Prologue
A scam? If I call it a scam, you will not believe me. So what is the selling point of the iPad II? You'd say, it's its two video-sensors (camera), reduced overall thickness, 2x/9x speed boost, etc.
So let's talk about integrated video captors. Think about it: New (portable) computers, net-books and most smart-phones all come with such little devices built-in. The integrated video captor is an indispensable part of modern mobile electronics, so why is everyone so excited about iPad II's captor? Because the original iPad doesn't have one. So why doesn't the original iPad have a captor?
If you still don't think that this is a scam, keep reading.
Tech and sales
Any company that depends on tech must have a steady stream of tech innovations. However, what "new" product you buy at Best Buy may not be the newest piece of tech from that company. In this market, new tech is a game of cards: when you get the good cards, you don't go all-out. You keep the good cards and play them slow. If the game is good with the regular tech, a company doesn't need to use its best cards. Only when a product has been out for a while, that people are starting to forget, or when a competitor came out with the MOAB, a company will put its best cards into play, it's only then that a company will roll its "best" tech into a package of a product and introduce the FOAB to the world. In a nutshell, a company never introduces it's most advanced, bleeding-edge stuff to the market. It plays its cards with conservancy. This is a basic strategy and isn't news to anyone.
Apple, however, pushes this strategy to the extreme. What Apple has in its reserves is not (probably never) its newest, but some tech that is already mature , or cheap-and-easily-done pieces of tech.
The best example for this is still the iPad II's video captors. Miniature video captors are highly mature to the point that cheap plastic portable telephones have megapixel-level captors. Such tech would logically be incredibly simple for Apple. From an engineering point of view, adding such a captor to an iPad would only take a week to design (alter some innards) and the extra cost would be negligible. So why doesn't the original iPad have one? Because there has to be something "new" with the iPad II.
So we have the iPad II's HDMI ability. On Apple's site, there is a VGA dongle for the original iPad that is able to transmit video and keynotes onto a screen. But most reviews are two-star or less, because people want to share other apps' display. But for the original iPad, this could not be done. Engineering obstacle? Obviously not, because during the unveiling we can see clear-as-day Steve Jobs projecting his screen onto the big screen. Consumers cannot do this due to software restrictions. Now the iPad II can do such things, because the restrictions, basically lines of code, are removed. That's it.
Then we have the iPhone IV's video call and video registering.
Apple gets big benefits by doing this. There are few costs developing a "new" product. Most consumers (read: everyone), not tech-savvy, see every new feature as a "tech breakthrough", so they think that the new product is far more advanced than the last generation. This is an illusion. Most of the new features, that should have been integrated into the older one, were simply cut and removed from the older one. So yeah, the new product is more advanced than the old one, not because of the new one itself is advanced, but because the old one i. too backwards (primitive).
Think of it as this. Apple invites you to have some lobster or any other luxury food. Then it lets you starve for a while and sells you a burger for the lobster's price. And you are excited for that, not kowning that you can just go get the lobster for cheaper at some other restaurant.
Douchebaggery and totalitarianism
Every company boasts "consumers and customers first" and Apple is not an exception. They say that for each new product, they receive massive positive feedback from users. But does Apple really care? Apple is actually quite a douche at this.
"Diversity" in Apple products you shall not find. And what little diversity they have are all in the hardware: RAM, storage, etc. Consumers do not have the choice in terms of functionality, hard- and software alike. Apple products are filled with this simple message: What I say, you get; what I say not, you get not; what I say but you don't have, you just ain't got the right to ask.
Everyone knows that OS-X does not support "maximize". "We think that the window size should correspond to its contents". Good. So you think that this is logical and acceptable, but do you know that there are also folks that just want a simple "just maximize my freaking window"? Can't you just give an option? Apple's answer is this: You only have so much that I give, complaint is futile. Whic is basically how totalitarian countries run.
As mentioned in the last chapter, Apple deliberately reserves some simple and cheap tech in its products. "So everyone else has a captor? I'm special. I ain't installin' no captor." Typical douchebaggery.
So why is Apple such a douche? To impose domination. People are ruthless againt the weak, and incredibly submissive to the strong. Apple does this, because it understands human nature: Apple is the truth because I am primitive; Apple tech is advanced because I day-dream too much. So people shut up.
A closed system
Apple's ambition is limitless. It attempts to construct a closed circle with its products to form monopoly. Microsoft has been critisized for its browser monopoly; compared to Apple, this is nothing. Apple often ignores tech standards, either on paper or not, only to create its closed empire.
Both the iPhone and the iPad has very fast microprocessors clocking at over one gigahertz. However they do not support Flash. Flash is the most common multimedia platform on the rezo, yet Apple challenges this by downright not supporting Flash. Why? Because Flash itself is a very complete package for multimedia applications. Many apps can be done wholly in Flash, and Flash is trans-platform (multi OS support). If they develop Flash, Apple engineers or consumers would ditch the Apple platform and use Flash instead, leaving Apple nothing but an empty shell. So to obtain more revenue, why don't we skimp on the consumer part?
iPad has no SD-Card slot. The SD-Card is the most widespread storage card today. Even Sony's VAIO supports both the MS and the SD-Card. Apple doesn't include this because a user can buy an 8GB iPad then an 8GB card, leaving Apple with much less profit than that of a 16GB iPad.
The iPhone "supports Bluetooth", which only includes Bluetooth headphones (ear-pieces). All the other Bluetooth telephones can transmit actual files through, but no, not the iPhone. Because it forces the user to go through Wi-Fi and 3G, generating revenue for ATnT and Horizon, which in turn generates revenue for Apple.
Apple software is also extremely closed. No explanations shall be given.
The bioshepere in which products exist is created by men, but it should allow competition in there, too. But Apple does all it can to reject current industrial standards, thus creating its own biosphere. This is obviously monopoly.
(But Apple doesn't dare to not support YouTube and docx/pptx.)
Summary
Yes, Apple has some absolutely advanced stuff. But it doesn't use them to benefit mankind. It uses these to generate profit. Yes, in our system, the priority of a company is to generate profit. But a company such as Apple should put aside its money-gathering engine and start to take up some social responsability.
Apple has advanced tech, but it purposefully create flaws in its products, to generate profit from the follow-up models (like the iPad series). Apple forcefully boycotts industrial standards set by man, because these standards would hurt its dictatorship. Standards are the summum of human intelligence, only with standards can tech (and everything else) progress.
Look at Sony. Sony brought us: BetaMax, Walkman (cassette, but this may be Philips, even so Walkman is way more widely known), DAT, CDs, 1.44M disk and Blu-ray. And PlayStations. What did Apple bring us?
Cue 100 pages of criticism and controversy.
Edited by 3602 - 3/4/11 at 7:54pm
