[lbo-talk] Jobs

[Nathan S.]

On 10/06/2011 09:46 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> So do you mean the advances in thin laptops are because of Apple?
>> That´s news to me. I thought it was due to lower power requirements of
>> Intel´s ATOM chipsets.
> Most people don't give a fuck about chipsets. They want a computer that looks nice and is easy to use. That's where Apple's real innovations are.
>
> Doug
To get pedantic, the difference between a low-power chip and a regular 
one is pretty significant as far as electricity consumed and probably 
makes a noticeable impact as far as heat produced and probably even 
power bills, but otherwise that was my argument, save that there is no 
reason to fetishize it to the cost of several hundred additional 
dollars. Apple understands that most people aren't concerned with 
hardware specifics and so it only sells a limited set of hardware, 
making it easier for Apple to make sure the software will "just work", 
making it possible for Apple to spend time on design, making that design 
mass-producible. The problem is that the cost of that focus benefits 
Apple's shareholders in a huge way, and the cost makes that focus on 
physical design, software engineering and user-interface, which really 
should be a standard, makes it less accessible. It's the top 1% taxing 
the top 30%, while the top 1% on the MSFT s'holder team sneers at the 
top 50% by forcing them to engage in ongoing, decade-plus public 
beta-testing of the worst operating system in the past half-century of 
computing. Apologies to OWS.

And let's not forget that Apple went through its translucent plastic 
colored-LED low-pomo monstrosity (as opposed to spray-enamel sheet 
metal) phase, too. The c. 2000 Macintoshes were absolutely not good-looking.

I suspect Carrol Cox's complaint about "innovation" is largely 
correct--Microsoft is the real innovator here, and unless you 
manufacture reset buttons, that's destructive.