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Apple Bores Me, But We Fixed Our Mouse

By Alex Wilhelm
October 20, 2009
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Apple Bores Me, But We Fixed Our Mouse

Someone has to fight against the endless Apple hype. Even my polite, intelligent, well-written cohorts here at TheNextWeb are drinking the Cupertino kool-aide. I am here to push back against treating incremental updates to annoyingly overpriced, underpowered, or broken technologies as a godsend.

We all know that the technosexuals technorati love Apple: Apple software, hardware, middle ware, anything. Slap an Apple logo and in the words of Kevin Rose: “I don’t know what it does, but, I just want it!”

Blog coverage follows the same mentality: any update to make any Apple product a touch better bring in heralding cries of the “hardest/fastest/bestest/strongest Apple Whatever ever.” It’s enough to make the average PC user retch mildly.

Given the major blogs that cover Apple are almost all in agreeance over the superiority of Apple products (go watch bloggers at a conference), except for the token Windows guy at Gizmodo, I will be the lone non-Apple voice.

Let’s break down what Apple released today, and why you really should be nothing more than relieved over what has been released, not excited:

New Macbook: Well, about time. After the last two rounds of updates to its laptop line, the plastic clamshell Macbook was a dinosaur. If you are at all surprised that Apple took the time to improve it, you are far behind the times. At an embarrassing 4.7 pounds, it packs a paltry 250 gigabytes of storage, and two gigabytes of RAM. Want more RAM? Be prepared to pay $50 per gigabyte to Apple.

The Macbook is still overpriced technology, whose only excuse for existence is that Apple has to have something below the Macbook Pro, and can convince college kids that a few hundred dollars in Apple tax is worth the OS X experience.

Even with the updates, the Macbook is still underpowered, and overpriced. Next!

The Magic Mouse: The Mighty Mouse was long the disaster of the Mac line. I use them on a daily basis, and to hear the news of a slick new mouse made me leap with joy. Until Zee mentioned that indeed it costs 55 pounds. Wow, really? I love your work here Apple, but like hell am I paying that much for a mouse. If I was a professional gamer I might consider it. Overpriced, I’ll just suffer with what I have.

New iMac: An incremental upgrade, and a good one. But the way that people are talking about it, you would think that indeed that Apple had just invented the iMac. The iMac line has always been strong, and some upgrades will hurt no one. Still, calm down everyone. They took away the cord from the keyboard to the computer, nice, but not cancer-curing.

Oh, and it’s the fastest iMac yet. Of course it is! Would apple upgrade the system to make it slower? All they have to do is put a better top end processor as an option and, viola, the fastest iMac yet. Why do we keep falling for this?

Mac Mini: This thing is still underpowered: up to a 500 gigabyte hard drive? That is just a disgrace to the user of the computer.

There you have it, the Windows fanboy view of the latest Apple updates. Some good things in there, for the Mac community (that I am a part of), but nothing that is going to revolutionize computing. Nothing that is worth having endless coverage over was announced today. Calm down everyone, Apple is just going to do this again after the holiday season. Oh, and can you just imagine the explosion of derivative posting that will occur when the Apple Tablet (if it exists) comes out?

Spare me.

The Kevin Rose quote was from the Diggnation episode at MacWorld when they announced the Apple TV.

Tags:  

  • Tzzzz ;) More I can not say.
  • Ha ha ha. Best review yet!!!
  • Why thank you sir.
  • Krisjan
    Hmmm...I'm a bit of a fanboy and while some of what you say is bang-on I naturally don't agree with all your statements. Here's a fanboy's outlook:

    New MacBook: Totally agree! Way overdo, still over priced and could have made this their netbook without labeling it so.

    Magic Mouse: I was so excited about this. I unlike you, love my Mighty Mouse for the ability to customize its functionality especially with Expose & Spaces. It increases my productivity 2 fold. When I saw the Magic Mouse I imagined being able to customize it even further with the two-finger gestures and even three and four finger gestures (like the trackpad). Upon further inspection, the customization features seem limited with the Magic Mouse. This is based on screen shots of Preferences from the demos so the jury will be out until I get to play with it.

    iMac: I think this is a pretty epic upgrade. For almost the cost of a high-end television, you get a decent size viewing platform that runs OSX with Quad-core speeds...I think this is a step towards computer enabled televisions (something brewing in Apples rumour mill).

