Aaarrgh ... you'd think it'd make a lot of sense. Take the coolest guy ... put him in a cool place, surrounded by sexy stuff and excited challenges -- add a little life-threatening danger ... and before you know it, you've got a ratings hit.
But when the Fonz stood in California surrounded by beach, preparing to jump the shark ... it was the beginning of the end... an end so great that we all know it now as the term for turning the cool up so loud that everyone suddenly realizes you're just Henry Winkler on water skis.
I'm looking at Apple these days and frankly I'm tripping out a little.
We have the cool guy in the black turtleneck ... surrounded by iPhones, iPods, genius bars and petulantly computer literate kids selling his stuff -- and he goes and decides to go for broke.
He slaps the Macbook line on one foot, the Macbook Pro line on the other, grabs a rope behind Richie driving the Macbook Air speedboat and goes for broke to jump the dangerous economic disaster -- because he's the Fonz ... he can do it.
But you know what? Even if these new machines sell -- they're ugly as hell and basically just suck.
Apple's taken a beautiful set of monochromatically tuned computers and turned them all into a single set of black on silver garbage blocks of solid aluminum -- with the only seeming saving grace being that the MBP has dual video engines in it.
That's it.
As a constant buyer of Apple hardware -- I'm annoyed to the point of walkaway that they'd opt to radically veer from their successful lines and try this arrogant garbage.
The new lines are ugly. They are mandatorily glossy screen (goodbye, working under flourescent lights, the sun, near windows), and taken AWAY their signature statement -- so easy we only have one button.
Instead, they have "no button" ... oh wait ... yes there IS a button -- it's just been swept under the rug of a flat trackpad ... it's not even tap -- it's an actual clicking button without edges or physical features of any kind. Ooooh, that's impressive ... almost like making ALL the doors on a line of cars without handles. Sure is sexy, until you try to use it.
Pathetic.
Dear Apple -- please don't jump the shark -- we're all sorry ... we'll go back to buying more stuff -- please stop listening to whatever new division or division head has drawn you down this almost Microsoft-ian tone-deaf line of design.
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