South African Conceptual Image (Exercise 5)

For this exercise I decided to split my images into 3 categories and just see how they might interact with each other even though they vary in subject matter and technique. 

First up, African - European photographer Namsa Leuba explores messages sent to particular viewers, from a Eurocentric standpoint these images are striking as they reinforce the idea of a 'wild' Africa, a dark and untamed continent where people have to use what they have to get by. 

"The Western gaze that focuses on Eurocentric points of view upon an African society is controversially apparent in these images, which make them even more shocking, not only for the Guineans who were said to be afraid and felt exploited by Leuba’s “practices” but also Europeans who might interpret the images as savage. In one of the photographs a tribal costume is mockingly made from American flags." (Sarah Claire - One Small Seed Magazine)

The images made me think about what sort of assumptions a regular European, or even American individual would make of it. Depends on the experience, if you've never been to any part of Africa, one's view is more than likely developed from television and the media. The photographs take a different stand though, for those who have been to Africa know that it's not as wild as people might imagine. Even I as a an African citizen am provoked by the wild and makeshift appearance of the photographed people. Culture, tradition, and a unique fashion sense certainly exist in places like Guinea, after all the only thing that we have to compare are our own, primarily Eurocentric and Americanised views.

View the rest of the photographs :

http://www.onesmallseed.com/2012/05/namsa-leuba/

Next up : How could I not discuss our wonderful presided in all his glory -

Brett Murrays controversial painting aptly titled 'The Spear' is as conceptual as you can get.

The Spear depicts our current president Jacob Zuma, and of course the most prominent and eye catching part of the painting is his exposed manhood. The African National Congress, the current ruling party of South Africa weren't very happy with the painting.

Brett recounts in his words "For me, The Spear has a far broader meaning than some of the public discourse on its meaning, including the first applicant’s interpretation. It is a metaphor for power, greed and patriarchy.” The ANC was outraged at the painting and no doubt some of the good ANC supporters were the ones that ended up vandalizing the painting by throwing black paint over it. Nevertheless, thanks to the power of the internet no amount of effort from the ANC will stop the image from being circulated, which brings me to the discussion topic - censorship. Again, I could not say it better than the artist himself, Mr Murray recalls that while growing up during the 70's and 80's in an Apartheid oppressed South Africa he witnessed that censorship was one of the vehicles used as an suppression tool against the then young ANC. Censorship was what controlled the people and kept the white man voting for the white man. The retaliation by the ANC and the satire that goes along with the presidents decadent depiction just goes to show that members of the ANC either do not understand the point of the paining, or just blatantly agreeing that they are guilty of the things it's members have been accused of. Everything from Corruption to unnecessary tax payer expenditure is on that list, and by attempting to censor something like this painting proves at least to me that the ANC is ashamed of itself. I Mr Murray left out his penis, would the ANC care at all? Would they have figured out that the painting is based on a portrait of Vladimir Lenin?

Vladimir Lenin in all his glory:

Long story short, Lenin was a Marxist revolutionary who believed in the Socialist movement. The title reads : Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will continue to live. A typical propaganda poster from the Soviet Union it became the basis for Brett Murray's work perhaps hinting at how many similarities the ANC shares with a socialist movement. COSATU, the South African workers union even shares the same hammer and sickle motif as the USSR once did, coincidence?

Read Brett Murray's entire story behind the painting here: 

http://www.2oceansvibe.com/2012/05/25/artist-brett-murray-explains-why-he-painted-the-spear/

Last but not least Jane Alexander, a South African sculptor who has been active since just before the fall of the Apartheid government. I will admit that the reason I like her works is the macabre aspects. Human beings as far as history goes have been fascinated with the human body being cut up , burned and destroyed, it's that idea of death and the ultimate question I think that we all want to know, or maybe it gives us a thrill, a satisfaction. We are all concerned with our own mortality, but i won't go into a discussion about that, this is about the artist and her piece :

