some of apples products used to be decent. like the ipod mini - has firewire support, upgradeable storage, battery easily replaced, custom firmware available. of course since they realised that people were modding and extending the life of these things they put more effort into making sure everything they produce is designed from the ground up to be an unserviceable piece of junk filled with epoxy and solder that will definitely break on time.

I think that might be it: Apple has always delivered an experience that doesn’t suck, even though the products they’re selling have themselves sucked for years. People savvy enough to concern themselves with the product rather than the experience are always disappointed in Apple.

I secretly wish I could own a Mac and an iPod and just forget everything else. But I suspect that one day they’d find me hunched over a typewriter with “make dep clean modules modules_install bzImage” typed out over and over.

Which explains, in large part, why college towns/cities are usually pretty cool places to live. They attract tons of different people, many of whom choose to stay but some of whom choose to leave, creating space for new different people.

Hah!