last week, i came across a posting in an Android forum which mentioned something about Apple. the company, not the fruit. it was about how Apple wanted to patent or copyright the word ‘Pad’ for its iPad. frankly, i wasn’t aware of that pad-patenting-news. but what was interesting was the comment from one of the fellow ‘forumite’. it amazes me how extreme people can get. the particular forumite has so much hate for Jobs, which almost ‘sounded’ like he (Jobs) had done something really nasty him or his family.

to fair, i think Jobs & the team did ‘revolutionized’ many things. iPod alone has revolutionized portable music player. portable music player that plays MP3 format music was introduced in the late nineties (1998), where Apple only came into the portable music player market in 2001. never mind about who invented the player, but the key is who make it big and who made the name sticks. these days some people even refer portable music player as ‘iPod’, even though they simply means other brand of MP3 players. the name sticks. iPod became synonymous with portable music player. it was a marketeer’s dream. technology advancement has to go with design and the right marketing strategy to achieve what Apple has achieved with it’s various products today.

i am not a die-hard fan of Apple. i only ‘make-the-switch’ in 2008 and guess what makes me ‘make-the-switch’? two things: iPhone and Windows. the discovery of the goodness of iPhone OS, it’s simplicity and usability, coupled with the constant frustration with Windows’ security flaws and bugs made me decided that my life could be simpler. i want to use the machine that i have bought and not spending time doing diagnostic or speaking to the robot-like customer service people. i used to custom my own windows-based PC. i tired of missing drivers, security flaws et cetera. the last draw was with Windows VISTA which came with the Dell XPS 420. i am astounded by its (VISTA) endless bugs and driver incompatibility with many hardware. i was spending time calling DELL, making searches on the net for a solution. then came one day, i just walked into my local Harvey Norman and grab a unibody MacBook and the rest is history. since then, i have added an iMac, 2 generations of iPhone and an Apple Extreme Base Station to my Apple ‘collections’.

i just want to use computer and my mobile phone, and i am certainly not looking forward to patches or trouble shooting. i don’t hate windows. i welcome technology advancements, revolutions and competitions. but businesses shouldn’t let their books decided the fate of their products. i am using the Google Nexus One (Android 2.2 now) now. my conclusion? it’s a great phone and a superb OS. BUT, it definitely helps to be a hardware and software company. you make product with better integration between hard & software. period.