Slashdot Mirror
Apple, the New Microsoft?
VE3OGG writes "Apple, the ultimate source of cool. The marketers of slick. The next 'evil empire'? While it might sound goofy at first, Rolling Stone magazine is running an article that summarizes some very interesting points that detail how Apple could become the next technology bad guy. Among the reasons given: Apple's call to be rid of DRM (while continuing to use it in iTunes); Apple's perceived arrogance when they warned consumers not to upgrade to Vista, while not rushing to fix the problem themselves; and Apple's seemingly unstoppable market dominance in the form of the iPod. The iPhone featured heavily as well, a product that is months from release but steals the press from more competitive products. What do you think, could Apple eventually take the place of Microsoft?"
Apple products don't suck, and Microsoft ones do.
But competition is good... since Lord knows, MS needs it.
-M
Someone had to say it
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Just like IBM.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
AT&T used to be the big evil empire. Then it was IBM. Microsoft took over for IBM. Sure why not have Apple take over for Microsoft as most hated company? So who came before AT&T? Standard Oil?
Vocabulary is obviously not your strong suit.
Penultimate means next to last, is that what you meant?
You said "Apple products" and "dont suck" in the same sentence.
Microsoft mice are great (and I hate Apple mice) , but beyond that Microsoft stuff is pretty much crap.
If it weren't for Microsoft, Apple would be Microsoft.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
Focusing just on Apple's pipeline they are going to be in for some hard times ahead. Apple's iPhone is far to restricted to be adopted. Someone else will produce an iPhone killer before the iPhone even catches on.
Vista Forum - become a community member
Windows Vista Help Forum
MS, as said above, will always dominate the market. Their OS is destined to reign somewhat supremely over the industry. Apple has the market on MP3 plays though, but I doubt they will have an increase in mac users any time soon.
"I am a shaman, magician. The sun is purple. 3-D dimensions, I am for mental extensions."
Yes Apple could become the next Microsoft.... DAH DAH DAHHHHHHH!!!
But Apple actually makes things people want to buy so it won't be that bad afterall.
WOMP WOMP!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Really, who cares if Apple replaces Microsoft as top bad guy. The way I see it, it would just be a shuffle in the standings for largest evil empire, but Microsoft will still be around, evil as ever...
Office and Visual Studio are actually allright. The very problem is that MS dominates the market and doesn't have to compete in technology, customer service or public image. It would be great if Apple also gets some decent competition in music arena.
We all know that Google will be the next Microsoft.
Microsoft has long known that they can't get 100% market share. Apple has historically been their safe little place for people to think they're cool by not buying Microsoft (but still running office and IE). Microsoft even prevented Apple from going bankrupt back in 1997 with a massive investement. Yep. Microsoft once owned Apple. (I know I'll catch hell for pointing it out, so flame away fanboys).
The only legitimate alternative to Microsoft is Linux.
others when they themselves started pimping for brand marketing.
I think it was about the same time MTV stopped showing music videos.
If Apple is the penultimate source of cool, who is the ultimate?
Um...any company that gains an overwhelmingly dominant market position can be Microsoft in that area. Once a company has totally squashed the competition, there's nothing left to do but play defense against potential rivals. That is a disincentive for innovation, good customer service, good value for money, etc.
Competition is good, all else being equal.
The useful question is how to stop having such a simple-minded view of life, not whom to direct your witless hostility at, to distract yourself from the emptiness of your dorkish life, next.
I've been hating Apple for months now! I can't understand how everyone else can't despise how ubiquitous the ipod has become. I'm prepared to personally stoke the fires of hatred for Apple.
"Apple, the penultimate source of cool"
So Apple is second to last in coolness?
Focusing just on Apple's pipeline they are going to be in for some hard times ahead. Apple's iPhone is far to restricted to be adopted.
No kidding. While it may have wireless, it has less space than a Nomad. Lame.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
...NOT a freakin non-profit agency. (although a few of those suck too)
;-)
Apple's sole purpose, if you boiled everything down, is to make money. Never forget that. And to address the question at hand, sure, apple can be the next M$. Google can be the next M$. M$ can be deregulated, broken-up, then reformed into the NEW M$ and be the "next M$."
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's only a matter of time (and regulation).
(although apple's stuff is purdy, i suppose
Apple, the penultimate source of cool.
So who will the last source of cool be? I'm confused.
Or is someone trying too hard to use big words again?
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Apple will never be the next Microsoft, because the majority of Apple users opt-in to their platform and products by paying a price premium.
The majority of Microsoft users suffer a mediocre product because they don't know or don't care, or are unwilling to pay the price (of money, to buy Apple, or of time and expertise, to run Linux).
The first being... ?
Two companies just competing for our bucks and using their natural monopolies for their own ends and us deciding what we will accept with our dollars.
Nothing to see here.
Slashdot continues slide into the superfluous.
Some examples off the top of my head - legal action against bloggers, iPhone trade mark, stock options, treatment of Woz.
If anything, they are able to get away with actions which would be considered unforgivable were they committed by Microsoft. The only reason they are not considered as evil is due to their size - except in the case of music downloads, they are not in a monopoly position.
Apple are a very big company (albeit smaller than Microsoft) and have been for many years. To pretend they are otherwise is naive to say the least.
But if they come out with the iChair then Steve Ballmer had better worry.
I noticed that they called Apple the largest purveyor of DRM technology. I thought that far more DVD's had been sold than songs from iTunes. Is there something I'm missing that makes DVD's free of DRM or is this just a case of Apple having DRM that's not broken too badly? I know that here in the USA it's just as illegal (thanks DMCA) to get around one as the other.
Yes, I know you've been around longer than I have.
Google already is the next Microsoft. We just don't all know it yet.
Anyone who knows history knows Apple pioneered alot of Microsofts methods, I have always said that both are equally evil, Apple just have a smaller marketshare and thus evades notice most of the time.
But once Ballmer is out and the OS division and Application division become two separate public software companies, then we will find out what the engineers can deliver for an OS.
Apple has always been super proprietary in everything they do. These guys are the ultimate control freaks and always have been. They could have beat Microsoft the first time around if they weren't locking hardware and sofware developers out of their platform. Want to tweak your os/x gui? Apple keeps breaking the interface with each update _on purpose_ in order to freeze out customization apps. Backward compatibility through the Apple line is less than stellar, and explains some of their past troubles with regard to market share. MS on the other hand have had some rational people in their midst who have always seen to it that backwards compatability rules. They almost never break backward compatability for any reason, and when they do it is because it is nearly technically impossible to keep. I can still run my DOS apps in XP.
I saw that movie where the kid worked at a Microsoft-like company and his friends were killed for their code by direct order from the Bill Gates-like guy.
Anyway, having seen it, I am going to choose not to say anything about this article. I like my life and code just the way they are.
"In God we trust, all others we monitor." -- Unofficial NSA motto
As long as they follow their business model they've always had - tying software to hardware - they'll never achieve enough market penetration to be Microsoft. For consumer level stuff, if iTunes becomes too cumbersome, people will move on. It's yet to face any serious competition, when it does, it won't seem like such an unstoppable force.
They could have very microsoft-ish market share if they'd sell OS/X for commodity hardware. I'd install it tomorrow if I could (i mean could in a supported way, not a hacky-half-assed way). But they won't, so they're pretty much irrelevant to me as a company. They've never factored into any buying decisions I've been a part of in the business world - I'm sure some businesses love Macs and are all Apple this and Apple that, but that's the exception that proves the rule.
They'll always remain as a sort of a curiosity. A proprietary platform in a world where hardware and the OS is a commodity. As people move towards internet based productivity apps, and towards cheaper purposed appliances for other things (gaming, media), the whole Mac vs PC thing will become less and less relevant. We already talked about this in the "future of OS's" story today - with virtualization, and other technologies, we'll be able to focus on the applications, and less attention to the chunk of code between the hardware and the application.
Bottom line; they just don't have the clout, and never will - short of a total remake of their company from the ground up.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Thanks to the nifty Apple/PC personified commercials I now know that all Apples come with an integrated video camera right in the monitor.
Well thats just fucking nifty. Maybe I am just paranoid, but having a video camera trained on me whenever I use the computer is disquieting.
I definitely don't need some snazzy Appl-ey hacker writing some code that lets remote useres watch me get all pissed off when I PK'ed playing WoW. And in my more intimate moments I already have to contend with ceiling cat.
Thanks, but no thanks. I read 1984 and it was a little bleak for me.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I'm not sure how the statement "Apple's call to be rid of DRM (while continuing to use it in iTunes)..." fits in with this theme. Sure, the motives for Steve suddenly deciding that DRM is bad may be suspect, but at least Apple is moving in the right direction. Right now, they couldn't drop DRM if they wanted to for the vast majority of their catalog - they are bound by their contracts with the record labels. It would be nice to see them drop DRM from bands who would like to release DRM free music (e.g. BNL).
/K
So, Apple is bad because they continue to use DRM on the iTunes store. Brilliant. It can't be because, oh, I don't know, that the media companies would absolutely freak out if Apple unilaterally dropped DRM. They can't -- they would end up in court I suspect.
Warning their customers that their software doesn't run on Vista is a nice thing to do for their customers. As we've seen in other stories, lots of other software won't run on Vista either. Heck, some of Micosoft's own software won't run on Vista from what I've heard.
And, from the last point in the summary, it is entirely possible that people like the iPod because it's a good product, and the iTunes software makes it easy to use. The iTunes music store is also nice, because it was quite literally, the first legal place to buy digital music. DRM or not.
It is possible that at some point in the future Apple could become a big evil company. But, none of the things to suggest that in the article summary are anything more than FUD and sensationalism.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Let me break it down for you all.
Apple sells overpriced plastic boxes with lock-in that is done in such a way that it somehow doesn't grab the attention of the clueless sheep that use it.
Microsoft does not deliver what they promise in their software, and abuses their position at the top in an attempt to retain their peak; little do they know that if they slacked up a bit and let someone else grab a little more market share, people wouldn't be making as many death threats against them.
Linux provides people with total control over their systems while making the most simple of tasks take ten times longer than they should; since Linux has become more mainstream, an increase of hair loss due to pulling has become apparent as well.
There is no "good" option. There is only a "not quite as bad" option. All you fanboys need to stop stroking your egos and let people use whatever the fuck they want.
Living With a Nerd
Why did it take TWO FUCKING DECADES to manage to make software that barely qualifies as adequate? They were evil when they were small, and nothing changed when they got big. They never tried to compete on any honest grounds in their entire history.
Damn straight. Everyone who's anyone knows that the one true source of cool is The Fonz. Apple couldn't hope to compete. Can Apple walk into a room, whack the jukebox, and make it play music? Hell no...they had to come up with the iPod as a workaround.
