Sexy, yes. Uebercool, yes. Screaming fast, yes.
For the rest of us, no.
Here's a little missive I composed today in my rising fury (but obviously won't send):
Dear Mr. Jobs,
If I thought it would do any good, I’d dope-slap you.
Or send you to time-out for quite a spell.
I’m a long-suffering Mac user, former Mac salesgal, Mac evangelist, and shafted AAPL shareholder. I’m also a skilled Windows user in my professional incarnation. That’s who I am, pal, and, although I fit the Mac buyer profile of the highly educated and relatively affluent consumer, I am neither a rich lady nor a spendthrift. For this reason, you may finally be losing my business.
No longer crazy after all these years, you might say.
As of today, with these super-duper G5 machines, we MacPeople can finally lay claim to processor speed and performance parity with the rest of the computer world. Whoopee—-only it will cost us through the nose. How disdainful can one company be of its customer base? If I had any influence, I would urge the whole Macintosh community to boycott the G5 until the prices are lowered by at least 30%.
One must wonder in what country, in what economic environment, you exist, Mr. Jobs. Thanks to corporate overlords such as you and the mobster government currently terrorizing our nation, ordinary people are losing their jobs or haven’t had a raise for over two years (sound familiar, Mr. Gulfstream?), paying higher property taxes, sales taxes, tuition costs, etc., and the vast majority of us CANNOT AFFORD TWO-THOUSAND-DOLLAR COMPUTERS!!! …even if we could really use them for our digital hobbies and businesses.
And how dare you, once again, announce a product that won’t ship for two months at best? With the incompetence long characterizing Apple's manufacturing and distribution operations, I would wager that those G5s will not hit non-Apple retail venues until, oh, around Halloween or thereabouts. I had enough time in the trenches to know whereof I speak.
For what seems an eternity, I have held out hope for a change in your attitudes and behavior, since you and you alone are Apple. Having superb taste does not entitle you to continuously flip off your rapidly shrinking base.
So, what’s my plan? Well, make my 2001 tricked-out Power Mac last as long as possible, then probably buy only used Macs on ebay, then—-if you continue to suck Mac users dry with $129 OS “upgrades” and $99 .mac subscriptions for an unreliable service—-well, it looks as though I’ll have to start exploring Linux or some such abomination.
Your truly ticked off slave,
Me
