Nathan,

I've been watching this decline for many years now. Apple once fought on the side of being different and pushing boundaries but now produces a sanitized user experience for the masses. I blogged about this a number of years ago:
http://houldsworth.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-technology-jihad/

Steve Jobs was a visionary...and a prize jerk - just read his official biography and you'll agree. He was incapable of accepting design that was just good...he wanted nothing but the best and had the clout and the balls to demand it. That is what has been lost.

Just take a look at the latest version of iTunes. It's a user interface disaster. It's OK for listening to music but a complete nightmare for anyone that listens to audio books or podcasts (about 99% for me). That would never have been accepted by Steve.

This is exactly what happened the last time Steve left Apple. The company was run by 'professionals' who had no idea how to run a company like Apple and therefore ran it into the ground.

Want proof...just look at the stock price. In the last 6 months Apple has lost about 1/3rd of its value and its position as the #1 valued company in the world. Nuff said.

Facebook needs to stop changing people's settings to the ones they think you should have. How many times have I had to go in and reset my privacy settings? And why do I have to switch back to 'most recent' every single time I open FB? I don't care what YOU think is the "Top News"

Facebook's privacy policies are a joke - no one trusts them anymore. A lot of people on G+ are obviously there because they have more control and more trust.

Great post. I hope you don't mind if I link to it from my latest blog post on why the iPad missed the mark for business use.

While I think that there are a lot of people that are buying these the application for business is still quite limited. If all you need is email, a browser and a place to take notes, then the iPad is great. But, as mentioned in my latest blog post, they still have some way to go in allowing companies to put their proprietary apps on the devices.

The enterprise developer suite looks good on paper (what little information there is on it) but my company applied for this a while ago, and easily qualifies, but nothing yet. Perhaps it is vapor-ware?