Month: October 2010

Last week Apple annouced their plans for the Mac App Store.

It makes perfect sense. Apple has well over a hundred million users with credits card info with iTunes and they have a proven software distribution model for iPhone and iPad.

I was talking to my brother about the Mac App Store last week. He believes that at some point the App Store will be the only way to install native apps on future Macintosh computers.

Since then I’ve heard others express this concern and belief as well. 

Call me naive, but I just don’t see it that way. First, the open web is much more compelling than any Mac OS X app for the most part. My latest two Mac’s don’t have any MSFT software and the main native app I use is Chrome and Firefox. I keep Apple Pages, Keynote and Numbers as a backup if Google apps barf. I gave up on Entourage and Apple mail many moons ago. 

Ryan Block makes the point nicely in his recent post:

The real issue with the desktop software market is that (unless you’re talking about productivity software) there just isn’t all that much consumers need to buy anymore. The boxed software business didn’t die because of app stores, it died because of an overabundance of great programs that are free, open, or otherwise subsidized that are available through other web or internet services. To put it another way: lately, how often have your parents bought software for their computer (that wasn’t Microsoft Office)

The opposite is true on my iPhone. Even though I’m a preacher for the open web & html5, the reality is right now, I use a ton of iPhone apps and prefer many of them over their web counterparts (regardless the platform). I wish this wasn’t true but it is. 

I’m sure it isn’t easy being the President of the United States.

Especially in these times of significant unemployment, debt, and a restless nation that wants improvement in areas like education, infrastructure, healthcare, financial reform, etc.

The demands on this President must be endless and complex.

But I’ve got one more demand. It’s important and it should be easy.

Because its a civil rights issue.

We need to elect leaders that believe all people should be treated equally regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual preference.

And right now in this country, in 2010, we have a President and many leaders that believe that your sexual preference should determine whether you are treated equally or not.

All of these things like debate about marriage, don’t ask/don’t tell court stays, school bullying etc are just symptoms of something much larger. The question is do we believe that all people should be treated with equal rights, respect and protection. And right now many of our leaders don’t feel this way.

This is a tragic shame, embarrassing and something that we will look back on and wonder how we put up with it for so long.

We need to fix this.

Most of us know that a change is inevitable but I see no reason to just sit by and wait for things to improve.

Let’s make it clear to each other, our children, our colleagues, our friends and families, our candidates for the mid-term and our President that we need everyone to be treated with complete and total equality.

This is a civil rights issue and it’s critical.