Lets look at these one at a time:
Apple's call to be rid of DRM (while continuing to use it in iTunes);
Apple is selling music players and needs a way to get music to users easily so they will buy said music players. The providers of said music are a cartel convicted of abuse multiple times. The cartel required DRM and Apple pushed back on how restrictive it is and prices. Does anyone think it would be better if Apple refused to do business with them and let Microsoft dominate the DRM market? Apple needed to be there to stop MS from using the incompatibility of DRM'd songs against their OS offering. There is nothing hypocritical about saying it would be better for everyone (except the RIAA) if DRM was no more, either voluntarily or by law. Does anyone complain that OpenOffice reads and writes .doc files, all while they talk about how bad it is people are locked in that format?
Apple's perceived arrogance when they warned consumers not to upgrade to Vista, while not rushing to fix the problem themselves;
Perceived arrogance? Some people think Apple was arrogant when they apologized for their software not working and recommended people hold off upgrades? Can you tell me the name of a software vendor that isn't cautioning customers to wait until things stabilize, because I'll happily stop doing business with the irresponsible twits.
They have about 70% which is the minimum share where some governments start investigating possible antitrust issues due to dominance. Compare this to MS's 90% and multiple convictions for abuse. Some of Apple's actions are antitrust abuse if they have enough market share, but all in markets where MS already is abusing their monopoly and the governments have declined to stop them. Two wrongs don't make a right, but two monopolies battling one another is a lot better than one screwing consumers as hard as possible.
The iPhone featured heavily as well, aproduct[sic] that is months from release but steals the press from more competitive products.
Ummm... umm... what? Apple released pictures and discussed a cool upcoming new device and people paid attention and this is somehow indicative of Apple becoming an evil empire? I like it when companies come out with cool toys. I hate it when they come out with crap that no one likes but everyone has to use anyway.
Could Apple suddenly gain a dominant position in the market and then abuse that position? Well, it is vaguely possible, but the items listed are no reason to think it might be likely. If they do that, and we all suffer as a result I'll complain my head off, but one nice thing Apple has done to date is avoided any lock-in that keeps me from migrating all my hardware and files to another platform like Linux. Until they do that, I'm not about to lose any sleep over the danger of Apple, when the danger of MS has never been stopped and shows no signs of slowing.
I don't think I can post a response long enough to ennumerate all the reasons why it ain't happenin'. I'll just hit the heights . . .
1) Nobody was there before MicroSoft. IBM could've been, but they misjudged terribly the actual scope and nature of the PC market (incidentally, even IBM wasn't there first - anybody remember Heath Z80's or Commodore's PET?). Apple can't just walk to the top of the hill - they have to displace the current king o' the hill first.
2) Microsoft's products may have always been iffy when it comes to QC, but so much of what they did was cutting edge - even when they were copying the competition! I have a friend who swears that M$ Word was the first WYSIWYG word processor, but I'd swear I saw a Macintosh doing it before M$ got to market. Either way, M$'s WYSIWYG office products and their flight simulator were hailed as revolutionary when they hit the market - because they were. Individual users and even business users accepted egregious mistakes and shortcomings because the new software was cool!
3) Microsoft's upper management - from Mr. B. Gates on down - have always had a clear vision: business first, cool tech second (or further down?). We Linux types tend to point out the results of this kind of thinking (buggy software, vulnerable OS's, exploits which cause a "what were they thinking" response), but we often fail to observe the results of this kind of thinking (checked the price of M$ stock lately? How 'bout the company's net worth? Mr. Gates' net worth?).
4) Even though most individuals tend to view DRM as evil (necessary or not is a subject for another debate), MicroSoft puts it in everything they make. Why? Because big business is where the big bucks are at; and big businesses love things that'll perpetuate their business model (see: patents), even when it's outmoded, superannuated and ineffective. Apple may be willing to play ball with DRM as a necessary evil, but MicroSoft has not only embraced DRM but even looks poised to marry it. It doesn't matter what a few hundred thousand geeks decide to do with their individual desktop dollars - big business makes us the monetary minority in a huge way.
The remaining dozen or so reasons why Apple will not be able to displace Microsoft (in the forseeable future) are left as an exercise for the reader to find.
It irks me when people use penultimate in place of ultimate thinking it's some intelligent way of saying "super-ultimate."
No, they are the closest thing to the ultimate in coolness as you can get.
It doesn't mean what you think it does either.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I don't understand why Rolling Stone would think Apple is calling for removal of the DRM requirements and still planning to use it themselves.
I think it was pretty clear that Jobs was calling for the end of DRM so Apple wouldn't have to use it themselves, thus making the iTunes store much more attractive. The biggest complaint they get is that the DRM is inconvenient.
In Rolling Stone's penultimate world, making things consumers actually want gets you labeled a monopolist bully, rather than, say, stealing everything from your competitors, pushing unfair agreements, and trying to put everyone else out of business.
Of course, we are talking about a magazine that covers the pop music industry, so I can see where they might get confused.
Think about it. Which would you really rather have: having [almost] no choice in operating system, or having to use solely proprietary hardware?
A friend emailed me this:
Why DRM and Locks on Apple Stores are Dumb
by Steven Jobs
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
With the stunning global success of Apple's iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to "open" the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods.
Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music, software, movies, and video games encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player or console can play music or games purchased from any store, and any store can sell music, movies, and games which are playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies, and software companies, and Hollywood studios, and video game companies, would license Apple their music, movies, video games, and software without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music, movies, and games on our iTunes store, and DRM-free software in our stores. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music and movies, and we shall give them away for free, along with our trendy iBooks.
In order to lead this initiative, Pixar will begin offering all of its movies for download upon the Apple website, in DRM-free formats, which one can rip, mix, and burn on any device. The record companies caused the Napsterization of the recording industry by being too slow to give their content away for free, and in order to thwart pirates, Hollywood must beat them to the punch.
Software too shall be given away for free in DRM-free formats. Final Cut Pro and the Mac OS X will lead the charge. One of most burdensome characteristics of software is that if the customer loses the box with the license key, the customer must purchase an entire new copy to install the software on a second device. This is "unfair play," und thus all software shall henceforth be released license-free, along with its source code. Now that both Macs and PCs run on Intel architectures, it makes sense that all software should be able to run on all devices.
Just as the musician shall voluntarily give up their rights to their music in this brave new world, Apple will be releasing all of its patents and trademarks for the public good. Citizens are encouraged to show up to Apple with video cameras, walk around, attend meetings, and post the videos to youtube, as information wants to be free.
DRM has failed. The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music. They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. We cannot win. Nor can car security systems nor digital security for banks triumph, as brilliant hackers shall forever share secrets about cracking these burdensome entities on the internet. So often it is that customers, forced to buy cars with locks, find themselves locked out of their very own cars!
Starting next week, Apple employees will be forbidden from locking their cars, and the bank DRM that protects my back-dated stock options shall be removed, as no security system can be superior to hackers, and it is a mark of hubris before Zeus himself to even try. Locks are being removed from Apple stores, so come on by and get your free iPod for your free music, along with a free black turtleneck.
A brave new day is dawning, so drop on by the Apple site to downl
Hmm, for once in its lifetime Apple is actually getting competitive and people are complaining about it?
I think the people moaning about Apple doing well don't realise that competition is good for the consumer. If Apple was doing less well all it would mean is that Microsoft would try even less hard than normal and all the Windows users would be in an even worse situation.
In my humble opinion, the one thing that Apple has always done well and that Microsoft has generally failed on, is ease-of-use and making things fun to use. Again, in my opinion, this still is the case. I enjoy using my ipod, my macbook pro and the software contained on these deviced. However, were Microsoft to make software that was easier to use and more enjoyable to use, I would switch without a mutter. I understand i'm just a consumer and that being a "fanboy" doesnt really make any sense at all..
Apple right now is, for all intents and purposes, a minority player in the computer arena. The popularity of the iPod plus the feature set of OS X is attracting customers to the Mac product line, but Apple isn't a threat, yet. However, that doesn't mean their isn't room for concern. Apple's latest OS is built on the free, open source FreeBSD user land. Their web browser's rendering engine is based on KHTML, an open source toolkit developed in Konqueror. But Apple hasn't given much back to the community. Even what they are required by law to give back (enhancements to KHTML) has been done in large dumps rather than providing useful contribution to the Konqueror development team.
Why does any of this matter? It matters because it illustrates Apple's intent. Apple, just like MS, doesn't want to play nice, support open software or even standards. Apple sells DRM'd media on a closed platform that can only be played with Apple software and devices (iPod).
But the Catch 22 is, do you support them? Recently I've been encouraging friends and family to move to the Mac, and for now I still think it's a good idea. Why? Because Microsoft is still the number one bad guy and platform diversity will take away power from them. I think we should all be mindful of Apple's practices but their own arrogance will never allow them to be so dominant that they will be a threat. For instance, Apple demands that you use their platform to run their media and their OS. When new device X comes out that's more popular than the iPod, it will force Apple to support the device for have iTunes become irrelevant. Apple's choice not to allow their OS to be run on commodity hardware will hinder them from market dominance. I've long believed that the illusion of choice is part of what helped MS become a monopoly. People when their buying computers think, "should i get an HP, a Dell or an IBM?" When really all their getting is a Windows box.
Additionally, the shift away from traditional computing to the internet will also hinder Apple from being the next MS or Big Blue. Personally, I'm more worried about Google than Apple
Boy. What is it with the media these days. Anything that even remotely references Apple seem to have a Negative Connotation.
... OR "why not open FairPlay".
It is as if Apple just cannot catch a break since New Year.
Think about it.
Steve says remove DRM. At first blush, one would think the Media would run with it and the public opinion will have the masses in street demanding that DRM be killed.
Guess what, there is a spate of Netagive articles all over the Net.
And curiously enough, it does NOT come from RIAA.
But from everybody else.
Now, instead of crying for the death of DRM , the public is debating that "Steve must have been lying"
The iPhone is introduced. After the initial few days, all sorts of negative articles seem to appear out of nowhere. And the phone isn't even released...
I wonder if there is a single source behind all the negativity....
Jes
This article had me confused. Apple wanted to drop DRM because they're surely tired of being the bad guys. Dropping DRM (or encouraging its droppage) should make them the good guys (in our crowd), not the bad guys. It's like open sourcing creative media.
I don't get it.
Jon
Welcome to /.
This article is some of the most idiotic tripe I've ever read. For example, he says Jobs's proposal for is merely propoganda because he claims, without backing it up, that Apple is the ``largest source of proprietary DRM software''. First off Apple made a contract with the record companies that they would use DRM protection in order to convince them to sell music online. It's a contract---the only way out is to either terminate their rights to sell the music online, or if all the parties on the contract agree to change, in this case, to DRM-free music. Secondly, whenever I try to watch something or listen to something online, I often can't because it's ``protected'' by Microsoft DRM and can only be viewed or heard through a MS Windows box. I'm sure there's a lot more streaming going on out there than downloading from iTunes. It seems to me, that would make Microsoft more likely to be the ``largest source of proprietary DRM software''.