    Mac Mini: You forgot to mention the Mac Mini server. A great option for a small business looking for an affordable solution for file sharing, email and other collaborative features. This comes with 2 x 500GB hard drives. More than enough for a small biz.
  • Good point about the Mini Server, but who will use it? Good cloud hosting is so cheap, why do it in that way? The iMac TV point is also valid, well said sir!
  • Yes we all love Apple and as I mention if a store will be down from any other online store every client will claim on it. For us apple fans it is like christmas and eastern came together. And I am so one, never wanted a imac before, but know I see the new and just ordered 2 for the office. It is like a drug, no one need it, it is maybe not good for us but we all love it ;)
  • I assume that you mean "Easter," that aside, your office will have some quality, if overpriced, screens coming in.
  • Hunter Clarke
    Nailed it!
  • Glad that I am not alone here, the coverage was just revolting!
  • Really? This is your anti-Apple take of the day? Seems like cheap linkbait to me.

    And come on, everyone knows that you don't buy HD space or RAM from Apple, you upgrade that after the fact.
  • Is that possible? Didn't even know that. Are you sure that wouldn't piss off Steve? I wouldn't want to run the risk of being banned out of Apple heaven for saving a few bucks.
  • It wasn't in the past I heard, but you can now change your RAM. Point is, most end users have NO idea how to do that. Hence the cost is mere theft.
  • Chris
    You're so right. I love how the Mac community gets so gosh-golly-swoony over a new piece of hardware or two.

    Frankly, Macs are waaaaay overpriced. Wait a month and get all the same bells and whistles (or more) on a PC at a lot less. Mac users are buying into the 'premium brand' thing and paying at least 35% over the odds - and that is all going into Apple's profit coffers. I prefer to keep the money in my own profit coffers. But then I don't hang out at Starbucks hoping my Macbook will chat with the girl at the next table.
  • I always thought that meeting women was easier with a PC: "Hey baby, want to touch a *real* computer...."

    :)
  • You're forgetting that most of the Mac users don't WANT a PC.

    Semi-broken analogy: If you're really enjoying driving your Audi / Volkswagen / whatever, and no other manufacturer makes cars that you enjoy this much, you're not going to want to buy a Mercedes just because it's bigger, better, faster, more ... or a Volvo, because it's the sensible choice and has better resale value ... you're going to stick with your Audis, because you just love them that much.

    The only thing you're really considering when thinking about price, is WHICH Audi to buy, and whether to go for a brand new one or picking up an old one.

    It might seem silly to the rest of the world, but to us fanbois, it makes perfect sense.
  • Shobhna Iyer
    THANK YOU Alex. I totally and completely agree with you; I can already picture the glee and superior looks from some of my friends that I am going to have to deal with.

    All I did was go to the Apple page, open the Magic Mouse page, calculate the cost of the mouse in rupees (I'm from and in India) and promptly close the browser window.

    I just bought my new machine (Lenovo g550, w/ Vista unfortunately) after four years with my older IBM, and while I was looking into laptops I'll admit I was tempted by the Macbook; like you said, it's the way that Apple tempts college students (such as me) into buying a sub standard machine. But even with the student discount, the mac was twice the price of the machine I got, and I've got more HDD space and more RAM.

    I don't get the big deal. Honestly.
  • Woo! Well said my good sir, I am glad that I am not alone, either.

    I love hearing you calling a Macbook a "substandard machine" that is just music to my ears. Keep up the windows love, man.
  • I'm a little confused by this post. The "clamshell" iBook (not MacBook) has been gone for a looooong time, and I'm pretty sure the iMac has had a wireless keyboard available for a while as well (though maybe it wasn't standard). And it seems a little silly to complain about the most innovative new offering--the mouse--when you admit you don't like the OLD one!

