Apple Envy

I own an iPod, as you may remember, and I quite like it. One of the things I found a bit strange was the label at the back of every iPod "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China".


Why do I care that it was "designed" in California, I've asked myself? Is this label suggesting that this is actually an American made product and "we had to outsource production to China because of our shareholders"? Will we ever see a label on a Mattel toy claiming it was "Designed by Mattel in California, Lead paint added in China"? How about "Designed by Intel in Israel, Managed by Intel in the US, Made in China" for mobile Intel CPUs? Just how far will this go?

Well, Joel's latest column tries to put this into perspective, explaining what does the word "California" evoke in American culture. But what I found the funniest, is Microsoft's Apple-envy. They've added the following label to their lackluster, iPod-wannabe, strangely-named Zune:
"Hello from Seattle. Assembled in China".

Yes, clearly our friends from Redmond value a lot of things - originality is just not one of them.