Hackers gonna hate

Kyle Wiens was clear: Apple was experimenting with two divergent strategies - small, portable and inflexible vs larger, modifiable and upgradeable. Neither is anti-technology or anti-progress, they're just different paths.

Instead, Nick first assumes that the first option represents progress and draws his inference from there. This allows him to look down his nose at Kyle's clearly superior knowledge of Apple's product history and strategy.

Of course, this is ass-backward.

EDIT: --

Well there you go. John Gruber, who snarkily wrote off Kyles well written analysis as a whine, has linked back to Nicks categorical imperative.

I'm sorry, but that is the worst sort of circle jerk.

My biggest issues were the lack of a socket for RAM and the use of glue to bond the glass and aluminum.

As a side note, I have. PowerBook Wallstreet G3, a five year-old Compaq and a nine year-old Dell that are all still functional and in good shape. The Powerbook and the Compaq both have over 100k miles of travel on them and I'm convinced the biggest factor determining longevity of a laptop is the owner.

It's true that your batteries are somewhat beyond your control and there are some models with known issues (e.g. hinge problems), but how can I only person that's never had a laptop just up and die on them. I've also have had five or six other laptops assigned to me by the companies I've worked for over the last 15 years and I've generally turned them in to be upgraded (processor and RAM limitations).

Two year product life cycles are incredibly brief for people who aren't circuit-heads like us.

I don't think that's precisely fair. I'm not exactly a fan of King Ludd - I like machines a lot, I like taking them apart and putting them back together and doing cool things with them. For this reason, though I think they're really neat, and I've even thought about it just because they're so cool, I don't think I'll ever buy a Macbook.

Even so, I am not foolish enough to believe everyone is just like me on this count. I've even recommended Macbooks to at least three friends, helping them purchase and set them up, not that anybody needs much help with such intuitive machines. They're just not for me, and I know why - because I'd like to be able to disassemble them, and at the very least I'd like to be able to add or replace my own RAM.

Does that really make me a Luddite?

If anything, the closed nature of the hardware is going to make actually fixing things a lot more valuable.

When did "movie coolness" become a legitimate metric (let alone an important metric) to gauge the value of technology?

"devices that are more about the human interface and less about the components is a form of a categorical imperative"

If you are going to toss around weighty philosophical terms like "categorical imperative" I think it is important that you do not beg the question in the process. The author assumes that "hackability" is not a component of the human interface? In my opinion the human interface includes a discussion of user serviceable/upgradeable hardware. It is certainly not the most important aspect but of the human interface but it is on the list.

I also think it is a little curious that the author does not mention what brand of PCs he bought. If I had to guess I would say that the omission was because it was hardly an apples to apples comparison. All of my thinkpads have lasted a lot longer than two years...

PS

If we are going to talk about human interfaces lets drop the CSS floating vignette/border/frame thingy...

OK, that makes no sense whatsoever. I don't think the OP really knows what he's talking about on this bit. "Luddite thinking" is what leads to a desire for upgradability and hackability? Really? WTF?

If anything, it's exactly the opposite. Hackers are the ones who like to take things apart, explore them, explore their boundaries and find ways to push them beyond their boundaries and do things they weren't meant to do. If you can somehow make that into an analogy for Luddite thinking... well... your analogy is flat wrong.

My Dell XPS1640 isn't the best by any stretch, but I know that I can repair the hinges and upgrade the ram when I need to.

I'd rather spend more money upgrading and refurbishing a system than just buying another because it won't run the eventual CS8.

"Shame to let a good toaster go to waste over a frayed cord” - Proposition Joe, The Wire

Apple is targeting everyone else; they are selling to the rest of the world, the people who want something that works and don't care a whit about upgradability.

The only people that care about upgrading hardware are an extreme minority and Wintel salespeople.

After all, when was the last time your uncle Bob, that guy who does some computer stuff but is not a power user, told you he needed to upgrade his ram?

There's a lot of irony in linking people to the word Luddite when the author himself uses it incorrectly.

However, his "rebuttal" completely ignores the 2nd half of the original article's point: the new macbooks, and all ipad, are not recyclable despite what Apple says.

Not that Apple has a monopoly on callously diluting terms like "all natural", "recyclable", "free range", etc to increase profits and mislead consumers, thereby, eh, destroying the...EARTH. But still, even as the norm, it's pretty f-ing evil.