Yosemite looks terrible!

[joedec]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R41NNPBqRCk&app=desktop

Remember when iPad use to be fun to use

I miss animated page turns, used in the old notes application. The new solution is.... you can't flip pages at all

 

[grahamperrin]

Reduced usability as Apple's new norm

It nearly reminds me of the 80s.

Retro, current, futuristic … they're all good looks, provided each appearance is reasonably usable. And I have no strong objection to mixtures of appearances, provided there remains that usability.

In the screenshot above it was impossible to tell the name of the app without looking away from the front window, to a far corner of the screen (to the menu bar, not included in the shot). Also I should reiterate that it was probably simply a bug, and that the original publication of that particular screenshot was inappropriate.

There remained a problem

Let's make the charitable assumption that it was just a bug. The problem: with that positive assumption, there's a deep negative undercurrent.

When I encountered windows such as the one shown above, it never occurred to me that the absence of the name of the app might be a bug. Given the new norm of reduced usability in other areas of the operating system, I naturally assumed that pre-release windows with no identifying feature were intended to be an enhancement to the operating system. Another bewildering step towards a release of OS X Yosemite with a streamlined, minimal, sparse appearance.

That. That's what happens when Apple ignores its own guidelines. Give the user one ridiculous thing after another … eventually the user senses (consciously or subconsciously) a pattern. So the next discovery of something ridiculous is recognised for what it is – ridiculous – but that thing is treated as a normal part of the pattern.

Inspiration

Evolution of Mac OS X (Pics) (topic) – Apple Rhapsody – Workspace Manager, Finder and columns in particular – the first two Rhapsody-related quotes in that post should be an inspiration. Critics placed great emphasis on the importance of Apple respecting its own Human Interface Guidelines (HIG); guidelines with a twenty-year history.

Fifteen years later … that's now a thirty-five year history. I hope Apple can begin to put things right before too long.

Progress, yes … but please: not progress with a deep negative undercurrent.

 

[dmj102]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R41NNPBqRCk&app=desktop

Remember when iPad use to be fun to use

What I really miss is the Message bubble. It used to look so classy to me compared to what it looks like now.

 

[imasterus]

It's awful but it is true - I have noticed today that Safari displays websites in Helvetica Neue font which is just unbearable on non-retina Macs. I could put with App store stupid redesign (white background with awful font), but I can't stand it regarding Safari. Looks like, it's time to revert to Mavericks.

Ok. Better late than never to admit my hasty conclusion. The look and size of font in Safari has changed again but for good. I can only guess that it has something to do with an uninstall of MS Office (with fonts) and reinstalling few days later.

 

[xav8tor]

Finally updated my nMP to Yosemite. Needed it for 4K. Good lord what an awful GUI. For all of those who've said this OS interface is an abomination or used any other derogatory term, I'm in 100% agreement. I've had PC's since 1982 and used lots of Macs before finally coming over Apple side about five years ago. Win 8 is no better, but at least it's legible. SL was the best I've ever seen. ML was OK, but it's been downhill ever since. I've tried every tweak to no avail in order to increase usability. There's an app out to get the dock back, but what about all of the other flat elements with almost no definition? Apple and M$ have both lost minds when it comes to OS design.

Some of us actually use computers to make a living and REQUIRE a professional OS. I swear I'd rather ditch the GUI altogether and use DOS than this South Park looking interface. Make it so the iGizmos and real computers play nice together, but the interface doesn't have to look the same. Anyone developed an app yet that gets us back to an SL looking interface, maybe even with the ability to change color schemes, etc.?

 

[Ulenspiegel]

...this South Park looking interface...

I like that very much! It seems to be the best metaphor so far.

 

[grahamperrin]

Title bars, Flavours, source code, pre-Yosemite appearances (enhancement request)

… Anyone developed an app yet that gets us back to an SL looking interface, maybe even with the ability to change color schemes, etc.?

