Slashdot Mirror
iBox Episode 2
coolgeek writes "According to this article on Wired, the iBox (original SlashDot post), later renamed to the CoreBox, has run into some trouble. Their strategy is to clone Mac computers using spare parts from repair centers. Evidently, the supplier of the repair parts was reminded by Apple Computer's Legal Department that supplying to a computer manufacturer was a breach of contract. Consequently, the supplier has chosen to stop supplying parts. More information on at the CoreComputing website, and they say the game isn't over yet..."
Yes, I guess it is. Every once in a while someone gets up and says "hey, Apple is the only one making Apple computers! HOW DARE THEY! It's my God-given right to make and sell anything I damn well want! Apple are a bunch of bastards!"
How dare Apple make a great OS, then put it on machines only they make. How dare they try to make a little cash and stay afloat. They should just give away their hardware and software for free!
Ok, a little drastic, so they should just licence their OS to anyone and forget about hardware? Well, they're in a great position now. If you want to use their OS, you have to buy their hardware. Simple enough and tons of people are doing it. No where near as many people as on Intel computers, but still a good chunk of people who enjoy using OSX.
Someone comes along and tries to get around this and of course, Apple tries to protect itself. But with Slashdot of course the main theme is "How DARE you try to protect yourself! You just sit there and take it!"
Maybe if Apple were to build in protection to their hardware that would blow itself up if someone tries to build it from scratch!
Hang on, gotta go call Sen. Hatch.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
is it more acceptable for hardware manufacturer to fence off competitors? eg Apple restricting parts to be used on Apply-Only machines, while everyone's crying foul when MS is trying to install its own browser on its own product (and still allows competing browsers to be installed).
imagine what would happen if Ford only allows its "rolling" tyres to be fitted on its cars...
monopoly: Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service.
a monopoly of their own product? freaking duh. what do you expect? for them to throw their company out the window by allowing someone to intrude on their copyrights? okay, sure. they're monopolistic. whatever.
These are Apple spare parts. Apple has a limited stock of these to be used as replacements. They expect the part it replaces to be sent back so it can be reworked. There is not some magical motherboard fairy that creates an endless supply for someone to leech off and resell as new.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Bully?! Bully who? Apple has a contract to supply *replacement* parts to these companies. They do not and never have had a contract that allows these companies to *build* Macs. If these companies want to build Macs, they can go through the proper channels to get the tech info/parts they need. And if they can't strike a deal, they can find another business. There are plenty of computers to build and sell without trying to usurp the Macintoshes. This underhanded stuff just isn't going to fly.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's very simple, really.
Apple sells hardware at a premium price. The profits go on to fund interesting software like the iLife apps, iCal, iSync, Safari, Quicktime, a full development suite, and even an accelerated X11 Server. These software are made available for free to Mac users, because they already paid for it. In fact, if you use many of these applications, you'll realize that the original hardware price tag isn't that much steeper when you consider software costs.
Now, allowing people to buy parts and build cheaper Apple clones messes this up somewhat. Who will pay for the free software? The alternative for Apple must then be either to charge for the software, or to charge so much for replacement parts that it's impossible to build a cheaper clone. Realize that both alternatives are bad for loyal customers who actually buy from Apple. Additionally, it keeps the resale value of Macs high, which is also good for the Apple customer.
Apple's involvement in open source is among the best, but it is very carefully limited to areas that Apple isn't competing in. For example, Apple doesn't feel that there is any competition in the OS kernel space, so Darwin is open source. Safari is a capable browser, but Apple is not planning to win any browser wars, so Apple's chose to participate in KHTML development. However, Apple is holding back core technologies so that nobody can build a OS X clone for x86, which would put Apple customers back in the same situation of paying for people who would rather not pay Apple.
You may disagree with their business plan, but all in all, Apple's strategy is internally coherent, and appears to still work.
Do you think Sony would allow a repair center to resell PS2 components to a third party, who would in turn sell something called a "Play Stashun?" Is anyone jumping down Sony's throat for not allowing cloning of PlayStations?
Perhaps we can consider that not every platform benefits from being cloned.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Apple produces spare parts to replace broken parts for machines it has manufactured. There's quite a high overhead of maintaining these relatively small quanties and their distribution is relatively complex, so it's fair to suggest that these parts aren't sold at much of a profit, if any. When Apple sells a computer, it expects to make back enough money to cover both the parts and the development of that machine. When Apple sells a part, chances are the cost charged to the end-user, if any, will reflect the shipping and manufacturing cost of that part, only.
The upshot is that if Apple were to sell its own parts to competitors, it would be subsidizing those competitors because the cost of selling those parts wouldn't cover the costs of developing them and marketing the overall product built from them, costs Apple still incurrs.
Now, as far as Microsoft goes - do we expect Microsoft to subsidize Linux? I mean, on a moral level. Slashdotters fume that Microsoft signs restrictive contracts that force people who buy PCs to, ultimately, pay for Microsoft's marketing and development costs regardless of whether we want to use Microsoft's design, but do we actually want some extreme opposite? Have you ever heard anyone complain that Microsoft should? If Microsoft objected to a port of Internet Explorer to WINE, do you believe Slashdotters would be up in arms about it?