Stripped ('Oh Yes' Girl)

This piece in particular although made by a South African is more relevant to humanity as a whole and not related to the Apartheid struggle as a lot of South African concept works are. Since Jane Alexander is not very open about her work and lets the viewer decide and interpret it for themselves. For this final piece that is exactly what I intend to do. In a nutshell the sculpture is a ridicule of the modern day 'constructed' and perfected woman. The idea of beauty has, and will continue to be jammed down our throats by the spectacle, unfortunately women were the one's who got the bad end of the stick and not men. The sculpture is also impersonal, lacking emotion or colour, slumped on a barbie doll stand. It almost acts as a 'template' for what a woman should look like, a starting point for the definition of a real woman if there ever was one. The sculpture is also both polished and damaged in certain places perhaps pertaining to the struggles of women and the fact that they are survivors more than anything else, having to deal with a lot more pressure from society.

African Discourse - Hold hands around the world

In this exercise we were asked to cut out strings of paper people and then colour each one according to certain criteria. The criteria relate to how one sees oneself based on certain parameters :

This is what I came up with, each individual person was coloured based on the criteria below. The first person is based on your location .Having middle eastern origins (I was born in Ukraine and came to South Africa in 2002) the first person has quite a bit of grey in it, can't forget my roots after all! The second image has a more or less even distribution, I look after my body to a certain extent but most of my time current time is spent learning so I put quite a bit more mind in there. Apart from that, as a summary I can say that maybe I see myself a little more disconnected with people and the real world than I should be

Global Village (Part of Exercise 9)

The Global Village is a term coined by Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher of communication theory. The term itself attributes to how the world as we now know it has come to resemble a village with the explosion of communication technologies. These technologies have removed certain constraints in communication (as well as added some) and with that also removed the proximity barrier, we no longer need to be sitting next to each other to have a meaningful conversation. We now have the internet, and the internet allows us to do many amazing things when it comes to communicating and sharing information. Data transmission is now almost instantaneous(we get annoyed when it isn't) and we bask in the privilege of high speed internet connections. As with any privilege, there comes a time where you have to take responsibility for it. Sites like Avaaz(in a nutshell, a petition site), Kickstarter, Indiegogo and any forum that has people talking about things that are worthwhile have brought communities together. We communicate like families, and we now have power to help people across the globe.

I personally think that there is more positive aspects that have come out of a concept like the global village than there are negative. We are finally able to reach out to people across the globe and put our skills to use where they really matter whether it's raising funds or signing petitions. If there is any story I can relate to the global village it would be the arrest and  prosecution or Russian punk band Pussy Riot. You can read all about it here :

The Protest against Vladimir Putin and fair elections : http://rt.com/news/police-protests-moscow-putin-789/
The Events that followed : http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/105846/how-punk-rock-show-trial-became-russias-greatest-gonzo-artwork

The protest aside, what I really wanted to share was an email that comes from Avaaz.org, an organisation that aims to reach out and support causes all over the world through petitions. I'm a member ( I joined Avaaz so I could cast my vote to grant Peter Sunde, co founder of The Pirate Bay a plea for pardon against a case that would otherwise put him in jail for a year) and since then I've been receiving emails and updates from them. Here's the entire email regarding Pussy Riot's case:

Dear friends, 

Putin's war on dissent may have met its match in Pussy Riot, the female protest group. The European Parliament is calling for an asset freeze and travel ban on Russia's corrupt elite -- let's join their call and make it a reality -- sign the petition:

Facing 2 years in jail for singing a song criticizing President Putin in a church, a member of Pussy Riot gestured to the court and said in her show-trial's closing statements, "Despite the fact that we are physically here, we are freer than everyone sitting across from us ... We can say anything we want..."

Russia is steadily slipping into the grip of a new autocracy -- clamping down on public protest, allegedly rigging elections, intimidating media, banning gay rights parades for 100 years, and even beating critics like chess master Garry Kasparov. But many Russian citizens remain defiant, and Pussy Riot's eloquent bravery has galvanized the world’s solidarity. Now, our best chance to prove to Putin there is a price to pay for this repression lies with Europe.