… Flavours is of great interest, future version 2 should make Yosemite more attractive. But if that's followed by nonsense at WWDC, I'll be a step closer to my steps 7 and 8. …

Yosemite title bar visibility

There's the notion of hacking or patching, I don't imagine that it will be easy.

Flavours

Yesterday I asked whether there will be a private beta or public beta for Flavours 2.

I'd like to support Interacto Labs Inc. – developers of Flavours.

Generally

I haven't taken time to look at source code. If Apple had provided easy/obvious methods to go beyond what's preferable in System Preferences – with attention to the most troublesome aspects of appearance – I imagine that someone would have found at least one of those methods by now.

Consider what Interacto wrote in September 2014:

Apple's announced the future OS X Yosemite that will bring big and fundamental changes in UI, featuring a completely new and redesigned internal theming engine, a new programming language, among many others. This is the biggest change in OS X since Flavours started its development back in 2008 (10.5 at the time).

The amount of work and technical requirements to fully accommodate all those changes lead us to the decision to make a Flavours version bump to 2.0. Flavours 2 - a major rewrite - will require OS X Yosemite (10.10); older OS X versions (10.7 - 10.9) are only supported by Flavours 1.x.

The efforts required to support the new OS X theming engine also provides great opportunity to redesign and improve Flavours. …

 

[quackers82]

Yosemite has finally grown on me now, i have a 2012 Macbook Air, 2013 Macbook Pro, and a 2014 Mac Mini.

The Air and Mini are running Yosemite, and just my Pro is left running Mavericks. The Mavericks interface seems really old now when i use it, and the Yosemite interface seems like home.

But i cannot stand the default Yosemite out the box look, i have to have Dark Mode turned on and a non bright background. If i don't have them i just don't get on with it.

I stuck it out with Yosemite because i really liked the calling and texting from my Mac feature, had it not been for that i would have just gone back to Mavericks.

I only want 1 feature request for Mac OS 10.11 and iOS 9. Skins/Themes so you could have the iOS 6 look or the Snow Leopard look. As much as Yosemite has grown on me now the glossy, shinny, 3D look is the best looking interface, its what made me take an interest in the Mac and moved me from Windows and it should still be there for those who want it.

 

[wetsignal]

Agreed, It's Unattractive and Unfriendly, Not a Good Combo

I bought a Mac Mini in 2012, nice machine, quad i7, put 16gb ram in it. It came loaded with Mountain Lion and I loved it. I had been a Windows user since 1995 (but as an artist and photographer had used Macs in school) and was clinging to XP but like many, when I saw what they were doing with Windows 8 I bolted, I thought for good. I installed Mavericks when it came out, even better in my opinion, basically seemed to fix and refine a few things that needed refining (though honestly I can hardly tell the difference between them). I also own an ipad 3, ipod touch 3g and my wife gets an iphone 5c through her work. I put ios7 on my ipad and although it didn’t impress much I was ok with it. Same on my wife’s iphone (now she’s on v8, they make her update her phone). The flat vs. 3d thing sort of makes less of a difference on a small touch device, at least for me.

So I was excited but thankfully cautious about upgrading to Yosemite. I read the reviews about how ugly it was and I have to say I agreed just from the screenshots but I thought I’d give it a try anyway so I put it on an external USB 3.0 SSD to give it a test drive. I can now say the ugliness is not fully appreciated via screenshots alone. I will admit it worked fine on my machine, no slow down, I use ethernet not wifi so I couldn’t test that but really, it felt no slower than Mavericks.

But it is ugly. It’s more than that, it’s plasticky, even unfriendly. Everything works ok but the “space” of the OS is just plain depressing. Gone is the warm, quiet space of the previous version. I thought of a glacier as I was using it...minimal, formal, impressive, but ultimately cold and inhospitable. The brightness and lack of contrast, the blue folders, the icons, the fonts...what are they thinking? Technology has the potential to alienate the user and unfortunately, Yosemite does this, at least to me. It’s like what OS X would look like if it were designed by soulless androids. It tries to be friendly using the cheap tricks of saturated color and empty smiles (Finder icon) but fails miserably under sensitive observation. It’s autonomous, it only impresses itself.

