Alaric

Orange, FTW!

I'd say it's from the Department of Appropriate and Deserved Responses.

As a droid user, this is the first thing that's made me wish I had an iPhone... Here's hoping that Square ports it....

Good grief, Vanilla. Progress, huh? I could have sworn I said something about that. Oh... wait. I did. Right there in my second sentence when I talked about moving on and evolving. Go ahead and look; I'll wait.

See? Right there. I'm all for progress. I'm not for companies changing their minds on things without providing (as much as possible) a painless way to accommodate those who have bought into the current paradigm. A lot of the posts in response to this blog entry alone seem to agree (not even mentioning the uproar that FW400 caused). And don't tell me they couldn't have done it; they just didn't really bother because they think .mac isn't as good, and people should just realize it and move on, regardless of the inconvenience it causes. If that seems like good corporate policy to you, great. I respectfully disagree.

As for iTools, when you market something as free (and really as part of a whole package), most reasonable consumers aren't going to think: "hey, I'm getting a package of A, B, and C for price X but, surely, unless I can get the company to swear forever and ever amen that they'll never *again* charge me for A, B, or C, then one day the man's going to come knocking again."

Yeah, Apple can market computers, in part, by offering a free service and then, once people have bought the computer (and the marketing), unilaterally change direction and start charging. If you think that's good corporate policy, great. I respectfully disagree.

You know, I've had a mac for a number of years now, and I really like Apple as a company. I'll also say that I understand that things move on and evolve. But Apple is developing a long and distinguished history of a "my way or the highway" attitude that flies in the face of the "customer is always right" mentality. When I got my first iBook way back in my youth, it was marketed as coming with iTools which would be free and would, among other things, usher in world peace and harmony. I never used it. That didn't mean I wasn't annoyed when my friend told me that Apple was unilaterally deciding that the whole free thing was madness if they could actually squeeze more money out of people who bought the computer understanding that iTools was part of the package. I never paid. Never using it and never paying for it doesn't change this core fact: changing the deal midstream is uncool. People invested in .mac. Apple decides that doesn't work for them and forces the change to mobileme (my investment in that choice being limited solely to acknowledging that .mac will always be a cooler email address than .me (which both costs Apple in market awareness for "macs" (a questionable advertising choice at best) and sounds hopelessly narcissitic... an image I wouldn't think Apple would wish to promote further)). Apple comes up with Firewire 400. People invest in it. It's still perfectly viable. Apple pulls it from most consumer products (including my unibody macbook). Did it hurt me personally? No. I don't have anything using FW400 and never did. Did others? Yes. Did it hurt them? Yes. Was SJ explanation that USB 2.0 is more dominant sufficiently outweigh that infliction? Reasonable minds can differ, but my personal opinion is no. Killing the powerPC chip is another one. iTunes comes out. .99 is the price of any tune. Period. Oh, except not any more.

I'm not dumping on Apple. As a general rule, I like Apple, but that doesn't mean you turn a blind eye to a glaring (and repeating) corporate policy. I'll probably always have a mac, but it's because their OS is superior. It certainly is not and will not be some promise Apple makes at the time of purchase. Apple's failed to follow through too many times recently for that to help them in the equation much.

I suppose it's inherently subjective, but I have to disagree that either of the Sorrow games holds a candle to SotN for a couple of reasons. First, once you got some of the very rare items in SotN, Alucard could kick monster hind-quarters like Soma could only dream about (magic aside... I'm more of a melee judge of character when it comes to a character's bada** factor). Second, SotN ranks so highly in my book (and in the opinions of many of the "top 100" evaluators) because of it's ability to innovate. Say what you will in favor of the Sorrow games (and there's much to be said that is positive about them... they are fantastic games), innovation is not one of its dominant (or even present) characteristics.