Wow. 25,000+ words, and yet he missed what I think would be a much more compelling argument to support his thesis; ie: Apple is the perfect storm of Hacker plus Artistic culture. As a company it operates as a native in both the artistic and technological spheres, and that cross cultural influence gives it great power in both spheres.
They're making exceptionally tinkerer-hostile products. Maybe that culture exists inside Apple, but they're doing as much as they can to smother it among the general public.
Yeah - I had stuff to say there - but the article was already way too long - as you point out.
But I don't believe Apple represents the desired fusion - it leans too much on the artistic ideology side imo. But I think that would be much more the controversial claim and more difficult to support - it's another 25k word topic in itself.
