Open Letter to Tim Cook

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Dear Mr Cook,

Why do some car and motorcycle companies have the courage to devote significant resources to racing?

Currently, MacBook and the MacBook Pro lines share almost all design goals: weight, thinness, battery life, beauty. As such, they are differentiated only by screen sizes, connectivity and minor performance alterations.

Why not provide creative professionals with a line of more powerful computers? In other words, why not have the courage to provide true differentiation between these product lines and produce a ‘Pro’ line that eschew some of the lightness and thinness, but gain true professional-level performance?

The reason Apple should spend money on creating and marketing true professional hardware is the very same reason for which car and motorcycle companies devote significant resources to racing; because it provides them with credibility. When motor companies race, they are affirming their ability to create the very best possible product, the one that no other group can challenge.

Whether Apple likes it or not, creative professionals have always provided it with its ‘street cred’. Sadly, Apple keeps abandoning them (need i bring up the now 3 year-old Mac Pro!?) by producing ‘Pro’ hardware that is merely consumer-level and explicitly ignoring trends in professional-level hardware design.

I have been an Apple user since my first Apple//; i care about this company and its products.

Sincerely, Peter

PS: There is such a thing as too small:

Remember this?

Old Mac Product Grid

Angry White Guys with Guns, Feel Free to Terrorize the Country!!

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Angry White Guys with Guns, Feel Free to Terrorize the Country!!

Bundy et al., the perpetrators of the armed takeover in the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, have been acquitted today.

The message: You can be an armed terrorist, just as long as you’re a bunch of white guys.

As many have pointed out, had this takeover been perpetrated by ‘non-whites’, the result would surely have been quite different.

Quel Malheur!

 

PS:

The treatment of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe‘s protest is a prime example of this double standard. Bundy et al were armed to the teeth, took over federal land and offices, threatening people with firearms, but were not bothered by the authorities, who decided to let the terrorist group operate as it saw fit. 

Contrarily, the unarmed Sioux were immediately and violently imprisoned, even though they had no weapons, and were on their own land!

If that’s not a clear double-standard, i can’t figure out what is!

The Slow Death of the Pro Mac

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Here i was cautiously optimistic that Apple had renewed its interest in the ‘Pro’ aspect of the MacBook Pro by including seemingly capable dedicated GPUs in all its most recent 15-inch models (something they had not done for some time)…

It turns out, of course, that this entire line of dedicated GPUs were created to provide low-end consumer performance, maximizing battery life…

It’s sort of ironic that Tim Cook was quoted as saying that VR will be a game changer; seems Apple is resolutely excluding itself from that game, and, as usual, only the faithful ‘Pro’ users suffer…

There will eventually come a point when Pro users’ dislike for Windows is superseded by their inability to get work done because their beautiful-super-extra-thin rigs are woefully underpowered…
Don’t forget that this means less development resources, which means even less professionals, and even less dev, etc.. etc..

What is this obsession with getting extra-thin and light hardware at the expense of everything else?!?!
Especially when there is (technically) an ‘non-pro‘ line that is supposed to address these concerns of aesthetics over performance!!

it really sucks watching this slow-motion computer-icide that Apple has been performing on itself for so long!!!
Grrr!!

The Risk of Over-Confidence – Quick Note

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While it looks like the Clinton campaign has made significant advances in the polls, there is only one ‘poll’ that counts: the actual vote!

We find ourselves in a very delicate situation: voter apathy is at an all-time high; many of those who intend to vote for Sec. Clinton have indicated that the fear of a Trump presidency is their primary motivator.

The risk, then, is that these voters may feel that their participation is not necessary since Sec. Clinton has such an advantage. This, in turn, could lead to a dramatic drop in turnout for the Democratic camp…

Let us not lose sight of the importance of this election!

“Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything” – Donald Trump, Republican nominee for President of the US

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“Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”

It is supremely important to note that these are not just words

Mr Trump has already excused this by saying that he mis-spoke, but this is not mere speech!

Everyone seems to be forgetting that Mr Trump is describing actions, behavior, sexual assault he admits to have performed!!

I’ll just add this: if you are one of the women whom Mr Trump has assaulted this way, now is the time to say so!

Past Behavior…

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As the saying goes ‘Past behavior is the best predictor for future behavior’..

This should give us pause when it comes to Donald Trump.

Indeed, while Mr Trump has readily (and repeatedly) declared that, in the past, he was out for himself and his family, he now asks people to believe that he will turn all of his efforts to the selfless endeavor of the presidency, and look out for those who have been ‘left behind’.

Many people seem to take him at his word — worse yet, they believe his his intentions align with their own, despite evidence to the contrary.

Let us first ask whether there is any evidence of any altruistic behavior in Mr Tump’s past.

One could point to Mr Trump’s foundation as evidence of generosity, but further investigation has demonstrated that his foundation has not received any money from Mr Trump himself in nearly a decade, worse yet, his foundation was used only to benefit Mr Trump, his family, and his business. At the very least, this is cynical, callous, possibly illegal, and it is certainly quite the opposite of altruistic.

Let us forget about altruism, and consider simple fair play.

Here, we find a (very) long list of people and small businesses that have been bankrupted, or at least lost great deals of money, by simply entering into contracts with Mr Trump that he later broke for no other reason than he just did not want to pay…

We are talking here mostly about the well-documented multitude of contractors whom he hired for a given task or product, and then never paid despite having received satisfactory delivery of those jobs or products..

This, in my mind, is the worse offense..

That he never gave money to charity, and used his foundation for his personal gain makes him a selfish cynic, but stiffing people after they’ve provided honest work is something else, namely, fraud.

Finally, there is ample evidence that he knowingly defrauded private investors and financial institutions when he engaged in his spree of bankruptcies, from which he richly profited while people and institutions lost millions upon millions.

Considering all this, how can anyone believe Mr Trump when he claims that he’ll suddenly change and not only stop swindling everyone, but actually help them!?!

There is absolutely nothing in Mr Trump’s past to support the idea that he would look out for anyone but himself.

What’s more, every single bit of information about his past shows that, if in office, he would continue this self-serving and abusive behavior and make every effort to divert presidential power for his own gain, at the expense of the American people, and the greater world population…