Posted by: Steve Abrahamson
Date: Monday, June 11th, 2007, 16:59
Category: Opinion

During Steve’s keynote for WWDC this morning, the Apple.com store went
offline with their now-familiar “We’ll be back soon” stickie. In the
past, this has been a guarantee of new toys – er, sorry – hardware from
Apple, as they take the store offline to revise the available lineup.
But Steve introduced no new hardware today. But when the store came back
online, the entire web site was redesigned; the header, which has used
the horizontal grey-on-white striping and large tabs that we had in OS X
10.0, has finally been replaced with a clean, stoic header brushed metal
header, and the Apple logo is chrome like might be found on an XServe.

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It’s about time.
While Apple has been criticized for having several UI schemes running
through the OS for a while now, it’s nice to see that they’ve finally
retired the last bastion of the original – and by today’s standards,
clunky – OS X theme and replaced it with something entirely modern.
Kudos, Apple. Nicely done.
Steve Abrahamson

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Posted by: Steve Abrahamson
Date: Friday, January 12th, 2007, 08:00
Category: Opinion

Lately Greenpeace has been targeting Apple with a “GreenMyApple” campaign, including the infamous “Greening of Apple” publicity stunt in New York a little while back. OK, point made, good to be aware that Apple, like many, could do better.
The problem is, they’re going too far. Way, way too far.
They claim that they’re targeting Apple because Apple should be better because they’re, well, Apple. But like a teenager who’s crushed upon learning that their parents are imperfect and only human, Greenpeace doesn’t seem to want to accept that Apple is a corporation like any other, that they try to do their best, and they’re not perfect. Greenpeace is running the risk of alienating people who support them. And they don’t care.
How do I know? I called them. I spoke to someone about the GreenMyApple
campaign, and explained to him, in the most rational way possible, that
while I sympathized with their goals, there was a backlash going on;
that when I read about their activities I found myself thinking badly of
Greenpeace, not of Apple. I may as well have been talking to my iPod; he
told me about the validity of the campaign, and even said, “we alienate
people with every campaign we do. That’s just how it goes.” He couldn’t
have been less interested.
Hmm. Nice. Chalk up one more alienated person.
Of course, there’s plenty of holes in Greenpeace’s story, too. You could read Roughly Drafted who wrote After spending at least $50,000 on expensive lab work, Greenpeace ignored the data they discovered, or AppleInsider who reported Greenpeace admits placing Apple under more scrutiny than any other electronics manufacturer. But that’s facts, and Greenpeace prefers factiness.
Like that teenager seeking attention by whatever means necessary, Greenpeace seems hell-bent on trying to cause Apple problems, from unruly protests (that get them kicked out of Macworld Expo) to botched “greening events” – but not out of high moral ground; they do it purely because they know that attacking Apple gets them publicity.
Here’s the problem with that…. Read more after the jump…

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Posted by: Steve Abrahamson
Date: Friday, December 30th, 2005, 16:38
Category: Macworld Expo

Whether you got lumps of coal in your stocking or oil company stock, at this time of year Mac geeks around the world turn their attention to Macworld for new toys. This year feels like it’ll be a biggie, and I’ll be happy with lots of faster, lighter, new designs on laptops. Yeah, that’s nice; I could use one. Maybe a new desktop enclosure, maybe a new set of category names. That’s nice.
But what I really want to see is an iPad.
Read more…
Contributed by Steve Abrahamson, principal at Ascending Technologies, where they write FileMaker Pro systems like the ones he described running on the fictional iPad. He can be reached at steve@asctech.com.

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Posted by: Steve Abrahamson
Date: Thursday, June 9th, 2005, 07:57
Category: Opinion

Apple made the announcement this week that they’d be transitioning the chipset at the heart of the Mac again, and the entire Mac community seems to be wailing and gnashing their collective teeth. It’s the end, they say. What will we do? How about relax? Read More…

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