The European Parliament is calling for an assets freeze and travel ban on Putin’s powerful inner circle who are accused of multiple crimes. Our community is spread across every corner of the world -- if we can push the Europeans to act, it will not only hit Putin's circle hard, as many bank and have homes in Europe, but also counter his anti-Western propaganda, showing him that the whole world is willing to stand up for a free Russia. Click below to support the sanctions and tell everyone: 

http://www.avaaz.org/en/free_pussy_riot_free_russia_a/?bfwkodb&v=17300

Last week’s trial is about far more than three women and their 40-second ‘punk prayer’. When tens of thousands flooded the streets to protest rigged elections, the government threw organisers into jail for weeks. And in June Parliament effectively outlawed dissent by raising the fine for unsanctioned protest an astounding 150-fold, roughly the average Russian’s salary for a whole year. 

Pussy Riot may be the most famous Russian activists right now, but their sentence is not the grossest injustice of Putin’s war on dissent. In 2009, anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered a massive tax fraud at the heart of Russia’s power dealers, died in jail -- without a trial, on shaky charges, and with medical attention repeatedly denied. 60 of Russia’s elite have been under scrutiny for the case and its cover-up, and the sanctions the European Parliament is proposing are on this inner circle. 

International attention to Russia’s crackdown is cresting right now, and the ‘Magnitsky sanctions’ are the best way to put the heat on Putin and help create breathing room for the suffocating democracy movement. Let’s give Europe's leaders a global public mandate to adopt the sanctions. Sign the petition now and share this with everyone: 

http://www.avaaz.org/en/free_pussy_riot_free_russia_a/?bfwkodb&v=17300

What happens in Russia matters to us all. Russia has blocked international coordination on Syria and other urgent global issues, and a Russian autocracy threatens the world we all want, wherever we are. The Russian people face a serious challenge, but we know that people-powered movements are the best cure for corruption and iron-fisted governments -- and that international solidarity can help keep the flame of these movements alive. Let’s join together now to show Putin that the world will hold him to account and push for change until Russia is set free. 

With hope, 

Luis, David, Alice, Ricken, Lisa, Vilde, and the Avaaz team



I hope this sheds some lights on the concept of a 'Global Village' for me it's about people helping each other through the use of technology, in this case the internet.

The iTunes Way

I wanted to create several posts about my progress with my research paper, now admittedly at this point I'm not very far and it is a problem that I have created for myself. Technically we still have over 2 months to complete the entire research paper, but the thing is I haven't researched that rigorously, I am going to start from today gathering new research and writing down the things I have already looked in the coming posts.

So now that I have a general understanding of my topic it's time to move onto refining my research question for the paper. My investigation started off with a general outline of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to relate my research to Apple as a company. Their ties to the music industry are the interesting part at least for me. I'm pretty ambivalent when it comes to Apple so I had to find a connection I could explore and still have some fun doing it.

My research question as it stands goes like this

The effects of iTunes on the state of independently published music since it's inception

Now I need to break this down :

What kind of effects am I looking at :

How published music has become a source of income to those who previously did not have the gateways. Single tracks have been made popular by iTunes and made good business sense even if the record companies are annoyed. Where previously one had to shell out for a full album to get 'that one song' now you can just purchase that one song on iTunes, quick and easy and DRM free.

I propose using a case study of a selected artist and how the digitization of music has mad his/her life easier, this will narrow down my search, I now need to find an artist that meets the following criteria:

• Has several interviews/videos on the web
• Preferably makes the kind of music that I like
• Has something to say about his independence
• Lastly if possible, make contact with the artist and ask them first hand about their experience and where they think the music industry is headed at this moment in time

The interviews don't have to pertain to iTunes because I personally think that it's obvious that Apple is the big player in the game. I also need to choose a research methodology

So there you have it, this is the route I want to go and no doubt the question will change, it seems a little broad to me so narrowing it down is a priority.