Maybe some users only care about function and can overlook aesthetics but for many (most?) of us, we cannot and the “ugly gap” between Windows and OS X has narrowed such that the seemingly unthinkable is now true: it’s a real horserace between the two for my next computer. And for what? The new features are not earth shattering. They’re out of significant ways to innovate this OS and coasting on the current “fashion” in UI design (largely popularized by them!). Apple, please, please reconsider this direction. Part of the pleasure of using a Mac was the soul, the warmth under that cold, sleek exterior. Why this obsessive need to make the “inside” look and feel like the outside? They need to look at the very best in automobile design...the outside of a car can express it’s machine nature but when you’re driving it you want to feel like every decision was made for human comfort, physical and psychological.

 

[Zetaprime]

I bought a Mac Mini in 2012, nice machine, quad i7, put 16gb ram in it. It came loaded with Mountain Lion and I loved it. I had been a Windows user since 1995 (but as an artist and photographer had used Macs in school) and was clinging to XP but like many, when I saw what they were doing with Windows 8 I bolted, I thought for good. I installed Mavericks when it came out, even better in my opinion, basically seemed to fix and refine a few things that needed refining (though honestly I can hardly tell the difference between them). I also own an ipad 3, ipod touch 3g and my wife gets an iphone 5c through her work. I put ios7 on my ipad and although it didn’t impress much I was ok with it. Same on my wife’s iphone (now she’s on v8, they make her update her phone). The flat vs. 3d thing sort of makes less of a difference on a small touch device, at least for me.



So I was excited but thankfully cautious about upgrading to Yosemite. I read the reviews about how ugly it was and I have to say I agreed just from the screenshots but I thought I’d give it a try anyway so I put it on an external USB 3.0 SSD to give it a test drive. I can now say the ugliness is not fully appreciated via screenshots alone. I will admit it worked fine on my machine, no slow down, I use ethernet not wifi so I couldn’t test that but really, it felt no slower than Mavericks.



But it is ugly. It’s more than that, it’s plasticky, even unfriendly. Everything works ok but the “space” of the OS is just plain depressing. Gone is the warm, quiet space of the previous version. I thought of a glacier as I was using it...minimal, formal, impressive, but ultimately cold and inhospitable. The brightness and lack of contrast, the blue folders, the icons, the fonts...what are they thinking? Technology has the potential to alienate the user and unfortunately, Yosemite does this, at least to me. It’s like what OS X would look like if it were designed by soulless androids. It tries to be friendly using the cheap tricks of saturated color and empty smiles (Finder icon) but fails miserably under sensitive observation. It’s autonomous, it only impresses itself.



Maybe some users only care about function and can overlook aesthetics but for many (most?) of us, we cannot and the “ugly gap” between Windows and OS X has narrowed such that the seemingly unthinkable is now true: it’s a real horserace between the two for my next computer. And for what? The new features are not earth shattering. They’re out of significant ways to innovate this OS and coasting on the current “fashion” in UI design (largely popularized by them!). Apple, please, please reconsider this direction. Part of the pleasure of using a Mac was the soul, the warmth under that cold, sleek exterior. Why this obsessive need to make the “inside” look and feel like the outside? They need to look at the very best in automobile design...the outside of a car can express it’s machine nature but when you’re driving it you want to feel like every decision was made for human comfort, physical and psychological.

I'm one of those users who don't care what it looks like as long as it works. And in the case of Yosemite, it does, and it's still way better than Windows. So I'm satisfied.