The answer of course is no. Apple may be shooting themselves in the foot by not creating a mechanism that allows third parties to contribute to their costs in exchange for the ability to produce machines independently, but it's hardly immoral for them to do so. And it's certainly not immoral for them to tell their resellers that goods that are intended for the exclusive use of Mac buyers - people who've paid money to Apple and expect service at a reasonable cost - be only supplied to Mac buyers, on pain of Apple dropping them.
Microsoft's business tactics are well documented. Apple's are not in the same ballpark. And neither company should have any obligation to subsidize a competitor, except possibly as compensation for those cases where illegal actions by that company has damaged that competitor. I don't see any case where Apple has to compensate anyone.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The only flat panel iMac I see listed at store.apple.com that has a 60GB hard drive runs $1299. So that particular incident is all Micro Center. But all of this is really beside the point.
When you buy an Apple machine you're not buying the box, you're buying the overall product. Apple thinks of the computer as a whole, not processor, firmware, software. If you don't care about any of this and just want a cheap generic DIY box, then why are you interested in Macs at all? Just for the transparent windows?
Much of Mac OS X's value comes as result of Apple's approach to product design. The ease of use, peripheral connectivity that "just works", seamless integration and low maintenace don't come for free -- they come as a result of looking the computer as a whole product, not various disperate pieces slammed into a box ala Dell. You can't have both.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Bullshit. Apple has no right to dictate to me what kind of computer I want.
They aren't stopping you from NOT buying a Mac.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Steve Jobs shoots Apple in the foot once again. MBA classes all across America probably use Apple's poor business decisions as examples of how to offend customers and how *not* to grow business
Please enlighten us as to how allowing a third party to distribute a cheap knockoff of a design that Apple spent years creating will bolster Apple's image of quality and help them increase revenue.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Obviously, letting anyone build the hardware and just licensing the operating system could never be very profitable... what a stupid idea :)
It's only really worked once, and many others have tried. I don't see that as a very strong business case.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Define "monopolistic practices", please. Monopolies are perfectly legal in the US, and certainly should be in any free market nation. In fact, that's the extreme towards which free markets strive (rarely getting there because the market doesn't allow it -- if a firm does attain monopoly status and follows suit with standard monopoly pricing and there are no major barriers to entry in the market, then other firms will enter and under cut the monopoly by pricing at the competitive rate). It's only when a monopoly acts illegally by using its existing monopoly to attempt to gain another monopoly in an unrelated market that there is a problem. That's not to say that a firm cannot hold two or more monopolies, either. That's certainly conceivable, if the firm did not use its existing monopoly to create the new one (difficult to do, but not impossible).
Please review industrial economics, monopoly economics (not the system of economics that govern the board game Monopoly (tm)), and the anti-trust laws of your country of origin (assuming the United States here, since we're discussing an American firm) before spouting, thanks.
Nobody will read this far down in the discussion but I just want to put this bit of truth out into the ether:
...eventually.
1. Apple isn't evil because of "going after" this parts supplier. The supplier is in obvious breech of contract. Duh. There's plenty to criticise in the Apple company and in the Mac platform; pick a reason, just make it a valid one, okay?
2. Clones are bad for the Macintosh platform. Bad, bad, bad. Any strategy which erodes their ability to leverage OS/iApps/Hardware into a seamless, second-to-none user experience will be death to the platform. It is not good. It is bad. It will kill the one, single unique thing about this company and they will be swallowed up into the sea of mediocrity that is the rest of the PC industry. Nobody should want that, as even PC users benefit from Apple's R&D.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I'll bite.
1) This argument is kinda silly at this point. Originally, it was brought up to point out that just because a company has small market share, it doesn't mean the company is succesful. In essence, the initial logical argument has been distorted by opponents and proponents to the point where it doesn't make sense. And you're completely wrong about the PowerMac case. Two optical drives, 4 hard drives, built-in Firewire, bluetooth, USB, modem, ethernet, WiFi plus 4 PCI slots and an AGP card with dual monitor support. What do you want to put in your computer?
2) Hmmm, I don't think sliced bread is an operating system, but here goes. OS X is an excellent OS. It's not the be-all end-all, and it has advantages & disadvantages compared to PCs or Linux. Let's point out a couple things. iBooks start at $1000, eMacs sell for less. Quicktime nag screens suck, no doubt there. Then again, Quicktime Pro is one of the best software values on any platform, it's easy, it's powerful and it works. Macs suck for games (so I here), crush Linux for ease of use, are far easier than PCs to network (I've spent 10x more time getting my Mom's Windows network to work than it I've collectively spent on mine), and have a much higher proportion of good software than either Linux or Windows. Ya, the hardware costs more upfront. But the OS is rock-solid, easy to use, and quite powerful.
