Bait and Switch
If you haven’t already seen it, Kevin Fox of fury.com has an excellent bit of parody in response to Apple’s decision to cut off everyone’s .mac email addresses/accounts who won’t pony up for the full service. It’s called “Bait and Switch”. Also check out his response to all of the comments he’s received.
How much is goodwill worth? Apple is only estimating that 10% of the users with a .mac address will upgrade. Any idea how much this might be? Maybe a couple million? How much is not pissing off the other 90% worth? It’s a poor business decision, especially for a company that relies on brand as much as Apple does.
Kevin’s a newly-minted friend from the West Coast who will be joining us shortly here at Carnegie Mellon. He’ll be in the HCI Masters program, and we’ve already committed each other to the task of tightening the bonds between the HCI program and the Interaction Design program, where I reside. He’s a terribly bright guy, and previously worked as an interaction designer at Yahoo! on their instant messenger app. He also possesses quite a fine apartment in the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh. I know it’s a nice place because I’m subletting it from him until my own place opens up (one day left). I only wish it came furnished - I’ve been sleeping on a tiny camping mattress for a month now and eating my meals picnic-style on the floor. Very glamorous, let me tell you.