You’ve Changed Apple.

Remember when Apple was cool. Not just because its products looked sexy, or they impressed your easily impressed friends, but because they were the antidote to Microsoft. Now they are Microsoft, only they wear jeans instead of a suit and only care about making you want things instead of making things you want.

I have never really been a Mac guy. As a designer that put me on the outer from the very beginning but my argument was that if you can design on a Mac then you can design on a PC – the programs are the same. Substitute the Command button for the Control button and voila, same same. I owned a Powerbook for a while, it was good. For $4,500 I should hope so, I could have bought four PCs for that money and just thrown them away each time they crashed and I’d still been in front.

Admittedly the iPhone was revolutionary. Unlike a revolution it went to great pains to restrict its citizens from using it for anything Apple hadn’t approved or couldn’t directly profit from. Its founder goes on rants to his followers, abuses them for being lowly serfs in his kingdom of cool and seems to be going completely mad with power.

The iPad could be good but who really cares? I saw a woman in the airport using one only a few days after its release – she was playing solitaire. I could play solitaire on my first 486SX with 16 colours and dual floppy drives 14 years ago. The iPad makes you look more like someone shouting “hey, I’m cool too” rather than someone on the cutting edge.

Technology doesn’t really have to look cool anymore. It is cool when it that makes our lives easier, keeps us entertained or allows us to do things we couldn’t do without it. Apple has long managed to make it into a fashion statement or a status symbol – awesome marketing and great products. Only now it has gone to their head, they assume people will love their products simply because they made them. For now they are probably right, but soon it could all change. Come on China!