Frankly, I would prefer to read an article about how Rolling Stone is the Microsoft of the pop music magazine world. To me, that would seem more apt.
Well, duh, we made that choice in the 80s. That's why MS is who they are, and Apple is who they are.
MS wrote an OS for an open hardware platform, Apple decided to create the entire package, hardware and software, themselves.
Heh, I remember as a kid, it was Apple vs Commodore. C64 vs the IIe. The Apple zealots are kind of like I was at 12 - the C64 was the ultimate computing machine, and Commodore was the greatest company, and Jack Tramail was my god. But I was 12 and in retrospect understand I was a moron - these modern day mac people are grown adults, and it boggles the mind.
Of course the choice in hardware for the PC platform made all the difference in the world. Especially in the days when hardware costs still dwarfed software cost. The MS "tax" (run our software) was negligible compared to the Mac "tax" (run our hardware).
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I realize Apple traditionally plays to the musical and artistic types (among others), but where did the long haired, dope smoking, rock and roll types at Rolling Stone get the idea that this was a two-way street on which they could be competent journalists of matters of IT and the tech industry? Apparently the drugs are affecting their grasp of reality more than they realized. What's next: VIBE giving a breakdown of Windows Vista's security and performance issues, or Cat Fanciers magazine explaining why Ruby on Rails will eclipse Java, PHP, Perl, and ASP.NET as the web platform for the next fifty years?
Actually, scratch that last one -- there isn't enough drugs or catnip in the world to come to a conclusion like that...
Will we have to start calling them APP£E?
What irks you is the penultimate of my worries
I sure hope so!
Ha! Welcome to...oh. Shit.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Rolling Stone doesn't know music. Why do they know the technology industry?
OK, then, what's the ultimate source of cool? Or are we maybe just a bit hazy on the meaning of "penultimate?"
"My understanding is that they are still using it because their deal with the record companies, who actually own the rights to the music, won't let them sell it without DRM. If some of the labels don't require DRM, then Apple should definitely not require it either, though."
Thanks, I was going to say approximately the same thing. Instead I'd like to ask that moderators mod the parent post up (I don't have mod points right now or I would have myself)!!
They'll be so busy duking it out with each other that consumers will end up winning. Ever hear of competition?
Please mod parent up - and insightful, not funny!
There's a reason cars come with GPS's, A/C, leather chairs and cup holders: People are generally stupid or busy. If in sales you're both.
People can build their own computers but they often have an application in mind that they want to use. I have YET to see a dumb terminal with a web + mail gui (except the mac mini) that meets people's "needs".
Sadly an OS from a large mega company (MS/Apple) is required.
was microsoft ever cool?
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
It's funny that at one time the same was said about the Ford Motor Co. In 1927 they built the 15 millionth Model T, a record that would stand until 1972, when Volkswagen built the 15 millionth VW beetle. Today, it's only their own PR people who think Ford is increasing their market share. Actually, their stock price has gone consistently down for the last three years.
As you see, there's no such thing as a company that will "always dominate". Considering that the software industry evolves much faster than the automotive segment, I don't think we will need to wait 45 years to see another company assume the predominance Microsoft has today.
Whatever happened to... Apple is going out of business, again, oh no!
http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/
They have a long way to go before Apple even has the power to be nearly as evil as MS!
(Your average Mac-basher keeps saying "Apple has only 2.6% marketshare anyway" for crissakes.)
"...objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences, subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny." -Gould
I would argue they already have become the evil empire. I mean just take a look at the iPhone. Locking it out from 3rd party application development? Come on, if Microsoft tried that the whole /. community would be freaking on them.
Adventure City Tours
I only own one Apple product, a 60GB 5G iPod.
It was great, until I let them upgrade it to firmware 1.2. Then it was crap. Couldn't run for more than 20 minutes without locking up. Everybody had this problem, not just me.
Did Apple release a patch the next day? No. Did they release a patch next week? No. Next month? No.
For month after month, my iPod sucked ass because of that godawful firmware. Did Apple ever announce that a fix was coming? Did they ever acknowledge that there was a problem? Did they ever even say one single word about it? Hell no. They're Apple, they don't have bugs.
Eventually they did release a fix, and my iPod is good again. But damn, that really pissed me off.
TFA states : "Apple's call to be rid of DRM (while continuing to use it in iTunes); Apple's perceived arrogance when they warned consumers not to upgrade to Vista, while not rushing to fix the problem themselves; and Apple's seemingly unstoppable market dominance in the form of the iPod"
OK, Apple could become evil. If they gain more marketshare, say 30%, they may become much like Microsoft. American law will force them to do so. The lat states that a company must do whatever it can to increase shareholder value, even if it is evil or immoral, as long as it's legal. Failure to do so will get them sued by greedy shareholders.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with the reasons suggested in TFA:
1) Apple is forced to use DRM by the suppliers of the music. There is NO contradiction in Job's call for dropping DRM while still using it in iTunes Music store. Apple has no choice. It's either use DRM or have no music to sell. Note that iTunes or the iPod does not require DRM at all. Only if you buy music through the iTunes Music store is there any DRM.
2) There is NO arrogance is Apple's suggestion to hold off on Vista. Apple has not yet made iTunes fully Vista-compatible. But then, neither has anyone else, including nVidea, most printer manufacturers etc. If you require iTunes to work properly, Apple suggest you don't upgrade just yet. If iTunes is not important, go right ahead. No arrogance there, just sound advice, which you can freely ignore.
3) Apple does not have a "seemingly dominance of the market with the iPod". The iPod is simply the best selling player at this point in time. As soon as someone produces a better one, Apple's so-called dominace will be gone. Most of the music on most of the iPods is in open standards format (mp3 or AAC) and can play on any player. There's nothing that binds people to the iPod except it's inherent qualities. If a better player comes along, it will "dominate" the market.
I Like Apple products, but I'm no fanatic. I defend them here because the wrong arguments are used.
I've been saying so for years now. Apple gets away with stuff that almost got M$ broken up a few years back.
/that/ respectful of the third party developers. Now, if you have an idea, they'll just steal the blood of it without any kind of remorse. Look at the "Widgets". And various others.
/allow/ third party, dirty apps here". Won't want that thing to crash, mam.
/worse/ than MS for about 10 years now. I think a few people are starting to realize it, but then again, there are worse FanBoys in apple's camp than there is in M$ camp nowadays.
:D
+ They make products on their OS that uses private frameworks. LOTS of them. Even worse, they have the "strategic" bits in the OS so they get debugged by unsuspecting nice third party developers, then hammer them with "the" product. Look "core image" and then, some time later... "aperture". All the "Pro" Apple apps share UI look and feel that is not available to anyone else. It's nice, sleek and fast. Seen it anywhere in a third party app ?
+ Their Cocoa framework (despite the huge amount of fanboy noise) is not scaleable to a "proper" application size. STOP if you are a fanboy and think : is there any BIG application made in Cocoa today ? I mean, a BIG app ? Safari isn't even in cocoa apart from the face. The core is C++, and this is a perfect demonstration of the lack of scalability of the "developer favorite". It's just a framework to make toys and the odd utility.
+ Up to the late 90's, Apple always was careful not to make any "gizmo"; it took 15 years to roll in the menubar clock, they were
I've been saying for years that apple no longer need third party developers. The WWDC is just a marketing "show" for steve to make a keynote (one more) and the technologies are getting down to the level of complete gadgets.
Now with the iPhone, they just came out and said "we are in control, we don't even
So yes, I think Apple has been
Yeah I know, I've got the bulletproof shorts on, so fire away... I won't read
Being able to run DOS apps in XP is cool and all but, really, that's your argument? You can still run Classic (OS9) apps in OSX. Besides Classic I'm sure there are emulators if you want to run even older stuff...which I'd much prefer over legacy-cruft that can't be removed from my OS.
"Want to tweak your os/x gui?"
uh, no.
Thanks for posting this sentiment. There's no hypocrisy here. Steve J. is simply re-directing heat over DRM onto the people who have demanded DRM: the content providers.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
For once I wish a mod up call worked
Apple not only impose DRM on songs the indi labels don't won't DRM on. They impose stricter DRM than necessary on big (evil) label songs (as proved by other music stores with less restrictive DRM on same songs). The PR and marketing genius of Apple, and the following it creates, is nothing short of amazing.
Mr. Jobs and all the other overly affluent executives will sell out or do whatever it takes to avoid their companies being held reponsible for the damage they, and their coompanies, do.
You don't get filthy rich by being ethical.
Does that make sense?
And who modded you up anyway?
Quoth Webster:
It comes from Latin (as expected) ulter, ulterior, ultimus - the last meaning 'the most distant' or 'the most extreme.' Hence the meaning for penultimate is 'next to the last/most distant' and his 'second-to-last source of coolness' is perfectly appropriate. It can mean 'second-to-best' as you would like, but 'extreme' is neutral so 'second-to-worst' can also be assumed if the context does not provide specificity (as was the case here)
The reasons that Apple is evil are very different from MS, and very different then what is mentioned in the article.
Apple is 'evil' because of:
- Lock-in. Apple is the ultimate lock-in company.
- Control/Lawyers. nuff-said.
- High margins to support big ad budget (to tell you they are cool).
(High margins are possible because they are cool and because their users are locked in.)
- The usual corporate crap, like the stock option issue.
Personally, I think the iPhone sounds great - exactly what I've been looking for - but I would never buy one because I know it would cost me too much in the end. I know people who are quite happy spending
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Disclaimer: MacEvangelist
I would reply "Define evil." I will try to and I will be brief.
Steve Jobs: "Perception is reality."
Bill Gates: "MY Perception is reality."
The difference between an evil Apple and an evil Microsoft is that Apple users might believe that 2 + 2 = 5, but Microsoft users are told that 2 + 2 = 5 until the just "allow it" to be.
ScriptedReplay you beat me to it.
Why is everyone forgetting the small important detail that makes a world of difference?
MS is a software company that very late in the game added some hardware to their portfolio when they needed to expand.
Apple is a hardware company that manufactures some software in order to sell more boxes.
Why is that important? Just look at all the dirty tricks of Bill and the gang. They all revolve around trickery unique to software and the fact that the manufacturing cost of software is close to zero (the development is expensive, not the individual unit). OEM lock-in, bundling, giving away stuff to drive out competitors - all things you can't copy verbatim to a market where you actually have to manufacture something.
Oh yeah, there's also the fact that Apple is very good with standards while MS has always re-invented the wheel (usually square).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
They are the next monopoly....
The GP is misunderstanding his dictionary entry. "Next to last" is meant to be used in a different way than he thinks.