    Ultimately, though, Apple isn't making big changes because it doesn't HAVE to. Maybe people are stupid for drinking the Apple-aid, but other companies are even more stupid for not capitalizing on a market full of people who want computers that look good and work simply. The glut of hideous black plastic Windows laptops shows that other computer companies just aren't responding to what this market segment wants. Maybe other computer companies start offering something in this vein, Apple will be forced to innovate more. Until then, why not stick with what clearly works for the company?
  • I have to agree with everything written above.

    And yeah “I don’t know what it does, but, I just want it!” sums it all up. :P
  • Wouter
    I hate Apple because of the fanboys. I enjoy seeing fanboys make fuss/cry when someone is critical of Apple :-).

    The Apple fanboy's identity is so much intertwined with Apple products, if you would remove all the Apple, there's simply nothing left. They're sad people :-).

    It is also funny when fanboys complain about other people spending lots of money on some fancy expensive fashion brand. Somehow they don't understand they're showing the same behaviour themselves :-).

    Hehehe fun times with fanboys.
  • I wonder if we put two in the same bottle, and shook it, if they would fight?
  • The new Mac releases are incremental and overhyped? Yes.
    Mighty Mouse was a crime against God and Man? Absolutely.
    Windows gives you more hardware bang for the buck? Numerically, yes - but the variety in hardware introduces less stability, so it's a mixed bag.
    Therefore, Windows > Mac? Sorry, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
    Way to be strong and be the voice of dissent, though. Good show.
  • You summed it up well, my friend.
  • Wouter
    BTW you can use this quote in your next article:

    “I don’t know what it does, but, I really hate it!”

    Wouter 20-10-2009
  • Don't tempt me.
  • Great anti-hype post!

    Apple are very clever at getting their fanbase to a lot of marketing for them, I'll grant them that ... and this is just one more way for them to feed the fanbase more stuff to talk about.

    I for one really WANT the new iMac ... but I also really wanted the old one, so no change there. There are some considerable upgrades over the old model, mostly the display and Core i7 CPU though.

    I am not too sure about the mouse ... never liked the "mighty" mouse, I guess I could just give it away if I don't like the "magic" one and go back to my trusty Logitech MX1000.

    Mini bump? Meh, they're just doing the bare minimum to keep that line alive ... kind of interesting with the mini server ... if only they'd put that out 3 years ago .. these days most stuff goes into the cloud or just get's put on a NAS appliance that requires much less configuration than OS X / Windows / Linux.

    I do find the last comment about nothing there to revolutionize computing a bit off ... I can't think of ANY hardware supplier the sells consumer / prosumer computers that are actually REVOLUTIONIZING computing. All of that comes from software companies these days, and has been mostly for the past 15-20 years. Sure, Apple does put a LOT of polish into their hardware (sometimes at the cost of self-maintenance / self-upgrades), but so does the other manufacturers in their high-end lines.

    I for one am very excited to see what Windows 7 can actually do, and to see if there will finally be a worthy new Windows OS for those that enjoy working on that platform. I can imagine that a high-end Lenovo with Windows 7 would be a joy to work on, just as my 3 year old MacBook Pro :-P
  • Morgan, I hope that I didn't give the wrong impression: I agree that no one is revolutionizing the hardware market right now, except the continuing mobile wars (I am in the iPhone camp).

    Windows 7, you seem to agree, might give the world a true shake, we will see.
  • You guys are focusing on how NEW mac products are overpriced, but you're missing a gold mine of fanboy hate: Craigslist Computer classifieds. There, you can see people selling 4 year old powerPC macbooks for the price of a new windows notebook.
  • Which is comical, in its own right.
  • Rob
    So we can purchase 4 year old PowerPC equipment (a bit slower than an old pentium 4 for us PC users), for the same cost as a sweet Core2Duo PC? No thanks, I'll stick with the PC.