 

[One13Truck]

I only want 1 feature request for Mac OS 10.11 and iOS 9. Skins/Themes so you could have the iOS 6 look or the Snow Leopard look. As much as Yosemite has grown on me now the glossy, shinny, 3D look is the best looking interface, its what made me take an interest in the Mac and moved me from Windows and it should still be there for those who want it.

This is the one reason I finally broke down and did a jailbreak on my phone. It looks as much like iOS6 as I can make it look again. Unfortunately it only clones the icons and not the actual apps themselves.
I've done similar with Yosemite adding back the absolutely beautiful skeuomorphic iOS and OS icons and done as much tweaking as I can but there really needs to be a way to skin/theme this awful mess and make it look half decent at least. I hope someone can come out with a more involved way to fix this thing.

 

[Etan1000]

I bought a Mac Mini in 2012, nice machine, quad i7, put 16gb ram in it. It came loaded with Mountain Lion and I loved it. I had been a Windows user since 1995 (but as an artist and photographer had used Macs in school) and was clinging to XP but like many, when I saw what they were doing with Windows 8 I bolted, I thought for good. I installed Mavericks when it came out, even better in my opinion, basically seemed to fix and refine a few things that needed refining (though honestly I can hardly tell the difference between them). I also own an ipad 3, ipod touch 3g and my wife gets an iphone 5c through her work. I put ios7 on my ipad and although it didn’t impress much I was ok with it. Same on my wife’s iphone (now she’s on v8, they make her update her phone). The flat vs. 3d thing sort of makes less of a difference on a small touch device, at least for me.

So I was excited but thankfully cautious about upgrading to Yosemite. I read the reviews about how ugly it was and I have to say I agreed just from the screenshots but I thought I’d give it a try anyway so I put it on an external USB 3.0 SSD to give it a test drive. I can now say the ugliness is not fully appreciated via screenshots alone. I will admit it worked fine on my machine, no slow down, I use ethernet not wifi so I couldn’t test that but really, it felt no slower than Mavericks.

But it is ugly. It’s more than that, it’s plasticky, even unfriendly. Everything works ok but the “space” of the OS is just plain depressing. Gone is the warm, quiet space of the previous version. I thought of a glacier as I was using it...minimal, formal, impressive, but ultimately cold and inhospitable. The brightness and lack of contrast, the blue folders, the icons, the fonts...what are they thinking? Technology has the potential to alienate the user and unfortunately, Yosemite does this, at least to me. It’s like what OS X would look like if it were designed by soulless androids. It tries to be friendly using the cheap tricks of saturated color and empty smiles (Finder icon) but fails miserably under sensitive observation. It’s autonomous, it only impresses itself.

Maybe some users only care about function and can overlook aesthetics but for many (most?) of us, we cannot and the “ugly gap” between Windows and OS X has narrowed such that the seemingly unthinkable is now true: it’s a real horserace between the two for my next computer. And for what? The new features are not earth shattering. They’re out of significant ways to innovate this OS and coasting on the current “fashion” in UI design (largely popularized by them!). Apple, please, please reconsider this direction. Part of the pleasure of using a Mac was the soul, the warmth under that cold, sleek exterior. Why this obsessive need to make the “inside” look and feel like the outside? They need to look at the very best in automobile design...the outside of a car can express it’s machine nature but when you’re driving it you want to feel like every decision was made for human comfort, physical and psychological.

This is VERY well-written! Would you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE copy and paste it into this page on Apple's "Feedback" site immediately:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Please do!

Thanks, Etan

----------

I'm one of those users who don't care what it looks like as long as it works. And in the case of Yosemite, it does, and it's still way better than Windows. So I'm satisfied.

Glad it works for you! Wish it did for those of us who have to constantly squint to read the screen and end up with headaches, eyestrain etc. after a hour or less of work!

I have been on every Macintosh operating system starting with the original one on the 128K Macintosh in 1984 up to the present, and I have never before experienced the frustration and difficulties I've had since "upgrading" from Mavericks to Yosemite!

