-provoking read.
Pirsig and Rand both embed their philosophy within fiction, thus leaving you befuddled and oddly unsatisfied: "Did I just read a philosophical treatise or fiction?"
Sharp commentary, Thomas. One thing that sticks out to me is how Apple straightjackets their products. Apple corals the entire user experience down a narrow path. Power-users hate the constraint of this Apple straightjacket, but at the same time, new consumer-level customers -- grandma with her iPad and cousin Alice with her iPod touch -- benefit from the simplicity of the straightjacketed experience.
"There are three types of people in this world in dealing with this social reality. There are, what I call, the deniers, the people who deny this reality exists. They almost want to pretend that we are descended from angels and not from primates."
"Among these deniers, you will find two types. You will find people who are genuinely disturbed by the politicking aspect of human nature. They don't want any kind of job in which they have to do that. You will find that they are slowly marginalized. They can be happy that way. They are never going to assume a position of great responsibility because it involves all of this."
"The other branch of the deniers are the people that are the passive-aggressors. ... People who consciously don't want to admit that there is any kind of manipulation involved, but unconsciously are playing all kinds of games."
"The second type of person besides the deniers are those who love this Machiavellian part of our nature and revel in it and are master manipulators, and con artists, and connivers and are very aggressive."
The third type is what I am calling the radical realist. It is what I am proposing that you adopt."