My thoughts on Apple

Apple make beautiful unique pieces of hardware, on the outside that is. On the insides, they are the same as everyone else's; Intel make their processors too.

The last time Steve Gates left (or was thrown out) apple dived, when he arrived back he bought with him a fresh view on usability and interaction along with some amazing design talent which revolutionised personal computing to what we know it as today.

I've been using most platforms extensively over the past 20 years and Apple don't really write the applications that are used everyday, like Adobe's Creative Suite or Microsoft's ubiquitous office Suite. And I know it's a shock to designers everywhere, but the applications work the same, regardless of the Operating System they are running on.

Apple's strengths are they look pretty and that has garnered them a cult like following; the other is their very compatible ecosystem. Their very tight and closed ecosystem is built by excluding other manufactures of hard and soft ware, reducing consumers choice and forcing us to use their profit centric innovations like iTunes.

For the record, I have more iPods than I can use, iPhones lying round and at work I'm surrounded by the Apple logo.

I can use any platform to achieve what I need in work or recreation. I do not like Apple's exclusionary business practices. But I see it as their major downfall; they will only be a niche product when the chips land, I call them a 20 percenter. They'll only ever have 20% of the market when the peak from releasing something new fades in to the back ground....

5 things Julia Gillard should do in the next 6 months.

So it looks like it could be total annihilation for Federal Labor, in Australia, this September when Aussies go to the poll. Julia you have strayed from your Left leaning Labor path and fallen into tit for tat politics with Dr No of Australian politics.

Here are five things you can do to restore our faith in you, if they don't have the affect of getting you voted back in for another term; you will at least leave the country a better place than when you found it.

1. Gay Marriage: Of course this is going to be my #1 suggestion. You are a self proclaimed atheist, so you have no religious objections to Gay Marriage, you live in a partnership with Tim Mathieson and from what I can tell I don't think you are homophobic.
   It smells like political pandering to the small but vocal conservative religious right. Look out, it looks like you are about to be out flanked by the Liberals as they are all coming out in favour of it before you.
   Stop discriminating and start recognising our relationships and our rights.
2. Immigration: It is awful watching the Australian major political parties using refugees as a political foot ball and trying to appeal to the racists and xenophobes, who are also very minor representation of the populous.
   Why don't we start processing the backlog of refugees in Indonesia faster and also bring in at a minimum our international commitments. If the queue is moving, there will be less motivation of having to jump it.
3. Trickle up Economy: Stay the course with your social policies and don't get led astray. Has anyone else noticed how the Australian and US economies, which have stimulus policies, have bounced back faster and stronger than those of the EU, UK and New Zealand?
   Money does not trickle down in an economy, the Rich sit on it. If you feed the many at bottom of the pointy triangle of wealth, the money will eventually flow upwards, flatten the triangle and improve things for everyone.
   The National Disability Insurance Scheme will continue to be one of the great things you and your government has done.
4. Stop the Whaling: Get back into the International court with New Zealand and make motions against the Japanese to stop them from Whaling, there is no point of it and it's screwing up the ecology in the oceans.
   Protect our waters and keep them out, stop leaving it to the Sea Shepherd and the former Leader of the Greens, Bob Brown.
5. Beat Tony Abbott in September: The thought of having Tony Abbott as PM is not very palatable. His shear unpopularity is one the biggest things you have going for you coming into this election. Hopefully he finds it hard to keep his mouth shut for much longer.