Regards, Etan

 

[Badagri]

Glad you say "nearly" - because anything design from the 80s must have looked way better than this crap.
I still can't believe that Apple released something without any quality or style or taste. And I mean that on a level of general aesthetics, not of personal taste.

Reminds me of what Jobs once said about Microsoft: "they have no taste".
Hello Pot, my name is Kettle.

 

[Choctaw]

But it is ugly. It’s more than that, it’s plasticky, even unfriendly. Everything works ok but the “space” of the OS is just plain depressing. Gone is the warm, quiet space of the previous version.

As I read many of the negative posts I'm reminded of all the years I have jumped in and upgraded very quickly. Some how a little voice say's just wait until all the gripping simmers down. then another voice say's there are some on the forum who are never satisfied.

I went into an Apple store today and viewed the new OS and kind of felt they have dumbed down the interface a lot. That has nothing to do with how it performs, kind of like painting your fancy BMW flat black windows and all. I will wait a bit longer to see if all this bickering produces some redesigning. However maybe Apple has adopted the mentality of MS, which is here it is like it or not. Just my view, not knocking other views.

 

[Masada31]

This is the one reason I finally broke down and did a jailbreak on my phone. It looks as much like iOS6 as I can make it look again. Unfortunately it only clones the icons and not the actual apps themselves.
I've done similar with Yosemite adding back the absolutely beautiful skeuomorphic iOS and OS icons and done as much tweaking as I can but there really needs to be a way to skin/theme this awful mess and make it look half decent at least. I hope someone can come out with a more involved way to fix this thing.

For me I bought a used iPad with iOS 6 on ebay and sold the other iPad with iOS 8 . iOS 6 is just so nice to use I look forward to using it . It just works and it's fun to use. No blinding light or hello kitty colors. I just found I had no interest in the iPad with iOS 8 so I sold it on ebay and got one with iOS 6 . I then filled up with movies and music so iOS 8 can not download. My iPhone is jailbroken but you can only do so much with it to make like iOS 6 but does not feel like iOS 6 .

 

[grahamperrin]

Yosemite and Apple people, past and present

… Does Apple even have an all powerful aesthetics czar (creative director) anymore? …

Apple’s design problems aren’t skeuomorphic | counternotions (2012-11-05)

"… Is it possible then to have a Human Interface czar for a 500-million user ecosystem today at all? If it were possible, would it be desirable? And if it were possible and desirable, can one person be in charge of both the visual aesthetics and the functional experience of such a huge ecosystem? …"​

From the Steve Jobs would have... topic about the Dock icon for Calendar:

Steve Jobs Foretold the Downfall of Apple!

(The words of Jared Schwartzentruber, not mine.)

YouTube: video

– Clip from 'Steve Jobs: The Lost interview' (2012) –​

Hear, hear.

That is exactly what Tim Cook (worked for IBM for 15 years) is doing with … product - all about marketing.

And yet Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook and he groomed Cook to replace him. Obviously if Steve felt he had the acumen to run Apple then he must not be all that bad.

… innovation requires taking a chance, apple is doing just that now.

They're also not he same Apple when Steve ran the organization and it never could be. Disney nearly went bankrupt when Walt Disney died because the executives tried to run that company the way Walt ran it, except the were not Walt. Jobs understood this, and realized he needed to educate his executives on the "Apple way", i.e., Setting up their apple university and creating case studies, but let them run the company as they need to run it.

And Tim fired Scott Forstall, the guy who kept a jeweler's loupe in his office to check every pixel on every icon.. And guess what, we've ended up with an admittedly modern/beautiful but inconsistent and half-baked interface.

Little things, like the calendar icon and hundreds of others, bug some of us. I hope someone at Apple still cares as much as X-X.

– there's also a topic devoted to Scott Forstall. I found it pleasantly educational, thanks to other forum members, then unsubscribed.

 

[Partron22]

Apple’s design problems aren’t skeuomorphic | counternotions (2012-11-05)

How about the cognitive mess that is document management and sharing in iClouds, as Apple moves away from user-level file management?