It isn't like "next to last in the race" or "next to last in ranking", it means "next to the last chapter in a book", or "next to the last peak on a mountain". "Last" in this context means "final", not "loser".
Think of it this way: Apple is one step away from being the final source of cool. They are almost the coolest entity on Earth.
"Apple, the penultimate source of cool. The marketers of slick. The next 'evil empire'?"
///. And Apple ][+'s almost always had a fan due to heat.
// forever
Nope. Overheating due to a lack of a fan helped kill the Apple
If one calls 'lying' 'slick marketing', then Yup...that's Apple.
Apple
End of Feb - cancellation of the Newton. March education conference - "The Newton is an important part of the Apple product line"
WWDC 97 - Any mac sold by Apple today will run Mac OS X (Yet, the TAM did not)
Red Box (ok, sorra happened, just not the way developers were told)
Evil? Naw, just a typical corporation.
The REAL title, had you bothered to look at the webpage, is "Thoughts on Music."
Way to manufacture a title.
Obviously Slashdot is the coolest.
YES: Any corporation with Market Dominance will become complacent and anti-consumer. The question here is will they become anti-competitive? There are no laws against being anti-consumer, but playing dirty tricks o your opponents is a no no. The market assumes that consumers will leave even to a lesser rival if you walk all over your customers.
NO: It's about mentality. Apple, even in their early 80's heyday showed that they could play well with others. They worked hand in hand with other software companies like Microsoft, licensing their products fairly and squarely. Microsoft on the other hand has shown a mentaility of backstabbing and treachery when it comes to dealing with everyone else. So in this respect, it's the corporate culture itself that dictates market behavior given an amount of power. And while a corporation may change with power, it's underlying clture will dictate just how totalitarian they become.
MAYBE: Apple has always supported closed systems, enforcing a marriage of hardware and software, sometimes to the users disadvantage. But, there's been forrays into openess such as with the short lived Apple Clone program and Apple has played well with OSS. However, the real reasons for these moves are debatable.
So on the whole, I think Apple would be a lesser of two evils. Since any corporation with market dominance becomes corrupted by that power, it's the degreee of corruption that will be fostered within the corporations culture that dictates just how bad it can get. And Apple has shown that they know how to play fair and tend to foster innovation, where MS has always shown they like to play dirty and trample other peoples innovation.
Absolute 100% bullshit that Apple could touch the tip of Microsoft's horns in the evil category. Apple would have to run riot and rampage for decades to even catch up close. Saddam would be preferable to Gates. The only good software company is ANYBODY BUT MICROSOFT. No contest. Nobody else even comes close, in their kinkiest dreams.
But, hey, let's trust Rolling Stone to be a source of technology wisdom.
"Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!" - Steve Jobs
Talk about spin:
Forgetting that Steve Jobs explained the decision to announce now rather than later. His explanation was that Apple was about to file applications with the FCC. Jobs wanted to quell any rumors and address everything up front once Apple did that.
I guess this is compared to Cairo and Longhorn where some features promised have not been released in Vista even though they were promised 10 years ago. These announcements by MS had the effect of stifling adoption of other OS like OS/2, NextOS, etc. Maybe Apple will do the same thing, but I would wait til summer before I would accuse Apple of MS tricks.
Did he happen to read the rest of the article where Jobs explains that Apple has to include DRM or the content providers would not license the content to Apple. Also Apple is not alone in this situation. Sony, MS, Best Buy, hmmm. It seems that most online music distributors use DRM.
I don't know where this information comes from, but Apple's statement is thus:
Considering that some MS applications don't work with Vista, most companies are waiting until SP1 to install Vista, and other third party vendors like McAfee, Intuit, etc, are also having issues with Vista, I don't see how Apple's stance is unique.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Adobe is the new Microsoft, you nimrods.
The qualities of Microsoft do not apply to Apple, but DO apply to Adobe.
Compare the differences between Win2k & XP... How much better is it? Not at all, really? But they charged for the upgrade. They pretty much released the same software in different packages, and no one complained. Now compare Adobe CS1 & CS2. Big expensive upgrade -- that didn't upgrade anything (really).
Apple doesn't flood the market with inferior product because it knows it will still make a profit and shut down the smaller guy.
Point is, they might shut down the smaller guy, bully or walk all over them, but their products, if anything, are hardly inferior defective knock offs of previosly released products.
The Admin and the Engineer
MS is ingrained in corporate world... read infoworld.com for good look at entire enterprise including Macs.
Competition is good but companies hate it... look at Cable TV, Cell phones, etc... when was the last time you ever saw a "gas price war"? (or even know what that is)
Too much corporate influence in US govt has allowed too many (near) monopolies to be created, hurting competition, consumers, and the economy...
Time to really clean house in Washington... get rid of all lobby and special interest money - public funding of campaigns.
Everyone sure loves to knock Apple now they're doing well, eh? Disgusting, two-faced hypocrisy by shit media looking for an easy story. Oh, and phoney PR stories printed in rags by ... oh ... say ... MICROSOFT and every other frickin' competitor out there.
Adobe's market cap is not even 1/3 of Apples. And Apples is barely 1/2 of Microsoft's.
Adobe is but a drop in the bucket compared to Microsoft. Keep dreaming.
they are the closest thing to the ultimate in coolness as you can get
U R RONG
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Not a household name? Take a peek at the news sometime (A google news search for IBM turns up @15000 hits - posted within days, if not hours). Backend or not, mention the company name and you'll find that a ton of people will know someone who works for, or has worked for, or wants to work for IBM. They have a huge corporate presence, with divisions all over the nation. Just because a product isn't present doesn't mean that the corporate name has no cachet: employment means something too, especially to consumers who like to consume.
"Tu fui, ego eris" - Virgil
Where do you get the idea Safari changes are released in "large dumps"? You can get nightly builds of Webkit.
Apples intent is to leverage open source but they have given back, and a lot. They have helped with GCC changes. They have (as noted) helped build Webkit from KHTML. They released launchd as open source, along with a lot of other stuff.
They also don't demand that you use their platform to run their media - "thier media" is really AACs, an open standard. The stores songs run on Windows as well as Macs, but using the Apple iTunes tool to rip music you can rip to either MP3 or AAC.
They are doing better supporting open source, and open formats than many give them credit for.
I'm not really that worried about Google myself unless people started storing everything on the Google servers. But I think a few accidental deletions (as we have already seen happen with email accounts) teach a lesson very quickly about the primary place to start user data.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does Apple create anything close to MS Office? No.
:)
Does Apple create anything close to Active Directory? No.
Does Apple create anything close to Exchange or MS Server products? Not really.
The first one puts it pretty much out of the ballpark. Microsoft isn't successful because of consumers, but rather business adopters. This is the case from MS DOS back in "the day". IBM helped Microsoft get to where they are today. Apple has no such leverage because they are their own hardware vendor. They can't license out, make some deals, and get the OS installed at a discounted price for corporations to try out. Especially approaching the startups and saying "Hey we'll give you all these cheap PCs and software provided you make use of our technology only".
It could happen, but Apple isn't posturing themselves to do it. So the answer stands right now, as a big fat NO.
Though I'm curious, if Apple came up with an Active Directory, Exchange, Sharepoint, and Office replacement that was 'industrial' for administrative uses and solid as Apples have proven to be thus far, I would definitely have some curiosity to try it out
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
OS X already doesn't require a key to activate. You put it in and go.
Steve never says that we should do away with intellectual property; his essay boils down to saying DRM is counter-productive and doesn't actually do anything other than piss people off. You can buy unDRMed music if you want, but for online distribution, we're needlessly hindered, and he's right.
That a big leap to implying that he's a hypocrite because he won't give away the company.
Also, I rather think that whoever writes this sort of thing should use the products, or research the company at least a little. I've NEVER used a key to activate OS X, all the way back to 10.0. Don't criticize the company for things they already do right.
The main reason is simple. Apple only works with Apple products. Of course coders have made exceptions, but legally, most of Apple's hardware will ONLY work with other Apple items. Apple makes the computers, and you're stuck with it. You can't do what you do with Microsoft, and buy your motherboard from here, your video card here, your audio card there, etc. It's Apples unilateralism towards its own products that limit's its potential (or its danger, depending on your point of view.)
I guess you can consider them the new M$ the day Apple takes 5 years to develop a substantial upgrade to its flag OS, only to find out it took out most of the new features that were advertised during development, then goes into the console wars doing not too bad, and comes out with a sub par media player. Bottom line is, the question is inherently flawed. What does it mean to be the new MS? If you mean the main provider of home computer solutions, maybe. If you mean the company everyone loves to hate, with all the mostly satisfied iPod owners (vs. the 3 Zune users in the country), I doubt it. Being the #1 at something doesn't mean that you're necessarily running a monopoly. It just means you're either a) good at what you do or b) putting everyone else at a disadvantage. Apple does a) and obtains b), while Microsoft does b) because, let's face it, a) is not really in their ballpark.
Steve Jobs and Apple have repeatedly shown that they aren't "just like Microsoft" in their actions.
//e to the Macintosh - so it makes sense he was let go to do other things.
1. Compare Apple's software registration/installation process to Microsoft's. With OS X, you install and optionally provide your name, address, and phone number. Done. With Microsoft? Type in a lengthy product key that must be validated by Microsoft to activate your installation. Change enough hardware in your system, or dump it in favor of a new one, and you have to re-activate.
2. Microsoft's business plan centers around buying up promising new technologies of others, and re-branding them with the Microsoft logo. (MS couldn't even write their own pinball game for Windows, for crying out loud! They bought it from Maxis!) Apple's plan centers around Q&A, plus designers kept on staff like Mr. Ives, to design stylish, yet functional enclosures for the hardware products.
3. What "treatment of Woz" are you referring to? The guy still remains in regular contact with Steve Jobs, and in fact, I recall he was instrumental in Apple doing a new revision of the aluminum Powerbook G4 motherboard, after he discovered a flaw causing problems with it not properly using all of the RAM when you upgraded to the max. allowable memory. Woz said he's not really interested in being a salesman or in dealing with all the hassles of running a big business like Apple. He was never a big fan of the direction Jobs wanted Apple to go when they moved from the
4. It seems obvious to me that Apple is not nearly as "pro DRM" as Microsoft is. They only agreed to it (as watered-down as they could get record companies to go for) so they could get their music store off the ground with digital downloads. Now, Jobs is coming out against DRM - since he feels the digitial download marketplace has proven itself. Microsoft, by contrast, added much MORE DRM in Vista.
