[Rhymenocerus]

What would Steve do?

I find it humorous how many people seem oblivious to the fact that there's MANY people who find Apple uninspiring, especially since they often seem to be years behind those who are actually innovating. Unless you're trying to innovate new ways of marketing to narcissists and overpricing electronics.

[Seldaek]

Way to turn a decent post in an Apple vs. World religious war.

I for one use "What would Jesus do?" as a saying sometimes, and I don't need to be religious to do so. Similarly you need not be an Apple fanboy to get the reference. Move on.

[arjunnarayan]

To be fair, if you invoked a "What would Jesus do?" people would be apt to get testy.

The underlying assumption behind WWJD is that Jesus is a deity or exemplar of some sort, and that his example serves as adequate precedent to predispose us towards his point of view. For those who do not accept those axioms, it's irrelevant, just as if you said "well would my crazy cousin Max do?", or "what would Mohammed do?"

Those examples are often times important (such as the classic "what would my mom do?"). But they have to be properly motivated. Just as the mom example can be gendered and unfair, unstated assumptions that elevate certain groups (Christians/Apple-users in the running examples above) are also annoying and tedious.

Steve Jobs is not the exemplar of all things good in tech. There's a difference between listening to the words of a great man (Steve Jobs once said...) and deifying him into an archetype and extrapolating based on that myth (what would Steve Jobs do). The former is often relevant, the latter almost never is.

[rimantas]

So before iPhone came out pretty much every smarthpone looked just like it? And befor iPad came out Samsung, HTC, HP, RIM, Amazon had their tablet computers business going full-steam? And do you mind to compare prices of iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S, iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab and explain how are they overpriced? Or is it just inconceivable to you that Apple does indeed make damn good products for the price that is on par with competition?

[lotyrin]

I personally don't find any of their products to be very interesting or inspiring. The ideas were all in the ether already as far as I cared about them.

Of course, Apple managed to realize them, polish them and place them in the hands of consumers and developers and thereby create viable markets based around the ideas (even for competitors), and while that's definitely a feat of engineering and marketing, many people (myself included) simply don't care about that part.

The only part I care about is that it's driving money towards tech such that there are R&D resources for developing new products (at the level of ARM chip designs or battery tech) that might make new kinds of products viable (from an engineering, not consumer marketing standpoint).