As cognitive messes go, this is one Apple and Jobs danced their way into with eyes wide open, mouths proclaiming "The Best of All Possible Worlds".
Complexity is no good excuse for shoddy worksmanship. If the job's too big for one person, you have to build a structure, including people, that can do the job. It's not honest to just throw your hands in the air and complain "too complex", when you haven't devoted enough manpower and resources to get it right, or even internally consistent. -But this is more on the bad code base side of things than the ugly inconsistent UI side of things.

 

[Etan1000]

…
I went into an Apple store today and viewed the new OS and kind of felt they have dumbed down the interface a lot. That has nothing to do with how it performs, kind of like painting your fancy BMW flat black windows and all.…

Yes, the new interface is a joke but, for many of us, it also has EVERTHING to do with how it performs, because I/we can no longer work on our Macs without persistent vision problems, eyestrain and headaches.

I was prepared to accept the cartoon-like interface and the ill-advised abandonment of skeumorphism, but I never dreamt they would make it harder to see the screen, the system font, and the work at hand.

As your apt analogy suggests, painting your fancy BMW "flat black windows and all" makes it tough squinting to see out those dang windows!

Regards, Etan

 

[Choctaw]

Yes, the new interface is a joke but, for many of us, it also has EVERTHING to do with how it performs, because I/we can no longer work on our Macs without persistent vision problems, eyestrain and headaches.

I was prepared to accept the cartoon-like interface and the ill-advised abandonment of skeumorphism, but I never dreamt they would make it harder to see the screen, the system font, and the work at hand.

As your apt analogy suggests, painting your fancy BMW "flat black windows and all" makes it tough squinting to see out those dang windows!

Regards, Etan

Thanks for your positive response, I do expect some will belief I am stepping on their new play pretty. I started on computers in 1982 with MS. For years I watched new software come out that gave me things I did not use, and most of the time took away something I liked and needed.

A few years ago I decide to add a 2012 iMac to my network. It has been a great learning experience and a pleasure watching the screen pop up in a new and understandable way. So I was content with what I had. I never expected something new would be implemented that would not be acceptable by so many of this forums members. I take note to what goes on here, many times I have gotten correct information from MacRumors that was much better and accurate than calling Apple Support and jumping through their hoops.

The world takes note to the unorthodox, and thats what I have enjoyed about my Apple computer, it has not been the same old, same old until now. I just hope the storm can be settled.

 

[grahamperrin]

Observations

If I hadn't just gotten through a whole year of people moaning about how bad Mavericks was, and before that a year of how bad Mountain Lion was, and before that, Lion I would have more patience.

Every new release of OS X is the worst release in the history of releases.

This is different. Apple describes the design of OS X Yosemite as completely new.

Of course it's not completely new, but enough is different – and enough is troublesome – for it to be said (again) that the negativity around Yosemite is remarkably worse than negativity around previous versions of Apple operating systems for Mac users.

People are most vocal about things that dissatisfy them and given that Yosemite probably has millions of installations by now, the actual proportion of unhappy people is likely to be minute... maybe just slightly more than usual because some people find the design changes a little jarring.

My observations:

1. …

2. Yosemite looks disproportionately worse on non-retina screens.

3. I found it very jarring at first but it has actually grown on me - Mavericks now looks quite dated to me.

4. …

… Why oh why did they remove the option for us to independently remove translucency from the menubar? Grrr.

I'd like to keep most of the translucency except in my menubar.

 

[OldGuyTom]

Mismanagement:
http://9to5mac.com/2014/04/09/jony-...ne-interface-creator-greg-christie-departing/

Ive is basically, as far as I'm concerned, a glorified box designer.

I don't know about you but if I need open heart surgery, I see a doctor, not a sculptor. Jony Ive doesn't know what he's doing and it shows.

