@david, your point about patience is well taken. I think Apple has learned patience recently though. I can’t say the first Jobs (i.e., before the ousting and return) was ever patient in his leadership. Then again, the whole idea of a more open app store, etc is new to them, so it will be interesting to see what lessons they took from that experience.

@shaun, think you’re dead on. One of Rishad’s favorite quotes is “the future comes from the slime.” No one is ever ousted by a competitor they see coming. I think Apple has broadened its view of the slime a bit recently, thus the Quatro purchase. I’m also curious what their next move on Apple TV will be as a result. Patience (to Dave’s point) or cut and run?

@Pax “AOL on steroids” is a really unique perspective. Your point about bullying vs. providing entertainment is correct. After all, the analogy can only go so far between man and business. But, I’ve always likened it to a club with a long line out front. It has to be worth the wait for those people. The question remains: how many of them are there and how long are they willing to wait in line? With Apple those quantities are odd. The former is never huge, but the latter? Well it’s always mind blowingly long.

Apple is AOL on steroids.

I own an iPhone and waited breathlessly for the Tablet to help sway me toward the rest of Apple’s line of products. It did the opposite, which was completely unexpected.

I was always ambivalent toward Apple though I loved my phone (there are other options now that I intend to pursue). Now I think that Apple is simply a dangerous tech company creating a closed, ‘bleed the consumer dry for every bit of code’ company.

Whether you like the alternatives or not – at least they provide you options and come with standards built-in that are considered features on Apple products. Apple has now seen fit to decide what technologies to support and which ones they should kill off.

I don’t like flash but I need it. I have eBook and video formats that I’m not certain are supported by Apple. I have USB devices that I need to get data and media from and do NOT want to depend solely on iStores for data.

I think Apple is bullying it’s customers in much the same way Ali bullied his competitors. This is where the analogy between these two brands begins to diverge.

Ali put on a show for his “customers”. We got value out of it from a purely entertainment standpoint. Jobs has become a snake-oil salesman peddling closed, dystopian solutions. He doesn’t even pretend to be a benevolent dictator. There’s no value here except among the most ignorant of users.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by denuology: Steve Jobs beat Muhammad Ali in overcoming the Curse of Brand. @saneel explains why: http://bit.ly/b2uiO1 #iPad #apple…

Apple is very much in a fight. One of their longtime rivals in Microsoft seems older now and unable to find their form. Other prospective rivals like Sony have never delivered on their promise. Nintendo feels like it might be capable of stepping up – the Wii for me, has lots of parallels with the iphone in terms of big innovation jumps. Could they step up and fight Apple? What is Amazon up to – if Apple is building around the store concept, seems like Amazon is the organization to beat.

But the real worry for Apple, I think, is a new contender, who is likely fitter, smarter and has more tools then anyone they have fought so far. Put another way, I think Ali may be stepping into a new game – something less like boxing and more like MMA. Maybe this is a GSP vs Ali matchup. Jobs seems scared – it felt like the iPad was not only reaching in terms of how important it might be, but an attempt to shift the conversation away from a growing world of Android in mobile.

Ali and Apple are also similar in that Apple likes to talk trash. There product announcements are full of awesome, revolutionary, game changing language. Google developed a new mobile OS and some of the best cloud computing services and siad well, basically nothing. They basically gave away some phones and put an ad on their homepage. They speak by knocking people out – not telling people they are going too. From a brand perspective, some people are going to love the quiet new challenger, who just knocks people out, smiles and leaves the ring.

This is the most interesting part of the battle Apple is in now. They will use all the skill and reality distortion that we love them for while competing against someone who is really going to hurt them and shake their confidence.. That said, so much can happen. It looks like MMA now, but Microsoft may jump in the ring and also start roughing up Google and who knows what hardware vendors like Motorola, HTC, et al will do,

Looking forward to a great fight.