Please forgive me if I sounded harsh and mean. I'm sure I did. I'm sorry. And, let me say, what you are expressing does not sound alien to me. I have similar thoughts. I have only been "in the fold" for six years, not as long as many here. But I, like others, had my "Paul on the road to Damascus" epiphany in August of 2010. I had an HP laptop which was a nice little machine, and adequate to my needs (then) which was beginning to act-up (as every Windows PC I have ever owned, and there have been several, at about that point in their life-spans). So I was going to shop for a new computer, Windows of course, because it was all that I knew. A Sunday afternoon and I went to my local Best Buy, just to look around. And as you probably know, Apple had a presence in Best Buy Stores, the little "store within a store" Apple area. And I saw the most beautiful monitor. I had a Dell flat-screen which I used with my HP laptop, but nothing like this. I could not get over how beautiful it was. And I looked around and over and behind and finally read the product info, and saw that it was an iMac. It was not a monitor, it was the whole bloody computer. I couldn't believe it. The next weekend, I went to my local Apple Store and looked at iMac, spoke with an Apple person, asked him if he thought that it was too late in life for me to wean myself off of Windows (I was 59) and he assured me that I was not. So I went home, thought about it overnight, and came back the next day and bought a mid-2010 21.5 iMac. And I can honestly say, it changed my life. The learning curve was not as steep as I had feared, and the more I learned the more enthusiastic I became. I started to dare to try things I would never have considered otherwise (downloaded camcorder tapes onto the Mac, and learned how to use iMovie to create my own little productions, complete with music and customized titles. I was converted. And remain so. And then three months later, in October, Steve died. And I, like many around the world, felt it personally. I mean, I didn't know John Lennon either, but I will never forget where I was in Dec. 1980 (actually parking the car in Santa Monica, Ca), to do some Xmas shopping, when the news broke over the radio. It hit me personally, despite that I did not know this person, but admired him greatly, and it felt, as pathetic as it might sound, as though I had lost a loved-one. This is what art can do, because art has an almost indefinable capacity to communicate, personally, with others. And, yes, I feel that Steve was an artist, albeit of a different sort. I know that he did not design or build, but made possible a technology which has profoundly influenced my life, and for which I am grateful. And I do not wish Tim Cook or the current itineration of Apple ill, far from it. But things have changed, I know. Maybe they had to. Maybe they would have (certainly they would have) if Steve had lived. But I, like many, cling to the perhaps stupid idea that it would be different, and (arguably) better, if he had. And therefore I stand guilty of what I was criticizing you for, but I hope the fact that I am acknowledging it will to some degree absolve me of being a jerk.
Watch 42mm (at least one)
