After this initial foray into the mainstream, Heacock observes that usage of "kick ass", "kicking ass" and "kick-ass" picked up even more frequently from roughly the year 1990 onwards.
Their ranks include Christopher Nolan, of The Dark Knight and Inception fame, and Matthew Vaughn, director of Kick-Ass and the upcoming X-Men: First Class.
Apple is taking that supposedly wasted cash hoard and kicking serious ass while the rest of the computer industry sits around sucking its thumb and starts complaining about big, bad Apple cleaning up components and shutting them out.