5. No argument on Apple's legal action against the bloggers being bad. But, at least they did come to their senses and drop those charges.
last time a guy catch an apple was a big mess :D
the thing to keep in mind is the definition of "evil". in consumerist america, that usually means whether the company has the consumers' interest at heart. when i'm using windows, i don't feel like microsoft gives a rats' shit about me. they care more about MSN, or their deal with company X, or whatever. when I use os x, i feel that apple has put a lot of thought into how a customer, like myself, uses the computer and the os.
both companies could be committing horrible atrocities against freedom and humanity, for all i know (and I'm not downplaying that), but from a user-experience standpoint, microsoft *is* evil, and apple (and google for that matter) come out looking good.
user experience, in my mind, is at the heart of this debate.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
Not likely. Safari was already in public beta by the time Microsoft formally discontinued IE for Mac (though it was already abandonware), and was well-established as the Mac OS X browser of choice by the time Microsoft pulled the plug.
IE/Mac's last major update, aside from security fixes, was in 2001. Safari was announced in January 2003. Six months later, Safari 1.0 hit the net and Microsoft declared they would stop updating IE/Mac. IE enjoyed another year and a half of support (during which time before Microsoft finally declared it dead and stopped offering it for download at the end of 2005.
By then, IE/Mac was essentially irrelevant to the Mac's viability.
Maybe the original poster can only refer to penultimate qualities because he belongs to a religion where ultimate qualities are reserved for its god. Then saying that something other than the god was the 'ultimate source of cool' would be sacrilegious. That would still be annoying, though. Perhaps the use of 'penultimate' should be discouraged in cases where it's unclear what's ultimate. That, or at least toss us a footnote as to what's ultimate.
Loose lips lose spit.
I'm not sure 'penuntimate' is the word the author wanted... penultimate Pronunciation (p-nlt-mt) adj. 1. Next to last.
Never happened. True story.
Since you hesitated to dupe.
Yes, but not on Slashdot.
Say hello to my little sig.
Apple has a legal obligation to act in the best financial interests of it's shareholders, regardless of what they actually want. Otherwise, stockholders could collude with each other to liquidate the company into their pockets at the expense of the minority.
Apple Inc. is a Software Company(?)
Based on a detailed analysis of Apple's patent portfolio, we discovered at a high level that Apple is primarily a software company with roughly 65% of its issued patents being related to software elements like its: operating system; means for displaying information; networking; and image processing. If Apple is evil, then they aren't patenting it like Microsoft.
Evil Unseen - Apple's Growing Patent Application Base
Apple does have a slew of smart applications pending. One of the most interesting patent applications on our watch list, with a priority date reaching back to 2002, reads like this: "A method for synchronizing media contents between a portable media player and a media host... and synchronizing media content between the media player and the media host via the wireless connection..."
Apple may be able to make an iPhone call to Redmond if this one issues as written.
For the last 30 years, Apple _has_been_ one of the tech bad guys, and they continue to be. Where have you been during that time? --AC
I was running OSX 10.4 on an original Tangerine iBook until last week. I have a PII IBM SE600 laptop - care to speculate on how well XP runs on it? (Hint: it is running Kubuntu now).
The iBook now runs FC6 - and screamingly fast, thank you, but my point was - on comparably old hardware, Apple OS products have a longer usability range.
If you mean breaking 'classic' apps not running in OSX, well, there is a classic environment. Otherwise, they gave plenty of notice before the 'clean break'. If there is a 'gotta have' app in OS9, well, keep your hardware - there are lots of them still out there, running well.
As far as 'breaking' the UI, sure - you can't customize Apples' interface terribly much. What are you trying to change and why? You can write your own gui apps in OSX using Xcode and the development libraries, provided with the purchase of the OS. If you don't like that, you can run X apps. You can mix and match custom -non-human-interface-guideline compliant apps and X apps to make your desktop as ugly as you like.
BTW - Having a DOS prompt in XP hardly compares - it's only really useful if you use it to run Cygwin and related utils, and then you are about up to OSX (ok, BSD, really - Apple knew a good thing when they saw it, and rather than re-implement UNIX tools badly, they just incorporated them wholesale) command-line functionality.
I can also run DOS apps on my Mac, in emulation. Castle Wolfenstein, anyone?
If Apple is the penultimate source? In other words, according to this, Apple is the second-greatest source of cool, so there must be one that's better.
You can't be really evil, evil so much that your customers hate you, without market dominance to such a degree that it counts as monopoly.
Therefore Apple will not become the next "Big Evil".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Is not just because they use DRM (don't be naive, if they told the record companies they'd either shut down or stop using DRM, they wouldn't let iTunes shut down). It's because they use DRM to prevent competition in the hardware market. Both in music players, and on desktops. There is absolutely no technical reason OS X can't run on Dells.
They just are. They weren't created, they just happened. Corporations didn't just happen, they were created for a specific purpose.
Calling companies evil is somewhat problematic and inaccurate. The sole existence of companies is to make a profit. Companies have to do that in a competive market economy. So long as the market is competive, companies will usually set policies to appease the consumer. The real problem is the existence of a monopoly. The monopoly is a problem for both consumer and the company. If a company has a monopoly, then the company has no room to grow in that market (esp. if the market stop growing) and naturally sets policies that are anti-consumer. This manifest itself in many ways such as degrading product quality, decreasing competition in other markets by leveraging the monopoly, and raising prices. Apple does not have a monopoly in any market. For example, DRM is very much the desire of media companies. The music market seems more like a monopoly with its cartel of the big four. Apple had nothing to gain when it implemented DRM except right to sell from that cartel's library. However, Apple did somewhat responded to consumer by providing a water down DRM and has recently come out against it all together. As for the iPhone and iTV, both face an uphill battle to gain market dominance. Thus, the real evil is not the companies but we as the consumer allowing monopolies to exist. Apple may become "evil" but we will ultimately put it in that position.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
This article is just garbage. Apple calls for the end of DRM as opposed to proliferating their own proprietary DRM to other devices (which would make Apple's proprietary DRM the de-facto industry standard) and that makes Apple the next Microsoft?? What?? Where the hell is the logic in that assertion? Proposing a new paradigm that would be beneficial to consumers and would level the playing field makes Apple evil? It makes the "Microsoft-like". Good god.
It has become completely impossible to have a reasoned discussion about Apple or Microsoft. Even here on Slashdot where DRM is universally despised, I've read numerous highly rated posts that used the same logic as this author. So many people have a visceral hatred for Apple or Microsoft, they simple lose the ability to think clearly.
Instead of cheering "Yay, the largest provider of music downloads is calling for the end of playback restrictions", this guy is trying to smear the announcement by speculating on Jobs's motives and calling it propaganda. Well, fine. It its self-serving propaganda.
The important point is that its propaganda promoting a paradigm shift that will beneficial to me, the consumer. Whether it is beneficial or damaging to Apple or its competitors, I don't care. Whether Jobs is motivated by a desire to dodge the attacks of European consumer groups or is speaking from the heart is irrelevant to me.
I have to wonder how the author of the article would have responded had Jobs announced plans to license Fairplay to other vendors? I suspect he would have wrote a scorching condemnation of Apple and Jobs for making such a self-serving and market grabbing move. He would be railing against Jobs for accelerating the proliferation of DRM and scolding him for not calling for the end of DRM. His motives are far more suspect than Jobs's motives.
If they allow 3rd party hardware manufacturing they might still stand a chance. I'm not going to buy a computer I can't take apart and change around.
. . . I, for one will gladly welcome our new evil Cupertino overlords.
"If your parents never had children, chances are you wonât either." -Dick Cavett
What do they mean, Apple being the "new" evil empire? Since when wasn't Apple either evil OR an empire (meaning monopoly)? Just because they were an irrelevant, marginalized monopoly doesn't mean they weren't one, the same way it's possible for more than one empire to exist.
And as far as I can tell, Apple has pretty much always been evil. Look at the way they have always treated third-party hardware and software. Look at how they have always treated companies selling Apple products. Look at how they have always treated retail outlets selling Apple products.
Apple today is closer to having the complete and brutal monopoly over all things Apple they have ALWAYS BEEN SEEKING. Nobody except Apple is allowed to make any money from anything Apple related: you can only buy Apple stuff at the Apple Store or at Apple.com, businesses can only purchase hardware or software for Apples through Apple, and Apple makes sure it's stuff only works with Apple stuff: iTunes purchased music will not work on non-Apple MP3 players, and they made DAMN sure iTunes wouldn't work on Vista (despite having over two years to prepare for it, not including the fact that Vista has been out for around six months).
There is nothing "new" about the evil Apple empire. The only thing new is people removing their blinders.
Jobs calls for the end of DRM while continuing to sell music that uses it is proof that....Apple honors the contracts it signs? Nah, that couldn't be it, could it? Warning people not to upgrade to Vista while not rushing to fix iTunes is evidence of how evil Apple is? It isn't that Vista's kernel is so burdened with badly written and poorly documented code that Apple is having trouble getting QuickTime, iTunes, and FairPlay code to work properly? Nah, couldn't be.
The real problem here, as far as I can see, is that Apple is so buttoned down with secrecy that there's no one at Apple, other than Steven Jobs, who is able to give us any information. If Apple blogged maybe we'd all be less ignorant about our pronouncements. No, the sad fact is that we are all operating under a heavy blanket of ignorance. And that, for me is Apple's - and our - big problem.
I *still* find there are times when only Font/DA Mover will do the job. That's been around about as long as I've been using the Macintosh (first got my grubby mitts on a 512ke in 1987 and never looked back).
If working with an "Evil" company made other companies evil, civilization would have entirely collapsed with the advent of the corporation. Apple choosing just Cingular over a plethora of carriers is just indicative of Jobs' desire to keep it simple. Integrating with systems of other companies would produce additional problems in the long run, as well as increase initial costs. You can see the same philosophy applied to platform control; Apple holds control of their platform to keep their code relatively simple, as opposed to Microsoft's method of having dozens if not hundreds of platforms to work with, complicating their code further.
As for the essay, It should be clear enough from Job's own quotes here that he sees enforcing DRM as a waste of time and money on his part. In particular, Apple's own contractual obligation to fix whenever DRM breaks within a specific period of time. "...a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store." He continues with the following, further indicating how small a role DRM plays on an iPod itself, and simultaneously pointing out that iPod sales are not tied to sales of DRMed music. "Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store.... This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM." And the rest is more of the same, eventually pointing out that the music industry is selling DRM free CDs themselves.
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/>
From the content and apple behavior over the last ten years, it appears to me that Jobs is trying sway public opinion enough to put some kind of pressure on the music industry to drop DRM. Dropping DRM altogether would both improve public opinion of his company and drop DRM related expenditures across all of Apple. Again, this fits in line with Jobs idea to keep it simple.
Problems coming from the onset of Vista could have been seen by anyone not wearing blinders and a welding hood. Since when has a Microsoft operating system EVER played well with a competitor's filesystem. Early adopters have noone to blame but themselves?
