An endless array of technologies are thrown at us by Apple and all the other technology companies. How can we decide which ones are worthwhile, ignore others, and thereby achieve a balanced, productive life?  John Martellaro has some ideas.

Some of Apple’s new OS X apps are exhibiting an interesting tendency. Instead of a brilliant user interface to deal with technical complexity, there is the removal of functionality. However, simpler isn’t always better.

The list of things that Apple does that make us worry is getting larger. That’s natural when a company becomes a superpower.  But there are some subtle things that Apple could do to make things better.

Apple has entered several publishing markets where the company takes its 30 percent. Textbooks are one market where, for the sake of good image and an endowment for children, the company should have backed off and made a contribution to human history for all time. But Apple is thinking small, not big.

Small companies simply try to build great products. Large, powerful companies exercise their power. In doing so, they influence our emotions about them. Then human nature kicks in.

Apple is large and still growing.  By itself, despite the DNA of Apple’s culture and the legacy of Steve Jobs, that’s going to create problems. In fact, it already has. Apple’s heritage of simplicity has run headlong into Apple’s complex, interactive services, and customers are getting restless.

The contrast between Apple and DIRECTV as television content providers is never more apparent than when it’s time to upgrade equipment. It all started when John’s DIRECTV DVR started to sag under its software load, and it was time for an upgrade. Then the not-so-great adventure began and provided oodles of insights on how each company treats the customer.

Apple has a long tradition building a powerful “desktop” tower Macintosh. It has been a given that some customers needed a Mac with PCI slots, fans, and a powerful CPU, bus and graphics card.  Nowadays, technology has changed and so has Apple’s market.

In the last century, our technology dreams inspired us, and now we’re living that dream. However, somewhere along the way, the process of turning technical dreams into reality became warped. Against all odds, Steve Jobs didn’t let Apple’s size destroy its dreams. Can others follow?

Siri on the iPhone is a game changer, but does it also portend a change on the Macintosh side? It won’t be long before gestures plus voice completely eliminate the mouse and keyboard, and if you think you can’t fine-tune text that way, leave it to Apple engineers to prove you wrong. But how will Apple get there? How will the Mac evolve?