Letter to Steve Jobs

Dear Apple CEO,

First I want to say that I do not clarify myself as a maczealot but others might. I do love your products but I think two things are continuously hurting you.

One. Even though you tend to be very innovative or one of the first companies to embrace new technologies, you don’t pursue the arenas that need your help. Those arenas: Smart phones, make a smart phone, if you can create an mp3 player that demands attention and be the developer of the best consumer OS, why not? Also, whenever you get around to pushing out that video iPod you need to get into home media; either a video airport express, set-top box or better yet create a “media center edition” for the mac mini.

Second. You’re solely a hardware company, release OS X. Or even better create a portable OS X (especially for the Treo, ;D). But if you need to so you can make great products then I guess I’ll let you slide.

Dan Cameron

P.S. If you want to give me a job where I sit around and just tell you what I think I would work for free, well, as much as you work for free.

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October 06

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About the Author, Dan Cameron:

I'm the owner and solution engineer at Sprout Venture, a web solutions company that specializes in web development including WordPress.

I started my first blog in 2003 and transitioned to WordPress in 2004. Since moving to WordPress I've written a few plugins and themes for public consumption. Lately I'm busy engineering/building/coding and have only been able to share a few code snippets.

If you're in need of some web development, web design or custom WordPress plugins and/or themes contact me, I'll be happy to discuss it with you.

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  • The last part about the Palm stuff kind of re-enforces my point, although I think it applies even more to Apple. If they released OSX to run on non-Apple hardware, their hardware sales would tank.

    All of the high-end users would go to faster Intel based machines, if they could still run Final Cut, Pro Tools, etc. Since I don't use Macs for this purpose and you do, I won't claim to know better on the subject, but I've heard a lot of Mac advocates say similar things.

    Even Leo Laporte (who is a pretty big Mac advocate) says that Apple notebooks are not a good value compared to similarly priced PCs (unless I guess you put a high weighting on the sleek design issues you mentioned). He also said that he does all his video editing on PCs rather than Macs because it's faster.
  • Dan
    The whole overpriced deal is wrong. I used to think that way but now I've seen that they are comparible to all other computers out right now. Yes, the high high end is a little pricey but the people that are buying those have the budget so they are selling at the right price, market value. The powerbooks are similar to the high end Sonys but only a much better design, you can't find a better design for a laptop then the current powerbook. The iBooks are also a good price compared to a cheap dell. The iMacs are awesome, not just because I have one, but they can't compare to noisy fan blown boxes you make from fry's. The powermacs are hefty in price but the market they are selling to need them so go figure.

    The quality of the product and the sleekness of the design is worth it to me, aside from the OS.

    The whole open source thing is NEVER going to happen because the OS sells half their machines, maybe more. But I still think Apple could survive with selling their OS and hardware seperate because they have two killer products. And that is what I meant, selling two killer products together is better then splitting it up, they tried it and with Palm plumiting it only reinforces they're model, even if I don't agree with it because I rather see it differently.
  • Why would you think that open source would be worse rather than better? It could still be managed and developed primarily by Apple, just open for review and addition by other good writers. Apple wouldn't have to incorporate any external changes into their "official" build unless they wanted to, in which case they would be FREE to, so I don't see how it could get anything but better.

    My main point (that I was trying to make in a sarcastic manner) was that I seriously doubt that the overpriced Mac desktop hardware could survive if people could run OSX without it.
  • Dan
    Yeah, but MC doesn't work for Mac.

    2 is better then one. So two great combined things is better then one and another open source thing.

    I am willing to sacrifice.

    :D
  • I don't get the impression that Jobs is really into constructive criticism or even suggestions, but it's a good try. (Although the media center thing is kind of funny, "Hey, MS copied you, why don't you copy them?")

    I'm with you on the OS thing, even though I doubt it will ever happen. If they really honestly felt their hardware was so great, then certainly it would still be the best choice to run an open/free version of OSX on, especially one that they continue to develop, right? Hmm, I wonder why they don't want to do this... (that was sarcasm in case it didn't come through).

    I would just worry that if you ever were to get a job with Apple you might get fired for associating with me...
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