Finally, the Apple Corps deal was inevitable ever since Apple entered the music biz with iTunes and the iPod, as I seem to recall that operating iTunes violates their previous agreement.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
No, the original correction was right. Your correction to the correction was bascially wrong but you did rephrase the original statement so that it was no longer nonsense. The problem was that ultimate was the right word to use but whoever wrote "Apple, the penultimate source of cool", thought that penultimate sounded even cooler but was insufficiently educated to realize that tacking on a syllable can significantly change meaning in this case. Just because learning Latin is no longer required to be considered educated does not mean all dictionaries can be blithely ignored.
Just so you have a heads up I clicked on your sig...twice.
In our society, anyone more successful than us is automatically the bad guy.
No one likes a winner - that's why the media invented terms like "iPod Killer" and publishes glowing articles on every new product to hit the market that can fit the bill, salivating for Apples failure.
The same reason America's Funniest Home Video's was so successful. The same reason we embedd "journalists" in military units in theatres of war to catch all that death on film. Culturally ingrained sadism.
And how many PC crashes are caused by these wonderful third-party apps? Does it make Apple evil because they want to have some control over the performance and quality of their product? I don't think so, Tim!
...They'd have to prise my designer coffee table from my cold, dead hands first!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
You shall have iQUEEN, beautiful and one-button as the Dawn.
But I'll charge way too much for hardware: all shall love me and despair!
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
The nice thing about the English language is that words can be used in context to mean what we want them to, as long as others understand it. If the phrase were "the ultimate source of cool", we would understand it to mean the best source of cool. Not the last. In the same sense, penultimate, in context, would mean second to best source of cool. Not the second to last.
--Edward Dassmesser
Oh, I almost forgot to welcome all you newbies to /.
Sure, Apple, like any profit-motivated corporation, has done its share of lame things. Furthermore, there is nothing in the rules that says they won't, but to annoint them the next evil empire before Microsoft has stopped being it, and before Apple is really in any position to get there is sorta weird. Just a couple of months ago, people were saying it would be Google. What makes MS evil, at least to me, isn't their size or prominence. It's nothing more than they don't have the end user in mind with their products. They don't make a piece of software meant to work with everything and meant to stand the test of time. They make it to trap you into the next upgrade, and get you hooked on non-standard features. Despite this, they still make a decent program every once in a while. Hell, I run Parallels primarily so that I can use Outlook. But what's amazing here is this: you're citing Apple's anti-DRM rumbling as evidence of them being evil? Oy vey. Now that just shows that you're reaching.
That would be an old version of Missile Command I believe:
http://www.mrob.com/pub/source/missile.html
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Apple has been pissing a lot of people off, in a lot of different spheres, and yet trying to play the paragon . First, they have had a lot of hardware issues the last 3 years. Apple sold a lot of iPods but I also know a lot of people that got burned by an iPod that stopped working (for one weak reason or another- looking at it too hard!). There were batteries recalled, laptops that got too hot, Nano's that scratched very easy etc. Switching to Intel parts was good for performance but it took some shine off Apple's identity.
On top of that Apple has been in struggles with the labels for awhile (it wasn't long ago that labels wanted a share of iPod sales - Microsoft has since gone along with that) and this last proposal of Job's looks self centered even if he has good points to make. The Apple Vista ads look a bit lame along with the iTunes compatibility problems (iTunes is over-rated anyway imo). The iPhone looks makes Apple look a bit cheeky. Of course all Apple has to do in Europe ( a lot of people had crapped up iPods there too) is be the big American company and it automatically becomes a target for legal/financial bloodsucking ala Microsoft (the Clinton Justice Dept. in US did likewise).
I don't compare Apple to Microsoft at all because a lot of people "need Microsoft" (that was Gates model for along time - make people need you) where they don't need Apple at all. Not being needed by people, while still playing the declining yet still snotty, prima donna geek (waves to Linux fans!) is tempting people to harbor contempt they would like to act on. When people having this contempt notice a ground swell of it from others as well then that's when it gets ugliest. Apple might be close to that point.
Apple isn't exactly evil.
Apple: Makes their computers compatible with Windows.
Microsoft: Attempts to lock Linux out of Vista.
That comparison in itself is a good example of how Apple is NOT evil.
next to the last AGGGHHHHH!!!!!! the "next to the last" in cool? Please get your mom to proofread your submissions.
Apple has a near-monopoly in mp3 players and uses it to the disadvantage of competitors and of end users of competing products (eg: Linux users, no quicktime, no iTunes, etc). Them being evil assholes in those areas doesn't mean they have to replace MS in other areas.
Except for the usual suspects (environmental issues, patents, lawyers, and don't forget the shareholders) Apple differs enormously from an Evil Empire. iPods do not suck, they even improve. Mac OS X is faser on each iteration. The goal is user experience and good taste. The mindset is doing things right. The issue is "survive". Still, there is a long way to go, before this attitude blows away joe average.
It still is David vs. Goliath, a foot in the door, a scratch in Microsofts wallpaper.
As long as they keep this same focus, I am not considering this leadership as evil. I don't see greed, I see vision.
--------
* Sigh *
Not everyone needs DRM, idiot.
Ever heard of Lsongs?
Ogg, MP3, whatever, they've got it, for 0.88$ a song. All you need is a copy of Freespire or Linspire. No DRM whatsoever. And Lsongs still draws a profit.
Some digital rights are more eqaul than others.
t m
t m
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/MacOSX.h
Imagine if recording artists had rules as strict as Apple's Software License in their CD cases:
3. Transfer.
You may not rent, lease, lend, redistribute or sublicense the Apple Software. You may, however, make a one-time permanent transfer of all of your license rights to the Apple Software (in its original form as provided by Apple) to another party, provided that: (a) the transfer must include all of the Apple Software, including all its component parts, original media, printed materials and this License; (b) you do not retain any copies of the Apple Software, full or partial, including copies stored on a computer or other storage device; and (c) the party receiving the Apple Software reads and agrees to accept the terms and conditions of this License. You may not rent, lease, lend, redistribute, sublicense or transfer any Apple Software that has been modified or replaced under Section 2B above. NFR (Not for Resale) Copies: Notwithstanding other sections of this License, Apple Software labeled or otherwise provided to you on a promotional basis may only be used for demonstration, testing and evaluation purposes and may not be resold or transferred.
Apple Computer, Inc.
Software License Agreement for Mac OS X
Single Use License
PLEASE READ THIS SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT ("LICENSE") CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THE SOFTWARE. BY USING THE SOFTWARE, YOU ARE AGREEING TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. IF YOU ARE ACCESSING THE SOFTWARE ELECTRONICALLY, SIGNIFY YOUR AGREEMENT TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE BY CLICKING THE "AGREE/ACCEPT" BUTTON. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE, DO NOT USE THE SOFTWARE AND (IF APPLICABLE) RETURN THE APPLE SOFTWARE TO THE PLACE WHERE YOU OBTAINED IT FOR A REFUND OR, IF THE SOFTWARE WAS ACCESSED ELECTRONICALLY, CLICK "DISAGREE/DECLINE".
IMPORTANT NOTE: To the extent this software may be used to reproduce materials, it is licensed to you only for reproduction of materials you are authorized or legally permitted to reproduce.
1. General.
The software (including Boot ROM code), documentation and any fonts accompanying this License whether on disk, in read only memory, on any other media or in any other form (collectively the "Apple Software") are licensed, not sold, to you by Apple Computer, Inc. ("Apple") for use only under the terms of this License, and Apple reserves all rights not expressly granted to you. The rights granted herein are limited to Apple's and its licensors' intellectual property rights in the Apple Software and do not include any other patents or intellectual property rights. You own the media on which the Apple Software is recorded but Apple and/or Apple's licensor(s) retain ownership of the Apple Software itself. The terms of this License will govern any software upgrades provided by Apple that replace and/or supplement the original Apple Software product, unless such upgrade is accompanied by a separate license in which case the terms of that license will govern.
2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.
A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time,and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time. You may make one copy of the Apple Software (excluding the Boot ROM code) in machine-readable form for backup purposes only; provided that the backup copy must include all copyright or other proprietary notices contained on the original.
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/MacOSX.h
Jobs is funny. His silly doublespeak about DRM is just a riot. Anti-DRM messages coming from the head of THE largest single shareholder of Disney stock (voting stock at that) is just...well, I think you get the picture. If he was speaking more than hot air, he'd be the first one to strip everything on iTunes of DRM, including every single Disney and Pixar title, all of the tv shows from ABC, and would make Sony release their Disney Blu-Ray titles without BD+ DRM. I don't see that happening. Ever.
I think it's more along the lines of, "Everyone else should remove their DRM so we can sell their products on iTunes for a higher profit margin."
Mod me whatever, but Jobs is no knight in shining armor folks. If he was, Disney wouldn't be pulling the crap that they pull with public domain material and copyright extensions, and iTunes products would never have had DRM in the first place.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Also some screenshots and more information here:
l :)
http://home.earthlink.net/~mrob/pub/missile20.htm
iPod dominates the music player because it's a good product with some slick marketing. Windoze dominates desktop OSs by an accident of history.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I know this is off-topic, but I found it somewhat ironic and quite humorous that a Windows Vista ad was displayed immediately below the article. The ad said, "This way to Wow."
And a fond welcome to you too ;)
... see my small cartoon: http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/02 /msapple.html
Bye,
Oliver
If you're going to paranoid, might as well poke the mike with a soldering iron too
What's the problem? what's stopping you? Need those things?
Oh, I see.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Lend me your ears, and I'll tell you a tale.
Microsoft had over 90% of the market. That's step one, but even that is fine.
They then used that market power to force their browser on to the desktop, by threatening hardware manufacturers with economic ruin if they tried to install Netscape on the desktop. That is behaving like a monopoly.
If Apple has captured 70% of the market, that's not a monopoly. They're not threatening ANYBODY with anything but competition.
Not wanting to share DRM? If that's so great, why doesn't MS share? Or Real? I want to put Real media on my Zune with my Mac iTunes!!!! I can't do that, either.
In fact, the RIAA's policy is a) to allow the record labels to set pricing, not Mr. Jobs. Go with variable pricing: the average price, hint, hint, will be higher, won't it? If you want the Columbia Record Club experience, go with variable pricing; and b) the RIAA wants to share the DRM with Apple. Hint: this is the RIAA. That means the music cartel, or a big part of it, wants that. I thought all you hip bastards were anti-RIAA.
The only way out, EVEN IF STEVE JOBS WANTS IT, linux bois, is to abolish DRM, which is not only not accomplished if DRM is "shared," but the market becomes stable with DRM only. All the parties will then have no possibility of backing out. Everybody will be unified in screwing the consumer. Waytago!
Apple is not just trying to become Microsoft- they're shooting for something more. They're trying to impose a massive monopoly over the software AND hardware industries. They're using OS X as a way to lock consumers into their hardware, which only they offer. Isn't it obvious?
