Apple, I used to love you.  I love my Macbook.  I am on record as saying that the iPod Touch is the finest piece of technology that I have ever owned.  It has changed my life.  You make great products.  Why do you have to lie to me and the rest of the population?  I used to think the smarmy ads were a novelty, but now they just annoy me.  You used to be creative, and now you are just an outright liar.

Look, if you really have to resort to such tactics to sell your product, you may have to rethink your offering.  When netbooks roared into the scene, you mocked and dismissed them.  That’s fine.  Retain your superior price point and premium products.  However, don’t effing lie.  Your Macbooks have small screens too.  Your memory prices are insane.  Stop lying.

Most importantly, your computers crash.  It doesn’t have as widely a known name like blue screen of death, but it’s just the same.  Any Mac owner has seen the kernel panic screen.  This screen comes without any warning, and you are completely hosed.  Further, it comes at unpredictable times.  Stop lying about your reliability.  I haven’t seen a blue screen of death in a very long time.  Not once in the year I was running Vista, and not once since I have started running Windows 7.  I regularly see kernel panics on my personal Macbooks.  And stop with the “no viruses’” thing.  That’s like bankrupt bank claiming that they are awesome because they never got robbed by Jesse James.  Unfortunately, he went where the money was.  So you must be making the claim that no one uses your computers (thus making them an unappealing target for viruses).  Well done.

Word of advice to Apple.  Please get back to showing me why your products are awesome.  You iPhone ads are great for specifically that purpose.  These “I’m a Mac” ads are completely disingenuous and it’s time to move on.

This just in from the “we didn’t get the memo” department.  Building size posters are one thing.  Three within 2 blocks of each other another thing.  All of them talking about the greatness of Manny Ramirez and how he is a savior of the LA Dodgers.  You would think someone would have thought to take these down.  Maybe that guy is on vacation.  Oops.

The picture above is of a warning label that fell out of a water bottle I received here at TechEd in Los Angeles.  For those of you who cannot read that label, it says:

WARNING: This Product may contain chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive hazards.

Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but I am pretty sure that if you are going to hand out water bottles to potential customers at a tradeshow, you probably don’t want your out of box experience to be like this.

It looks like I will be speaking at the Structure09 event on June 25th in San Francisco.  I was invited to join a panel on cloud computing, and am honored to have the opportunity to share the stage with many industry heavy weights.  Quite frankly, I’m not sure I measure up to the panel, but the team over at GigaOm have faith in me.

If you haven’t already registered, they gave me a discount code for anyone who reads this blog or follows me on Twitter.  It should be a really good event.  They had their inaugural event last year, and I’m certain this one will be even better.  Here’s the synopsis of the panel:

Toward Cloud Computing: Private Enterprise Clouds As A First Step

Enterprises aren’t yet able or ready to migrate their applications to public clouds.  Public cloud infrastructure can’t run existing enterprise applications without requiring a rewrite.  Yet the lure of usage-based resourcing is strong. The solution? Build your own cloud with your existing infrastructure investment as a first step. This panel will contrast vendor visions about how internal systems can work in unison with external cloud platforms. A must attend for those looking to find solutions or opportunity in the migration path to cloud services.

Panelists

Moderator – George Gilbert, Lead Analyst, TechAlpha
James Urquhart – Market Manager Cloud Computing,Cisco
Brandon Watson – Azure, Microsoft
Steve Herrod – CTO Vmware
Dave Hitz, CTO, NetApp
Joseph Tobolski, Cloud Computing Lead, Accenture