It's not as if we all needed reminding that Apple is changing-- the company's hardly the same entity it was even six months ago. But while many of the changes that are taking place are positive ones-- increasing market share, better products, and actual profitability-- others show that some of the nicer points of the Apple we once knew are being left behind in the scramble for corporate viability. For instance, we found it sad when we had to face the fact that Apple no longer had the money to keep funding "cool" research projects that might never turn into profitable products. Seeing Newton get axed was maybe one of the most recent and extreme examples-- in that particular case, there was a product, and a great one-- just one that wasn't profitable enough, and therefore it got canned. Sad.

But that's not nearly as disturbing as hearing that Apple disbanded the Worldwide Disabilities Solutions Group last January. That group was responsible for making sure that each Apple product met the special needs of users with disabilities, and was therefore largely responsible for certain ease-of-use features that wound up benefiting all Mac users, not just differently-abled ones. But things get even worse, however, when you consider the way in which Apple eliminated this group. One of the most important projects of the WDSG was a web site called Convomania, which was a resource for teens with life-threatening diseases. When the users of Convomania wished to continue the site on their own, Apple threatened them with legal action for "modifying the company's online property without consent." Details about this decidedly unApplelike behavior are available in a Wired News article. (The Convomaniacs have since shown remarkable tenacity and resourcefulness by pulling up stakes and settling elsewhere, under the name "ConvoNation.") We at AtAT sincerely hope that this in an isolated incident-- a temporary lapse, and not a new and fundamental sort of inability to "think different" and spend $1 million a year on WDSG and Convomania in the face of quarterly $50 million profits. The bottom line isn't the only bottom line, if you catch our drift.

On a personal note, when my father was recovering from extensive eye surgery, the Mac was the only computer he could use, due to the presence of the CloseView control panel, which I talked his secretary through setting up for him over the phone. Now, four years later, my father is an avid Mac user, grateful not only for a computer easy enough for a self-confessed technophobe like him to use, but for a computer so easy to use and well-designed that he could continue to use it even when he was nearly blind. It's scenarios like that that have given Apple its vaunted "rabid user loyalty." Let's hope that the elimination of groups like the WDSG, which gave the Mac the same features that inspired such loyalty, doesn't turn Apple into "just another computer company."