If Microsoft started building whole systems, and the next version of Windows only worked on a Microsoft-branded box, what do you think would happen? They'd be slammed with a massive anti-trust lawsuit. Apple gets away with it, though, because their market share isn't large enough... yet. In other words, Apple's current business model is doomed. If they do get a dominant market share, they're gonna get nailed, and if they don't, well, they don't. Mac users lose either way.
Of course, the Apple fanboys are too busy circle-jerking to figure any of that out.
I'm no Microsoft fan, but hey, at least M$ generally stays away from hardware, and PCs are cheap. Dealing with Windows still beats paying a ton of money for Apple's Kool-Aid. In my eyes, Apple is already more evil than Microsoft.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
...once they enter the vacuum cleaner business.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1 bottles of beer on the wall. Take one down, pass it round... Oh, umm...
there _are_ some of us who never liked Apple's attitude _either_. Guess that would explain the linux machines scattered about my place.
Sorry, but this really isn't a very good comparison. Apple only lets OS X run on their own hardware. You see that big, shiny silver or white thing in front of you with the fruit logo on it? That is your software key for OS X. Apple doesn't care where you got your copy of OS X, because they know that you at least paid for Apple hardware to run it. As soon as Apple lets OS X be installed on hardware from other companies with no key, then you can make this argument. Until that time, it is pure bullshit.
This doesn't sound that bad to me:
3. Don't pirate our software.
You can permanently sell it to or transfer it to someone else if you want. (record companies have already come out against this)
If someone gave you a "Not for resale" copy (which are free), don't give it or sell it to someone.
1. Don't copy our boot ROM, or our documentation as they are not yours.
2. This is a 1 seat license (we offer family licenses at a steep discount)... don't install it on more than 1 machine (although we really would never know as it doesn't have some draconian activation scheme built in). Feel free to make a backup -- just make sure you keep the license and copyright notices on the disc.
Since we designed this software to be used by our customers on Apple computers, and we give you a "free" copy with said Apple computer, and we obviously spent a lot of resources in developing it, - we don't give you permission run it on your TigerDirect POS.
Compared to the other paid OS'es out there, I again don't really think that their license is especially restrictive. But that's just my opinion.. I could be wrong.
I'm not sure what your point is. Why not dig up what the Microsoft terms of license are. OS X isn't Linux and they don't give it away for free, but the fact of the matter is that they still don't assume that you're a criminal out to steal everything in sight, and ask politely that you follow the rules of their unenforceable agreement. Nothing prevents me from installing that software on 25 machines instead of 1 other than my conscience. All things considered these days, that's pretty nice of them.
Since the early days.
Its only Apple Fanboi's and the over-the-top Apple marketing that have painted Apple as a nice, friendly company.
Not until it runs on my current hardware and plays a *decent* selection of games. You can't understate the significance of gaming in OS selection. "Bigger than Hollywood" ring any bells?
Seems like they were trolling for attention from the geek set.
That's idiotic!
(I hope you understand by the context that I meant "brilliant" by "idiotic" in the previous sentence and "silly" by "brilliant" in this sentence.)
how to invest, a novice's guide
Then realized it was Rolling Stone...
Maybe I am too old... but before the MS era, APPLE was much much more eviler than MS.
f! close system!
2. am i to understand apple is the only company without compatible vista software ready to go on launch day?
The nice thing about the English language is that words can be used in context to mean what we want them to, as long as others understand it. If the phrase were "the ultimate source of cool", we would understand it to mean the best source of cool. Not the last. In the same sense, penultimate, in context, would mean second to best source of cool. Not the second to last.
The other thing about english is that you can pick your words to address your audience. Using the words "Hey niggas" to say hello is great if your in a room full of white middle accountants's and your trying to be ironic. Saying the same phrase while in a drug den in kingston(jaimaca) may not be so funny or garner the same reaction if you are the one of the above accountants. So using a word defined as "second to last" while meaning "best" to a group of pedantic nerds is obviously going to make you look foolish.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
apple will die with microsoft as the operational system paradigm will become obsolete
"They aren't saying "DRM is bad" and still using it. They are saying "DRM is bad, but we are under forced contractual obligations to use it - please convince the record companies of this so that we can drop it as well."
The problem with that excuse is that Apple had no obligation to sign the agreements in the first place. No obligation to start iTunes if they needed DRM to get the music (in fact if Jobs' claims about iPod users not buying much music from iTunes were true, not having iTunes wouldn't be much of a problem). I understand the trade-off (it's the same type MS is making), but if Jobs were truly against DRM, he would have "just said no".
You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not
join them. You were supposed to bring balance to the force, not leave
it in darkness.
Sounds like MS's own marketing department could have written this.
Nobody except Apple is allowed to make any money from anything Apple related: you can only buy Apple stuff at the Apple Store or at Apple.com, businesses can only purchase hardware or software for Apples through Apple, and Apple makes sure it's stuff only works with Apple stuff:
I call BS! I know of a number of places, stores, I can legally buy Apple merchandize from. I know of two stores that legally sell Apple stuff, computers and iPods, peripherals, software for Macs, and accessories for iPod exclusively. They not only sell these but also offer Apple authorized repairs and services, one is not more than 10 minutes walk for me. Though I wouldn't buy one there, peolle can even buy Macbooks; iMacs, Mac Minis, and Mac Pros; Apple Cinema displays; or iPods from Best Buy. I can think of other national retailers that also sell Apple stuff. Simply, saying users can only buy Macs, iPods, and other Apple stuff from Apple is pure BS!
FalconShould there be a Law?
Almost,
But now you have the option to forgo the land line and choose from several cell phone providers (available from several providers other than AT&T).
Or maybe even VOIP through your cable modem. (though in some places, you could be stuck with AT&T for cable too)
Still, the trend of re-combining is not good.
I'll believe Apple is "the new Microsoft" when Mac users stop getting treated like second-class citizens on the Internet.
"Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately owned and operated for profit, and in which distribution, production and pricing of goods and services are determined in a largely free market." - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism) It's a free market. You can't be a "nice guy" and survive in business.
The problem is that Apple doesn't offer a regular-sized, consumer-level Core2Duo-based tower computer. The Mac Pro certainly doesn't count because it's Xeon-based, high-end workstation hardware and you pay for that.
That was a mistake Apple made when they got rid of thier mid range Macs. Apple needs to bring back a Mac between the iMac or Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. Why they got rid of the mid range Macs I don't know or can fantom.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Oh, and by the way, are you religious? Are you aware that this statement applies to God? Just thought I'd mention that. If you believe in a God with any shred of compassion, then you must reject the "absolute power" statement.
:)
Just philosophical rambling, but we are assuming that an individual who gains "absoulte power" does not have "absolute knowledge" - that is, they can and will do anything, but don't have the wisdom to forsee all the consequences and in fact may think there aren't any.
Without the wisdom to know which paths ultimately lead to "corruption" and which do not sooner or later a small step will be taken, and then another. It truly is a silppery slope due to due to the momentum built. However, at any point is possible to just stop but most people don't realize this because one's thoughts are caught up in the momentum as well.
Told you this was OT.
And a fond welcome to you both?! I love when these threads start.
But Steve up there was right. In essence, you don't know anything if you don't know anything about the words you use -- what you 'know' is suspect, and what you communicate to others is unreliable. I can't believe no one has to take Latin in school anymore. At the same time, it's a wonder that many kids can read at all by the time they are in high school (disclosure: I took 3 years of Latin in high school and my wife teaches high school reading). Sorry for being kinda epistemological.
(Wish I'd had to take Greek too.)
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Will there ever be a whole day where there is no story on Slashdot whose tags are "no, yes, apple, microsoft, flamebait"?
The British East India Company or the Dutch East India Company? The Dutch company preceded the British company by about 100 years, and was one of the first businesses to be granted a corporate charter. The Dutch started granting corporate charters to shipping companies to limit the liability of the shipping business. Prior to corporate charters being granted when a ship sank, otherwise was lost, or lost the cargo the owner of the company was held liable which discouraged people from shipping. To spur shipping the Dutch crown authorized corporations to form wherein an invester could only loose the amount of thier investment. As a result the Netherlands became the biggest traders for a while.
FalconShould there be a Law?
No, you are assuming that. Absolute power and absolute knowledge does not imply absolute morality or absolute responsibility.
If you really do have absolute power, then there are no permanent consequences for you. You can just will that there be no consequences!
Are we talking about humans and corporations again? Because...
I don't see how that's inevitable either.
Maybe it's just because I'm sitting on the outside, but why is it so hard for a recording industry executive to look at the world today and say "DRM is wrong"? Or, who exactly was it at Sony who decided a rootkit was OK?...
I don't get how you get that far gone without noticing -- without looking at yourself in the mirror one day and saying "Man, that is one evil fuck I've become."
No, they willfully go down that road. Maybe it's a slippery slope, maybe they were tempted slowly, but at some point, they made a choice to be evil, greedy sons-of-bitches -- or to continue to be evil, greedy sons-of-bitches.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
DEAR GOD YES! Apple IS becoming the new Microsoft. But what makes this even more tragic is that they aren't even as GOOD as Microsoft. First of all, Apple has done nothing but bitch and whine about how they had features before Vista. Well first of all, the widgets was not Apple, nor was it Microsoft. It was Konfabulator (which is now owned by Yahoo). Second of all, So what if Vista has OS X features? That's great, no one cares. This just means that people can have a decent looking OS, while playing games more advanced than Photoshop. And 3rd of all, the iPhone...$600 FOR A PHONE!? I don't need a phone that can run OS X, be an iPod, AND a phone at the same time in one device. What's next? An iPod attachment to an Insulin Pump? It honestly would be easier to just buy an iPod and get a phone...and cheaper too, plus your not stuck with shitty service (*cough* Cingular */cough*) */rant*
But the term you'll want to start from is "fiduciary duty".
Of course a company can take more "pro consumer" policies, and donate to charity, but it has to justify those policies as working towards generating profits. If it can be reasonably shown that the officers aren't acting in the best financial interests of all the shareholders, any of them can sue, regardless of the desires of the majority.
It would be illegal for a company to give a full years profits to charity.
And I'm not advocating solely short term thinking (though many people do). All those things are perfectly reasonable, but they have to be shown to be done for the purpose of making money, not because you just want to do them.
I'm not so sure about Jobs. Regardless, as soon as the accepted investment, they entered into an agreement to make as much return as possible.
By the way, Apple isn't a very innovative company. They tend to take the innovations of others, make them shiny, and sell them. Just like Microsoft.
Unless you're claiming that Apple doesn't write software.
This was also before I learned how Apple ganked it from Xerox
Apple didn't steal the GUI from Xerox PARC. In return for an investment in Apple Xerox invited Steve Jobs to Palo Alto Research Center, PARC, in 1979. There he saw some of the technology Xerox was working on there. Seeing the gui Xerox came up with he took the idea back to Apple where the Woz, Steve Wozniak, had a team work on the Lisa which became the Macintosh.
