Apples actual response to the Flash issue

Richmond Mathewson richmondmathewson at gmail.com
Sat May 1 02:15:02 EDT 2010


  On 01/05/2010 04:34, Kay C Lan wrote:
> On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 2:36 AM, Peter Alcibiades<
> palcibiades-first at yahoo.co.uk>  wrote:
>
>> Some very wise comments on this issue:
>>
> Yes, many of the reader 'comments' made about this article are very wise.
> Unfortunately the article itself seems to be written by someone who believes
> they live in an idealistic world where people are forced to buy Apple
> products.
>
Well; nobody is forced to buy Apple products, but there is a tremendous
amount of peer pressure among the 20-40 year olds (who make up the
majority of the tech consumers) which almost amounts to compulsion.

Steve Jobs, like it or not, does have dictatorial tendencies, and, like it
or not, he does have tremendous power.

It is entirely possible, of course, to pop round the corner, buy a cheapo
PC and run whatever form of Linux grabs your fancy for next to nothing -
I know because that is very much "my bag"; but I'm a 48 year-old
non-conformist who has had people being rude to and about him for so
long that he has ceased to care; having a sufficiently self-confident ego
that it hasn't been crushed over the years.

Unfortunately (at least from my point of view) the world that buys new
computers (i.e. North America, Europe, Australia and the Pacific Rim) 
does not consist
of lots of goats; it consists of sheep mainly.

Last year, in Edinburgh the most informative thing for me (even more than
the conference) were the looks my wife's 7 year old G4 iBook was getting
in the Student halls of residence from Japanese students; several of them
came over and asked me why I didn't have a whizz-bang, spiffy-bananas
macBook - I don't think any of them could understand my reply:

"When it breaks down completely I will buy a new laptop, if I still need
one."

I have a similar problem with 3 spoilt rich kids I teach English to who
cannot understand why I have a G3 iMac at the front of the class
rather than some newer machine attached to a monster flat-screen
VDU. I have told them that when I put my fees up from £4 for 90
minutes to £40 I will get a flat-screen for myself upstairs; but that the
G3 is "just the ticket" for the school.
-------------------------------------------------
Yes, there are many wise remarks; but they are probably
tempered by a realisation that most of the "spending public"
are fairly foolish and prone to the winds of fashion.

The woman who helps my younger son with his Bulgarian literature
came round to borrow some money the other day because she had
seen a whopper flat-screen TV at half price in some trade mag a week
earlier and spent the month's food-and-bills money on it so she
could be just like the people next door (who enjoy a much larger income):
I forwent the temptation to give her a suitably pompous lecture . . .  :)

Quod erat  demonstrandum (kept the pomposity for here).




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