Apple...is this a joke?

Ok so I'm not an apple person. I like some of their functional and aesthetic aspects, but you won't see me lining up to buy the new iPhone 4.0.1.2.1 (now with more square edges!). I don't understand the Apple people who seem to not care that they have, rather literally, given Steve Jobs and co. carte blanche to charge any price they please on their products. Why? Because people keep buying the products at any price!

Normally I say live and let live, but if you don't think Apple are abusing your consumer brand loyalty, then the MacBook Air should (hopefully) force you to see the light. Full details can be found at CNN but here's the short version. The new MacBook will cost users a whopping $999 (at its cheapest and smallest). Your return on investment? A tiny laptop that has a massive (!).....64 gigabytes of space! How about a DVD reader? Nope! Will millions line up to buy it on opening day (despite alreasy owning superior, cheaper machines)? Absolutely! Meanwhile the lads at Apple are laughing at the fact that they pulled the same trick on consumers yet again.

Apple Exec: "What will we charge next Steve?"
Steve Jobs: "Who cares, people will buy it".
Apple Exec: "Won't they get wisen up to this trick?"
Steve Jobs: "Seemingly not"

Now I understand the supposed technological justifications for the price. Great battery life, weight, and flash storage. Downloading updates via the Web makes sense, but not being able to watch basic DVDs? And only 64 GB of space? This is criminal.

Though I'm sure many would (will) disagree with me, at the end of the day, if you want to spend $1000 of you hard earned (?) money, go ahead.

Would love to hear some views on this.

Think about it.

Manuel

Can't type on a touch screen? Me neither...

Ok so I can, but I don't like it. I like to actually feel the keys I'm typing on. What's more is I just find it plain annoying. Seems like I'm not the only one.

The folks over at Disney Research are coming up with something to take care of this problem. The Tesla Touch Screen seems to be paving the way for a whole new type of touch screen interface. Anyways, just though I'd share in case anyone agrees with me about how annoying it is to use touch keypads.

Manuel

P.S. Anyone else find it comical that anything vaguely associated with electricity has the name Tesla thrown in? I wonder what ole Nikola would think!