    I love some Apple products, but seeing the new iMac makes me want the last model. Am I the only computer user who prefers the 16:10 aspect ratio for my monitor? For the same size screen, I get a few more pixels, enough for my taskbar, or about 1/2 my dock, and that's space that I'd rather not give up. I must say that I agree with the original post 100%, and I've been quite dissapointed with Apple lately, even though I was (almost) one of the fanboys. The new lackluster products, and Snow Leopard are just two reasons why I've ditched the mac platform almost completely. Not to get into it too far, but mac os 10.6 corrupted a brand new western digital external drive while I was copying about 80gb worth of data. I had to run the disk utilities on my win7 computer to get the disk to work again, and the mac disk utility wouldn't touch it! I haven't worked win an os as buggy as snow leopard since windows ME. (Doesn't run iLife well, crashes when resumes from sleep, screensaver crashes, memory management not as good as leopard, crashed my hdd, and Rosetta doesn't run some of my old ppc 32-bit apps.)

    Sorry about the rant, but congrats to windows 7, Microsoft got it right. Good luck to Apple, as with the current lineup, I still won't be a customer.
  • Thanks for the note Rob.
  • OMG! Thanks for this. If you are an Win and Linux user its hardly possible to tell a Mac user anything. Its seems to me like Scientology - but more successfull ;-)

    yours Felix
  • Greg
    Sorry, I've got to call you out on such a lame article.

    You criticize the mouse for costing $70 but do you honestly think that Logitech or Microsoft would debut such a never-been-done-before device for less? My Logitech MX400 is a great mouse, but is standard as far as mice go and it cost $40.

    You completely missed the main feature of the new iMacs, the displays. I think having a 21" 1920x1200 display standard on the low end model is a pretty big deal. Not to mention that massive 27".

    As for the Mac Mini, I would love to see someone point out a faster PC in as small of a form factor. And, you do realize that the Mini's use a 2.5" hard drive right? For a small form factor computer, the Mini is a great machine. That's why so many people are choosing them to use as PCs over the Mini-ITX alternatives from VIA and others.

    I can understand not wanting to pay for higher end products, but you're just being a an Apple hater because you think you are staying off some bandwagon.
  • :) Hi there Greg,

    Thanks for the comment, I think that I can clarify a few things. As for the mouse point, I do.

    A better resolution is *not* a big deal. It is a small deal. When Dell builds a monitor with 50% more pixels, what happens? Nothing. That is what should happen.


    So what if it uses a 2.5" hard drive? That just means that I can not have as much storage as I need.

    I love high end products, and pay $100/month for my iPhone! I am not an Apple hater at all, I love Apple products.

    I do dislike Apple corporate, and the way their work is covered by the press.
  • Greg
    http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeybo...

    For the mouse: You can say what you want, but Microsoft doesn't make a Bluetooth mouse for under $50 and those are "laptop" mice. The "regular" Bluetooth mice start at $80. Which, of course, is higher than the Magic Mouse.

    Logitech's bluetooth offerings also start at $60 for a non-laptop mouse.
    http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers...

    For the display: When Dell makes that 50% larger monitor the standard configuration on the base model of any line, that's notable. I'm really curious as to what (besides a price drop, I'm sure) would you consider a noteworthy improvement to the iMac.

    For the mini: If all that matters to you is internal storage space, then the Mini isn't the right computer for the job. That's an argument against the whole class of small form factor computers, not the Mini.

    My point is, if you are going to criticize Apple for something, at least do it on points that hold water. I'll be the first to tell you that they are out there.

    I guess we do agree on something though, I've disliked the way the press has covered Apple for all but the most recent of the 20 years that I've been using their products. :)
  • McDave
    Confused. How can a user community with such a large market share have such a large inferiority complex.

    We could switch back to Windows (7) but the new MacBook also includes a 9-cell-equiv battery and two spares so the extra cost of the Windows option just doesn't make sense. (Compare a Dell XPS13
    + 4x 6-cell batteries @ £107 each = £1206 compared to £799 for the MacBook).


    In fact with the Mini OSX server costing less than the Windows SBS licenses alone the whole Mac vs PC cost premise has reversed. If MacOS is a Mercedes then windows is like a kit-version of the Merc but takes time to build, gives lower integrity & now, costs more!

    McD
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