Also answering the following question is imperative : Why am I researching?

The obvious answer would be because I have to, you know, for school, so I can graduate and get my degree. There has to be something less obvious in there doesn't it? Well to answer it I'm going to have to choose a particular stance on the matter, who's angle do I want to portray in my research. I found some tip on choosing a research methodology:


This paper introduces novice researchers to the differences in philosophical perspectives and 
the major research implications arising from them.  It is our contention that research should 
not be methodologically led, rather that methodological choice should be consequential to the 
researcher’s philosophical stance and the social science phenomenon to be investigated.  
Several philosophical approaches are possible in the science of research, however we 
perceive that more extreme approaches can be delimiting.  We argue that only an 
intermediate philosophical approach allows the researcher to match philosophy, 
methodology, and the research problem. 

Alright so I have to take a philosophical stance, how do I view the situation. I've just had an idea - work this paper into a sort of stance on the changes and possible future direction in the music industry, so I will be using a qualitative approach, using a case study of an artist and his first hand opinion the effects of digitized music and it's availability.

Before I go into the core of the matter, I will no doubt have to explore the roots of iTunes and the niche that Apple found within the emerging market. Therefore I have to be looking at the cultural aspect albeit briefly, because it does tie into my research. Music is an integral part of a lot of peoples lives, it has a lot of value to both the consumers of music and the artists themselves. Of course it's not without those who wish to reach a celebrity status and simply have a mountain of money. So I want to narrow down the musicians that I want to investigate to those who find meaning in what they do, they do it for a purpose other than status or money but out of love for their craft. I'd like to think that I'm taking a post-modernist view on the matter, there is radical changes that have been happening, it's not an evolution or a progression, it's a shift of mediums and ways of thinking, a paradigm shift if you like. I want to take a subjective and humanistic approach to the paper and make it as academic and as easy for people to read as possible, there needs to be a mutual understanding, anyone I refer to in the paper should be able to read it and say whether they agree or disagree.

An Untimely Demise of Diablo 3

I wouldn't have posted this on my History blog if I did not think that it could somehow relate to an industry where I might end up working one day. I'm talking about the game development industry which encompasses     a variety of skill sets, now more than ever. A massive triple A Game developer like Blizzard Entertainment, beginning as a humble developer has over the last decade grown into one of the most successful game developers of all time, with their game Diablo 3 topping the charts as one of Amazon.com's most pre-ordered game of all time. I myself am a casual gamer, and by casual I mean I don't spend a huge amount of time playing one single game as some people devote themselves to, the game I've played the longest also happens to be one of Blizzard's titles that being World of Warcraft which I played for about 2 years, taking a two year break in between and them playing for an additional three months after finaly becoming bored and giving up.

This post however is not about my World of Warcraft adventures but about Diablo 3 and my dissatisfaction with how Blizzard handled one of their most popular franchises by involving real money. Back in 2000 Blizzard released the sequel to their critically acclaimed Diablo game from 1996, it was an instant classic. The game is an action RPG(role playing game) in which the player takes control of one of five 'classes' , heroes with specific abilities and specialties. The game plays in a hack 'n slash style where the player is required to complete quests by defeating enemies and earning experience which leads to leveling up and your character becoming stronger. Throughout the players adventures they are required to complete quests and collect to upgrade your arsenal be it weapons, armor, or magic trinkets. In Diablo 2 the maximum level is 99 and is considered almost impossible to reach, taking months upon months of 'farming' or killing monsters over and over again to earn experience. If that wasn't bad enough, experience at that level range is only awarded if the player kills monsters that are within the level range which means having to farm the highest difficulty level : Hell. In this difficulty mode, the monsters are much stronger and some are completely immune to specific attacks so there is an immense amount of strategy involved when having to kill monsters or bosses, and on top of that, every time the player dies they loose a portion of their earned experience. The multiplayer in diablo 2 featured a ladder system in which players were ranked either by level (whoever was closest to level 99) or by player kills obtained through the player vs player mode (where you fight other players rather than monsters). That ladder system reset every 6 months, and the game has been going for about 12 years, and the servers are still up and running even with the release of Diablo 3.

