The attack of the silicon fruits

Not long ago, I watched the mini-series “Triumph of the Nerds”, a great 3-part mini-series filmed in 1995, at the time Microsoft was unravelling its Windows 95 revolution. It was the story of the birth of the personal computers, from the first Altair to the Apple I, the Bill Gates Microsoft adventure, the rise and fall of the Apple empire.
Just like the serie’s author, I felt kind of sad for poor Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack, the ones who could have ruled the world but instead became just some IT millionaires.

As you well know it, Apple was doomed to extinction in the 90’s, after Jobs being thrown out from Apple. He was indeed a pretty resourceful guy, his Pixar success being the proof. And, later, when he got back to running Apple, the revolution started.

Steve Jobs has visions and an enormous charisma. If he wasn’t in the computer business, if he was born hundreds of years ago, he would have been a Hitler or a Napoleon. People would follow him blindly wherever he said. He is a natural born leader.
He convinced hundreds of millions that one should pay for mp3’s, and that the coolest gadget on Earth was a shining white Ipod.
He convinced youpies that a shining new Apple computer was the latest idea of home entertainment, and that the Ibook is worth the price, double than the one of a common laptop.

And, these few last days, Steve Jobs is trying to convince the world that Apple will be joining forces with Intel.
Fortunately, there are still some who see behind the walls of smoke and mirrors: the future starts to look kind of bleak, with DRM chip protection on Intel computers and Apple provided media, with highly expensive hardware and digitally protected software, running only on Apple-designed hardware. Whether Apple will be bought by Intel, or not, it is an alternative to Microsoft, offcourse. But I still fear it.

Today, Apple lost a lot of my respect.

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