3) Apple's friendly? Well, they have a nice image, no doubt. But really, I've never heard any defend Apple by calling them friendly.
4) Where's the myth?
5) Not really a myth. Some stuff doesn't work. Every digital camera, flash card reader, mouse, trackball, tablet, monitor and drive I've plugged in has just worked. I had to install the driver for my printer, and for the USB-serial adapter I needed for some legacy devices that I used on my PowerMac 7200 in 1999 & earlier. Webcam support supposedly sucks, and well-intentioned webmasters who think they are clever (effectively) go out of their way to break non-WinExplorer browsers. Other than that, I rarely have problems. In fact, at one point I had my well-upgraded (new hard drive, upgraded RAM, WiFi card, Zip Drive) Lombard Powerbook G3, circa 1998, running for 5 weeks straight. Not a world's record, but pretty good.
Your last point is your best. Why do we support Apple? Well, because they make very good products that work, and a certain segment of the population thinks it's the best value out there. We're all different, and make judgements based on other criteria. No one's right, no one's wrong, we're all free to do as we wish.
I own a Mac, and I do buy into the quality argument; I'm also a QA person (I hate to use the term engineer in the software industry), so I believe I have a worthwhile perspective on quality.
The components in a Mac may be the same stuff other PCs are made of, and therefore the quality isn't in those components: but it is in their integration that quality is visible, and in their use.
Let me explain, from my quality background:
A high quality software product is not one with zero bugs or defects. Zero bugs or defects is a low *error* product.
A high quality software product is one that the user enjoys using, or in situations where pleasure isn't a good indicator, the user can do their task effectively, efficiently, and with a minimum of hassle, problems, mistakes, and errors.
So to rephrase those in terms of a Mac, a piece of hardware:
A Mac is not high quality because it has no errors or defects.
A Mac is high quality because the user gets pleasure from it's use, or alternatively they can do the tasks they want, with a Mac, with a minimum of hassle, problems, errors, and setbacks.
So to bring it closer to home, I use a Mac, and I see it as high quality, and I agree with the BMW statement on multiple levels:
Small niche
Affluent niche
Image conscious niche
Quality conscious niche
I enjoy using my Mac. Already one of my metrics for quality is satisfied.
My PowerBook *feels* good to hold. My PowerMac *sounds* good, because it is so quiet. The case on the PowerMac is a pleasure to open, because it is so simple. I like opening it to just look at everything and how well laid out it is, because I like machines and technology. I put together PCs for 8 years, and after owning a PowerMac for 8 months, I wonder *why* no PC case is designed like this.
Hard drives are mounted on the floor on trays, instead of a freestanding cage in the middle of the case. This cuts down on vibration by directing it into the floor, and minimizes cable clutter because all the IDE connectors are at the edge of the motherboard, parallel to the connector on the hard drive. This also increases airflow because the cables and drives run left to right, instead of front to back on every PC case I've seen; so by design the drives are positioned to reduce vibration and increase circulation.
The case is covered in a thick swathe of plastic, and there's a plastic motherboard tray (probably all acrylic), both of which reduce vibration noise a lot. This *also* doubles as an aesthetic device, making the PowerMac more attractive than most PC cases, as well as providing handles to make the PowerMac easier to handle than most PC cases.
The main cooling fan is 120mm, for low RPM and high cooling efficiency.
So as a technofetishist, I enjoy the design of my PowerMac and PowerBook. Elegant and efficient. Pleasure. All metrics for quality, in my book.
So then there's the other bit, about getting the job done; the Mac platform is the most efficient and effective platform right now for me to do what I want to do. Having access to a terminal suits me perfectly fine, because I can work from it. It beats Windows in some areas, and matches Linux. Then there's the applications, which beats Linux in most areas, and Windows in just about all areas. This is purely subjective because people have different needs.
I don't play games.
I make DVD-Rs using iMovie and iDVD, and I haven't seen anything on the Linux or Windows side that matches this combo in ease of use, elegance, and simplicity. 1 day to make a 1 hour iMovie, and 1 day to design the accompanying DVD, and that's because I'm a picky perfectionist bugger. If I wanted to slap something together, it would be 2 hour for the movie (the time it takes to import, plus minor titling and transitions), and 1 hour for the DVD (using stock layouts). These are professionaly looking layouts too, things I am *happy* to use, overjoyed, because when I use them, the people I will be giving thes
GPL Deconstructed
Yes, BUT they bought them for a different reason....
If they bought them as replacement parts (for which they have an agreement with Apple) and then sold them as new machines, they would be trading under false pretenses and in violation of their agreement with Apple. Apple can therefore do exactly what they have done.
We can debate the "niceness" of the agreement, or of Apple and we can debate the naievity (or stupidity...) of the company but they have broken an agreement with Apple and that's all there is to it.
It's like obtaining software "for non-commercial use" at a reduced cost and then using it for commercial reasons, or buying something in place X and taking it to place Y when you signed an agreement not to... you are breaking that agreement whether you like it or not.
hohum
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net