So, I’m watching the fall out from MacWorld in an IRC window, and I have to say that I’m continually surprised by Steve Jobs behavior…

I guess I gave him more credit than I should have: I thought he’d have more class than likes to show at these conferences.

It’s been a long standing gripe of mine that Apple can’t seem to do anything without pointing to Microsoft. New version of an OS? “We’re better than Microsoft”. New version of Keynote? “We’re better than Microsoft”. New keyboard? “We’re better than Microsoft”. Every single time I watch one of these conferences, it’s always the same thing: “Look what we’ve done, and look how much it’s better than Microsoft!”

Hey Steve: you’re cheapening your own product when you do this.

And as an Apple stock holder, that sorta pisses me off.

Apple has been cranking out some good work, over the last couple of years. True, they nickel and dime the public with OSX upgrades every 18 months, but as a stock holder, I’m sorta OK with that! They’ve been attempting to grow market share, they’ve been all over the news as a “happy” company again, blah blah blah. They’re the underdog which plays out very, very well in the emo-tech arena. That’s one of the reasons why they’ve historically been granted certain “privileges”. That’s why they can bad mouth the market leader. That’s why it’s apparently OK to include a music player and chat client in the EU and Korea without any governmental complaint. Special treatment to be sure but awww, it’s Apple, and they’re just trying to get better.

Pft.

Then there’s the iPod. That’s the de facto market leader in personal media devices, right? They are the market leader. They are the current winners in this race. The Zune is currently ranked #2, ya? What does Jobs do? Take a moment to trash the Zune.

Ummmmm, right. Because… I dunno, you want to kick the up and coming kid? You want to pump yourselves up at the expense of a competitor? I guess… I don’t think of it as that… I think it of it as crass. What’s more is that now I want to see them crushed. Historically, Microsoft has normally just taken the higher road in pissing contests… put out the technology and let it speak for itself. Even when Apple wasn’t beneath notice, in it’s first iteration – out tech the competition and let that speak to the masses. Now, a growing part of me wants to see a massive smack down in a very public forum.

Maybe it’s just me… at least they were able to launch their new iTV Apple TV thingy without taking shots at WMP or the 360 – the “cool streaming” aspect has been floating through WMP with the version 11 release, and the 360 has been adding its own content stuff over the last 6 months… and for $100 more you get a gaming system along with it. Whoo!

Either way, it seems that I’ve caused Steve to minimize our IM window not once, but twice, during the keynote today – that’s just about priceless *g*