The joys of go-to myths
As a perl developer I am all to familiar with people’s reflexive need to bring up old stereotypes and myths about perl at every conceivable opportunity. I could go on at length about this, but actually I already did (it was the first post I ever made on this blog). :)
I am realizing now that I’m part of another group that receives similar attentions, that of an Apple person. I hear all the time these tried and tired tropes, Apple should get out of the hardware business and try to be like Microsoft, Apple just make toys that aren’t for serious use, etc… Just read this post by Nicholas Carr complaining about how expensive Apple’s 8 core mac pro’s are. Eight cores. To be honest, I’m not sure what exactly he’s complaining about - it’s clearly a complaint, but what exactly it is is unclear to me - he says:
Didn’t anyone tell Jobs that these things are supposed to be commodities?
Is he upset that it is so expensive and he feels that he could get a similar Windows machine cheaper? That would be the standard Apple myth that has been debunked in detail too many times and in fact is debunked for this instance right in the comment thread on the post. But I’m just not sure, it seems to me that he could be upset that apple is releasing such a powerful machine as a desktop, because perhaps he believes that people are only interested in inexpensive computers? That would be a strange position to hold, especially given that one of Apple’s core groups are artists that are working with huge files and need every drop of cpu they can milk. The percentage of people who need such big metal are probably small, but Apple isn’t making you configure the machine to that spec…
Honestly, what exactly is the complaint here? What should Steve take from the notion that these are supposed to be commodities? What does that even mean? Doesn’t the fact that it is 8 core make it not a commodity?
