Some observations about the tech industry:

• iPad was a curious direction for Apple. Not sure there is a market for oversized iPod Touches. It’s as if Apple is starting to believe its own hype, that it can do no wrong and everything it releases is magic. It’s a company whose motto ought to be, “I did it my way” — from locking down the App Store to eschewing the likely mods needed to be a player in the enterprise market, the company does what it wants to do so it can retain maximal control over its brand.  That’s fine.  But it’s also self-defeating.
• Google terrifies me.  Yes, I have a GMail account, and I use Google Voice and Google Analytics. But the company scares me — it tracks too much, archives for too long, and appears to have some sort of master plan. And I don’t like companies that have master plans. It would not surprise me that when the Cylons finally come, they will be running Android (come to think of it, Android is a curious name for an OS …).  Google’s core business is search, and matching ads to search. But the forays into other areas (which have been successful mostly through acquisitions and not in-house development) suggests a growing monstrosity lurking in the corners: Why, exactly, does Google need to own broadband spectrum, fiber, cell phones, operating systems, social networks, IM systems, and such?  Because it archives and profiles data, for reasons that are not yet public.  That bugs me.  Especially when the company’s motto is “Don’t be evil.”  It’s as if they cynically believe that merely saying “don’t be evil” will lead people to believe that you are a force of good in the world.
• I’m increasingly impressed with the “new” Microsoft. Windows 7, IE8, the demo Windows Phone 7 Series, and Bing are solid products.  Office 2010 Beta is positively orgasmic. And more to the point, given Microsoft’s “battlin’ business unit” model, I don’t really worry that info I store in a MS property will eventually be used to profile me for my assignment in the Brave New World of the Googleverse.

So:  Microsoft good, Google bad, Apple as emo adolescent.