As I said I am not a hardcore gamer, however I have been following a gentleman on his youtube channel, which you can find here - http://www.youtube.com/user/Kripparrian . Even though I am not playing Diablo 3 anymore, I am still watching his videos for entertainment value, however he has recently stopped posting Diablo 3 content, and this is what made me want to write this entry. Diablo 2 servers are still running after 12 years, and will most likely continue to run until there is nobody playing the game. Since the game is so old, and there are not nearly as many players as there were 8 or 10 years ago I assume that the server load is relatively small, and the upkeep costs are even smaller, so we wont see Diablo 2 die just yet.

While I was excited for Diablo 3, it came as no surprise that I wasn't utterly thrilled when the game finally released in May earlier this year, 12 years. We had to wait 12 years for a new Diablo game, one of the longest development times in history, and when it finally came to be I couldn't be more disappointed. Not with the game itself however, it was the way Blizzard handled the release and the god awful DRM(digital rights management). The release day went horribly, the servers were overloaded and people could not get into the game. For single player. That's right, Diablo 3 was an always-on-line game. If you have no internet connection you can't play. Further more, you had to maintain a constant internet connection while you played, if your connection went down you got disconnected from the game. Many people were outraged that they couldn't play the game on release day, even though they ticked all the boxes. They had internet connections, they had spent the 60 dollars on the game, there was just one problem: they could not even log in to the servers to play the single player mode, single player mode, where you are alone, without people, with no justifiable need for an internet connection(did I mention that in Diablo 2 you only had to have an internet connection if you wanted to play with others?)

Always-on-line antics aside, the reason I wanted to post this is because, as I've pointed out in my introduction an issue that indirectly relates to an industry that I might end up working in. The issue is how Blizzard decided to handle trading items or 'gear' between players. Once you acquire items by killing monsters you have several options. If it's a good item you will probably want to use it as an upgrade to your current gear, if it's a bad item you will most likely vendor it to an in-game merchant for some in-game gold which you can then use to purchase a better item. The final option would be putting that item up on the in-game auction house. The auction house works similarly to a real life auction. The player can set a starting price and expiration date so that other players may 'Bid' on the item and if nobody bids higher when the item time expires, the player with the highest bid effectively wins the item. On top of setting a starting price, the player has the option of setting a 'Buy Out' price, which a sum that has to be higher or equal to the starting price. The 'Buy Out' option gives others an opportunity to immediately acquire an item should they have enough gold for the purchase, effectively bypassing the need to wait for the item to expire. There are several inherent problems when it comes to the in-game auction house, lets talk about them.

When the game was released, the best way to acquire the best possible items was from the auction house. The best items in the game would go up for millions of in-game gold, and players would effectively have to 'farm' gold by doing repetitive kills of monsters and or repeating quests to get themselves that sweet coin to spend on the auction house, and this brought about what the community calls botters.

Botters are regular players that effectively set up a program that runs a 'Bot' which is similar to playing the game yourself, except they run the bots to farm gold, and without having to actually play the game. Seeing as there is no limit on the number of Diablo 3 accounts a single person can create some of these botters run up and not limited to one hundred accounts, each farming millions of gold per hour. What do they do with this gold? They sell it online for real money, to regular players. Blizzard tried to combat the botting problem ever since Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft(which were and still are in a similar situation) by implementing the ability for the players to purchase gold legally through the auction house at a floored rate of 2.50 USD. Believe it or not, a huge game like Diablo 3 has an economy, and thanks to the botters, and to an extent the ability for players to purchase gold with real money legally the in-game gold is being devalued as a currency, which leads to inflation, the gold is dropping as we speak.