 

[Etan1000]

Venting here about Apple's current design disaster is great for the gut, but please keep in mind that we are only preaching to the choir here - Apple does not read these boards, but they DO supposedly read this one:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

So I urge everyone to copy the vents they have expressed or will express here, and then go to the above Apple Feedback page asking for comments on Yosemite, and paste in your whole rant, complete the few additional blanks required there and then hit the Submit Feedback button.

Please! - Do it!

Etan

 

[Choctaw]

Just my view

Don't kid yourself, Apple is as sneaky and curious as any other organization. They have a network second to none looking for trouble spots affecting their beloved products. MS reads here too, and loves it that a rotten part of Apple is being discussed. Happy consumes tell someone, unhappy consumers tell a 100 people. I would ask for your undeniable proof that this forum is never looked over by Apple. Until then lack of proof is no proof at all.

Your idea of posting on the site suggested is a very good idea anyway. The more we can put this Yosemite mess in Apples face the better chance they can pull their heads out of darkness and fix it.

As I have stated other times, big business has a new paradigm to cram down the consumers throats. Like it or lump it. They are the creators and buyers are the fools that are asked to use unacceptable products and keep quiet !

Just my take.

 

[Ulenspiegel]

Mismanagement:
http://9to5mac.com/2014/04/09/jony-...ne-interface-creator-greg-christie-departing/

Ive is basically, as far as I'm concerned, a glorified box designer.

I don't know about you but if I need open heart surgery, I see a doctor, not a sculptor. Jony Ive doesn't know what he's doing and it shows.

It was a very interesting read. Actually it proves what I thought and expressed here earlier. Thanks.

 

[Etan1000]

Don't kid yourself, Apple is as sneaky and curious as any other organization. They have a spy network second to none looking for trouble spots affecting their beloved products. MS reads here too, and loves it that a rotten part of Apple is being discussed. Happy consumes tell someone, unhappy consumers tell a 100 people. I would ask for your undeniable proof that this forum is never looked over by Apple. Until then lack of proof is no proof at all.

Your idea of posting on the site suggested is a very good idea anyway. The more we can put this Yosemite mess in Apples face the better chance they can pull their heads out of darkness and fix it.

As I have stated other times, big business has a new paradigm to cram down the consumers throats. Like it or lump it. They are the creators and buyers are the fools that are asked to use unacceptable products and keep quiet !

Just my take.

I respect your point of view, Choctaw. But having lived the corporate life among others, let me put it another way. Venting on the internet is considered by many corporate insiders, rightly or wrongly, to be a form of cathartic relief. Once the "ventor" posts his or her rant, many business insiders feel that the complaining consumer looks at his/her post with satisfaction, feels much better, and does nothing more to advance the argument, and is therefore no longer a threat to the corporate image. It's like a laxative for the psyche.

But also writing directly to the corporation, on the other hand, is treated by many corporate insiders as a much more serious threat to the corporation's public image with the buying public. It reflects the views of someone who may be a potential organizer, a public spokesperson - causing the insider to ponder - "Hmm, this guy/gal seems very proactive - who knows how far he/she might go with the tirade against our product?"

In addition, this feedback directly to the corporation becomes part of the record of someone within the corporation hired and paid to sift through these "feedbacks" putting that person in an inescapable position to collate and report the contents thereof to his/her superior. That's their job. They can't say later "Oh I didn't see that rant on the internet" or "I read that guy/gal's other internet posts and, trust me, he/she is some kind of a nutcase!" No, the man or woman hired to read, collate and report on that written Feedback sent directly to the corporation is sitting on the other end of the chute. It's that employee's inventory to which he/she has been assigned a responsibility upwards or to the group. For him/her, it's at least slightly analogous to the wartime chant of "incoming! incoming!". They can't escape responsibility for passing it on up the line.

With that argument, I rest my case in support of urging everyone to also send their rants directly to Apple at the url I furnished above.

Best wishes, Etan