history

Frustration Friday: Applenesia

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Apple is on top.  Apple rules our world.  iI want my iPhone, my iPad, and my iSystem.

Sure there's some bumps.  Ping has spam.  Apple has higher prices than some.  There's concerns expressed by people about closed technology ecosystems that are very legitimate.

However, let's face it – Apple is on top.  Everyone talks about them, wants to be like them, praises them.

So, I'd now like to see some people kindly discuss why all the doomsaying about Apple that we've seen on and off the last twenty years was wrong.  Publicly.  In detail.

I'm not angry it happened.  In some cases the various Apple-will-die stories seemed relevant at the time.  However they all turned out to be dreadfully wrong, so can some of the journalists and pundits and writers please go back and explain why so many of us were dead wrong?

Would it be hard to stop the praise to look back and ask just what we were thinking here?  Maybe it'll help us get better at predicting and evaluating.

Would it hurt to explore what Apple did to survive all those many years?  Maybe we can learn some lessons.

Could we ask ourselves if the death-of-Apple stories were just a fad (much like the death-of-Twitter stories these days)?  Perhaps we can stop history from repeating itself, as it often does to our embarrassment.

So, please news pages and magazines, journalists and writers, take a moment and explore why Apple lived when there were many times its demise was predicted.  Give us books, or articles, or even blog posts.

You can even write the draft on your iPad if you want, to get you in the mood.

– Steven Savage

(By the way the title of this?  One of my lamest.  Seriously.)

The History Of Geeks

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One thing I find strengthens my efforts, as an unrepentant geek, is to look back at history of all the geeks, nerds, fanboys, fangirls, etc. that came before me.  A quick review of history reveals just how much was done by people like, well, us.

History is filled with examples of people making great achievements in their own area of interest or outright obsession.  Our world is pretty much build on their efforts, knowledge, wisdom, and odd habits turned into virtues and creations.

How many of us were inspired by language-and-lit-geek JRR Tolken?  A man who loved language so much he ended up making his own.

Chinese history is filled with tales of philosophers, musicians, and sages who were joyfully odballs and geeks – many remembered to this day.

The computer you're using to read this is a product of huge amount of nerd-hours – from hardware to software.  You can only read this because of people that are likely FAR geekeir than you or I doing what they love to make technology.

Just take a LOOK at Einstein, Bill Gates, and . . . well most artists.

Guess what?  History is filled with people just like you.

Look back over history and look for fellow nerds, geeks, and fans.  You'll be surprised what you find.

You'll also be inspired.  If they succeeded, you can too.

– Steven Savage

Self Publishing: Everything Old Is New Again

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In the last year it seems everyone and their brother is into self-publishing.  Sure, it started with Lulu.com cornering the market, but Amazon got in on the game, Harlequin has their venture, and it seems every month or three there's some new endeavor out there.  With so many self-publishing options it seems like a new age of print material, both electronic and physical.

I'm all for self-publishing; indeed, I am self-published.  However I can't say it's exactly new.  We've had self-publishing for years, we've had unrestricted access to eyeballs for any author for well over a decade.

We called it the World Wide Web.

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