I don't really want to get into a long winded discussion about the gold problem, I do want to say however that this is the first time I've seen something like this happen, where gold in a game is coming to a point of being basically worthless. The issue for me is not with the gold problem, it's with the way the game is set up right at this moment. Above I discussed about the ladder system in Diablo 2 and how every six months it would reset, allowing different players to have a piece of the fame should they choose to work hard toward being on the ladder. Keep in mind that Diablo 2 did not have an auction house, the best items in the game were typically traded among players for other items. Certain people also set up websites on which items were either bough for gold or traded for runes, a very rare type of item one could obtain from killing monsters, allowing the creation of powerful artifact items. What I'm getting at is that Diablo 2 had a system, the ladder through which the players had something to do, whether it was farmign items or gold, or farmign items to defeat other players and rank up on the PvP ladder, Diablo 2 had what gamers call End Game Content, content that is accessed after beating the actual game. Unfortunately Diablo 3 did not see any of this. There are four difficulty modes in Diablo 3 being:

Normal: an introductory difficulty, nothing too hard
Nightmare: Once you beat the game on normal, you unlock this difficulty, in which you start over at the beginning of the game, except you keep your character level and items. In this difficulty the bosses and monsters are tougher and behave more aggressively , making for a moderate challenge.
Hell : Same thing goes here, beating nightmare unlocks hell, and more challenges and loot awaits.
Inferno : The ultimate difficulty, unlocked by beating Hell this difficulty will challenge the best of players.

In order to progress through the difficulties one has to acquire gear, either by finding it or by using the auction house. At games release, it was almost impossible to defeat inferno difficulty with items that you find, and many people fount it too hard without spending gold, and so the auction house it is. Since Diablo 3 lacks a ladder system AND Player versus Player combat(scheduled to be implemented in a future patch) the ultimate goal of any player is beating inferno difficulty, and for that you need items. However that's where it stops, once you beat inferno difficulty there is really nothing more to the game. No ladder, no player versus player(yet). Anything that anyone can do is beat inferno, and since inferno difficulty was made easier in the latest game update, even the casual players can do it now, without necessarily having the best gear in the game. I've since quit playing the game, and the way I see it, the only reason to continue playing the game at this point is farming for gold to buy the best gear possible at the promise of a future player versus player(PvP) implementation, as having better gear than your opponent no doubt gives you an upper hand.

So to wrap up this mini essay, I want to conclude by saying that by involving money in a game shouldn't be done , at least not this way. A few people have been saying that Diablo 3 is is essentially 'Pay to Win' however seeing as there is nothing to 'win' the argument is invalid. Paying for the best items wins you nothing, because there is nothing to do. In the end we can all learn from Blizzard's mistakes, and hope that these issues will be avoided in the future.

Kripparian, Avid Diablo 3 Player and Hardcore Gamer Talks about Diablo 3 Currency + Tips for fixing the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxh73943YRs&list=UUeBMccz-PDZf6OB4aV6a3eA&index=10&feature=plcp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwQ5aXOStQ&list=UUeBMccz-PDZf6OB4aV6a3eA&index=1&feature=plcp

Force, another YouTuber discusses the problems with Diablo 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kayJ64IZSs&list=UUGhs9S33RAeT5DEuKTO4Oew&index=1&feature=plcp

Contemporary Brand - Apple Inc. (Exercise 3)

I realize that this has been done before, however I want to put my spin on things with Apple. I don't so much like the company and what it represents, and I've never paid for an Apple product in my life even though I own a couple(they were all gifts). I'd like to extract the positive aspects of Apple and talk about the things that I do like and seeing as the question in the Assignment requires that I elaborate on changing the brands strategy I thought this was a good opportunity to do just that.

