Category: Photos

Apple products will always be second-best, not because anyone else is more creative or stylish, but because the best product is the one Apple developed before it was broken on purpose to stop you from doing things with it that Apple or its friends (i.e. RIAA, MPAA, BSA etc.) don’t want you to do. Whether it’s stopping you from using your iPod Shuffle with more than one computer ever (something I deal with constantly) or giving you “updates” to iTunes whose only purpose is to block useful plugins deemed innapropriate, Apple consistently chooses the imaginary needs of content producers over those of their own customers. They put blocks in your path on purpose, effectively rendering their products “defective by design” (the expression comes from an activist group fighting this and similar Digital Rights Management (DRM) mostrosities).

When it came time to choose a free engraving for the free Nano that came with my new laptop (I would never pay dollars for something so obviously broken on purpose) nothing else seemed appropriate. My favorite part is how natural the slogan looks printed on the back and how, if you stretch your imagination a bit, “Defective by Design” almost sounds like a legit Apple slogan (I mean, it’s at least as good as “Life is Random” right?)