The Aesthetics

I would be lying if I said that I don't enjoy using Apple products solely on how they look and feel. The designers really managed to capture what I believe to be the essence of technology that being simplicity. The products are simple, and they looks simple, and they work. To me that's what technology is all about, I'm not looking for elaborate designs and crowded interfaces, and I'm sure many people would agree when I said that Apple has managed to nail the GUI as well, Windows is quite close, however the downsides are more on the technical side rather than the aesthetic.

Oh iMac

Really pretty is it not, but why?

I think that the designs speak for themselves when it comes to aesthetics, people want to own 'beautiful' objects as much as they want to date the beautiful woman or the handsome gentleman, maybe even more so.

I wont go into discussing what beauty is(that's a whole other essay) I will say that Apple, as far as I'm concerned has extracted the essence of contemporary beauty - the tech is shiny, sleek, minimal, geometric and symmetrical, the lines are contained(meaning there are no random pieces protruding from the form itself) and there is an "all inclusive, all built in" feeling. The objects are also complete, take for example the difference between a PC and an iMac, the iMac really only has 3 components that you need, built in sound and monitor where as the PC seems cumbersome and in most cases does not follow a pattern IE : there are hundreds and thousands of designs for computer cases, where the Mac has had small face lifts over the past decade but remains largely unchanged. I've used a PC for my entire life, only working on a Mac over the last year or so, and even now I don't feel the comfort that I feel with the PC, but that's how it is, the first thing you get used to will often become the one you stick with. It's difficult to change habits especially because I spend so much time in front of the computer. So simplicity is key, as Tim Cook, current CEO of Apple put it :

"We believe that we're on the face of the earth to make great products and that's not changing. We're constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple, not the complex."

And apple delivers the simplicity in the most graceful way, even the stores that sell exclusive Apple products that aren't apple branded aim to stick to a certain aesthetic, like our very own South African FFWD. Take not that the below link to the store leads to a South African version of the iStore, which in fact is just a reseller(South Africa does not have true iStores yet). 

Since we are on the issue of stores, there is one thing that I must address - currently South Africans don't have access to the majority of the content that Apple provides(the following can be observed with iTunes, if the user creates a South African apple id, there is a major difference in the amount of content between South Africa and say for example the US) Okay so this is location based issue and can more or less be solved by faking the location that you are in which I don't understand, why not provide all content for all countries? If there is one thing I would fix it would be that. Moving along.

So Apple products are shiny and feel good but what about the experience? I will say that I disagree with the totalitarian approach they have taken with the products, that being the complete lockout and inability to customize or even repair your own hardware. This is a problem for many users that would like to do some DIY and fix things themselves, turns out that you don't really own any piece of Apple software or hardware that you pay for you're merely renting it. This is the part where I begin expressing my dissatisfaction with the product and perhaps suggesting a few things that Apple could do at least to improve my personal experience.

iTunes, it's a love and hate relationship, it's a free and almost mandatory piece of software that one has to have installed on their PC/Mac to interface with other Apple gadgets. There are alternatives, but the best alternatives cost money, and when Apple releases an update for iTunes, an update to the alternative is also required. I personally found iTunes to be a complete mess, I don't like the way it organizes my music and the program itself is bulky and counter intuitive. 

Sure I might be an idiot who doesn't get it, but is'int the point of apple products supposed to be simplicity? If so then they completely forgot what they stood for when they created iTunes, or maybe I'm just set in my ways.

On the bright side, the branding works, when confronted with the question of whether it makes sense or not all I can say is that the brand is no longer a collection of identities and logos, the brand is working for itself being driven by the community who supports it. Apple has created a cult following, and to an extent I think there are certain aspects of the technology itself that people fail to see. 

Biased Statement of the Day : I think that Apple is cleverly swindling it's consumers by purchasing and repackaging tech with the Apple log. Apple's innovation is definitely not in their technology.

Mac Observer Tim Cook interview:http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_coo_tim_cook_lays_out_apple_manifesto_with_or_without_steve_jobs/)

South African iStore : http://www.myistore.co.za/iStore/index.html