Now here I am 12 years later, typing on an AMD based computer running Windows XP, with my semi-new Mac Book Pro getting more and more use each day; I'm trying to "switch"(back). Much of this desire to switch is fueled by Microsoft's political moves, and not their technology. 2 examples...
For the past 10 years I've used Windows PCs 99%+ of the tyme however I too am switching because of Microsoft. Because of MS's policy of requiring Activation as well as WGA/WPA a few months ago I got a desktop PC with Linux preinstalled and hopefully rsn I'll be getting a Macbook Pro as my laptop.
In my perfect world, Microsoft, Apple, and a major Linux distribution each get 1/3 of the market share, with plenty of room for new up-and-coming OS's.
I'd add interoperability.
FalconShould there be a Law?
While you are arguing that OS X is protected, I have frankly never been confronted with any authorization scheme whatsoever. It may not run on a Dell, but I can own several old Macs and install whatever I want, in spite of Apple's wishes. Isn't this the purpose of DRM -- to protect uncompensated use? An analogous comparison might be asking why Apple AAC files don't play on a Zune, or vice versa.
It seems that Apple does not use much DRM in other areas, so I don't seem to understand how Job's statements are contrary to the company's behavior. Fairplay isn't inserted in the files when I import CDs. It doesn't get in the way of everyday use. And, I can export other file types. Lock-in indeed...
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Apple has never been a "nice" company; for heaven's sake, this is the look-and-feel lawsuit company.
Don't buy Apple because you mistakingly think they are nice, buy them because they make computers that work somewhat better than your average PC and because competition is good for the market.
I am a happy mac user, but I don't think that Apple would be notably more ethical as the top dog than Microsoft was. You know that old adage "power corrupts"? It's not just a trite little saying. It really has a lot of meaning behind it. The implications are enormous, and are reflected in the need for a short-term presidency in any successful democracy. It is almost impossible for anyone to become powerful without being tempted to abuse that power from time to time. Some more egregiously than others, but it will happen. Yet we keep on thinking over and over that if we only got the right person/company in charge, things wouldn't be that way. I don't agree. I think that Apple will become anticompetitive and draconian as soon as they have less to fear by doing so. It seems the nature of things.
Cheers.
I came to this conclusion while reading an article on "back-to-school" computers a while back in which a Windows system was recommended for graphic design students with no mention of a Mac. Without getting into the whole Mac -v- Windows debate, I know from experience working in the pre-press business that it's very Mac-centric and anyone sending files created on a Windows machine for output to a Post Script image setter is at a huge disadvantage. Any tech writer who isn't aware of this is either incompetent or biased
This ain't rocket surgery.
Amazon.com sells a lot of Apple stuff. And they are one of the largest retailers on earth, maybe the largest.
I've never seen the documentation that came with any version of OS X.
I've spent many a nights burning the candle with my friend while we hunted all over Google for fuckin' Linux documentation.
When we found some it was either inapplicable or hopelessly out of date.
OS X just works, and THAT'S worth $130.
(I buy the 'five install' family pack and I share the install CDs with another friend who's also got 2 Macs.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Stewardship
We are stewards of our shareholders' investments and we take that responsibility very seriously. We are committed to increasing long term shareholder value.
Let's be clear on this: "Apple's call to be rid of DRM (while continuing to use it in iTunes)" is not proof that Apple is "evil" or talking out their ass. Apple's signed a lot of contracts with a lot of content producers, and those contracts specify DRM. They can't just toss out that part of the contract. Their hands are tied. They're trying to get them untied.
Anyway, I honestly couldn't care less about the DRM. I don't buy music from Apple for three reasons, in order of importance to me:
#1: I refuse to purchase "new" music. By which I mean, I refuse to go to places like Best Buy and buy brand new CDs. I buy used when I buy at all. Buying from Apple would be like buying a new CD. I refuse to support the RIAA in any way.
#2: It's LOSSY. 128k "near" CD quality. It's not even in the same neighborhood. The same zip code, maybe.
#3: DRM.
And let me emphasise this - items two and three are microscopic in comparison with my first reason. #1 is the sun and #s 2 and 3 are a pair of leptons in comparison. If Apple tomorrow started selling files in un-DRMed Apple Lossless format, I still wouldn't buy from them.
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's only a matter of time (and regulation).
And regulation removes power.
Regulations don't remove power when it's those who will be regulated who write the regulations. And in the case of the current US admin, Bush has appointed industry insiders to positions in which they can write the regulations.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yeah, who's that Walmart upstart that "claims" they're big..
I'd say that Apple is just becoming what Sony was and still thinks it is. So it's more likely that Apple is going to release the ibox station 4.
sometimes, nothing.
I for one welcome our new cool computers making, great software providing, ipod selling evil overlords.
To be honest, I really am anti-microsoft-kind-of-linux-zealot, but the biggest issue with microsoft is the crappy software they make. If they were selling secure unixish OS I just might buy one. Having huge market share alone is not so bad, but having huge market share selling crap is plain wrong.
I'm sure apple would love to be the next evil empire... Microsoft takes a lot of hits, and makes a lot of money. Bill Gates must cry himself to sleep every night on his huge, huge pile of money. I'm a huge fan of Apple products -- many have been very well designed, and I appreciate their interest in form as well as function. OSX works well, is relatively free of bugs. I don't have problems with viruses or spyware, And, being a poet, I don't have to think a lot about how it all works. I like that I don't have to spend a lot of time tinkering with my fridge either. but Apple is just a company. It's not like Steve Jobs craps rainbows or anything. They want to make money. When they make a superior product, I want to give them my money. When they don't -- I don't want to any more. But it would be a lot easier if they didn't have to be so innovative.. if, say.. they could somehow get a huge percentage of the market *without* being particularly innovative. Through exclusivity deals... or monopolistic practice. Why wouldn't that be appealing to them? Shoot... *I'd* like to be the next evil empire, if there's a job opening...
who let a poet in here?
I see it going both ways
A lot of us already know MS has been trying to be more like Apple for quite a while (as eveidenced by articles stating them trying to match Mac/iPod feature by feature.)
But Apple has taken a thing or two from MS's strategies
We use Macs at work and compared to Windows they are a breeze to work with, nary a problem, and I would not want to switch to Windows. But as much as I like them I've seen Apple streching themselves out sacrificing a bit of the business computer market for the consumer electronics market.
The only group that is serious about business needs now seems to be Linux (and those that have adopted it Oracle, Novell, etc.).
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Thank you for playing another edition of "Another stupid Slashdot yes/no question answered."
if they wanted to.
How's that?
FalconShould there be a Law?
That's exactly what it doesn't mean. The article title misused it, and you're repeating the mistake. However since this is Slashdot, you've been modded +5 informative to his +3. It means 'Last but one in a series'. Penultimate implies an ultimate, ie, it's NOT the closest you can get, it's the one before the most extreme, it can't be used if you don't have an ultimate thing for it to come before, besides which it's not usually used in relation to ultimate as 'the best' and more for ultimate as 'the last'. So the penultimate step in a flight of stairs is not the last, but the one before. In short, it's the worst word to have chosen.
A more appropriate word for the meaning you state would have been apotheosis (eg apotheosis of cool), or simply the ultimate in cool.
They have never been any less evil. The just failed in the computing market, and succeded in consumer electronics instead. I was a mac user for many years, until i finally grew tired with apple failing to deliver a stable operating system at os 7.1. I just got tired of rebooting. The biggest problem with Apple is that their is a fanatical proportion of users, kind of like a religious cult. Like any fanatical religion, they scare ordinary people.
Apple is no different to Microsoft. They stole most of the ideas for their operating system from others. Their hardware is just cheaply made PC hardware, in my experience, often with an unfavourable failure rate. They tie you in to a proprietary OS, APIs, applications, file formats, and hardware. They lock you down with DRM. Less evil than Microsoft? I don't think so.
According to Fred von Lohmann of the EFF, Apple would not drop iTunes Music Store DRM even if they could. As I understand it (I don't recall exactly where, but I think it was from one of DVD Jon's recent blog posts on the topic), Apple employs DRM on tracks from labels that don't want DRM. von Lohmann concludes, quite rightly:
Incredible is the reaction on tech discussion sites like /. and digg where Lexmark and Chamberlain get almost universally razzed but people believe the line that Apple only reluctantly employs digital restrictions.
von Lohmann's post is quite informative and shows the real purpose of Apple's iTMS DRM—to lock in iTMS customers. DVD Jon builds on this in his recent blog posts.
Then there's Steve Jobs' recent lie about not "gum[ming] up" networks with third-party software, which the FSF debunked handily.
One doesn't need to delve too far into history to see how proprietors, no matter how slick their ads or how popular their consumer electronics, are not working in your best interests.
Digital Citizen
Google or GNU/Linux or me. The idea is that in any given marketplace a company in the position of Microsoft will always exist. If they are 'evil' or not is largely decided by shareholders and market trends. I do believe that somebody could have the leverage that MS does and not use it to screw over their customers. It generally doesn't pay as well, though.
So because you don't like Apple's business model, you are gonna call bullshit on the guy who posted? That makes a lot of sense. At least when you buy a Mac, you know you can use any version of the OS from the past 5 years or the next 5 years. The combo of Microsoft consumer OSes and Johnny-come-lately Hardware companies, you have to buy a new machine every few years to run the latest version, so you really aren't saving any money. Whoopty doo, I get a prebundled handcuffed version of a Microsoft OS when I buy a mchine. With a Mac, at least I have the option to run OS X.1-.4 (not to mention OS9), on a 7 year-old G4. I most likely won't be able to run X.5 on my G4, but Jesus, I've had a workhorse computer for 7 years, that has never broken down or lost data. What should I expect from a computer that predates iPods and OSX and WinXP? If I could only have gotten 1/5th of the usability out of my 2 and 3 year old pcs...
I like apple. I am writing this post using Firefox on OS X. With that said IMHO Apple has had many opportunities to make real strides when it comes to competing with the likes of Microsoft. But it seems like every time they get close they throw in a gotcha that makes their efforts have little if any impact.
The most recent example of this is the upcoming iPhone. The keynote that centered on this device made me giddy with anticipation. I carry a Cingular 8125 phone with Microsoft mobile 5.0 running on it. After seeing all the cool features and hearing Jobs state that this ran OS X (regardless of how you define that on a mobile setting) made me look forward to putting my phone on eBay and spending way to much on an iPhone. But, only days later it was announced that there would be no 3rd party development on the phone because it was not a PDA but simply a phone. Well, I'm going to continue to be careful and take care of my 8125 because that is a deal breaker for me.
Some people will say that I am not the average consumer for this product but I would beg to disagree. It's true that most people don't want to download software, beyond ring tones, not to mention writing their own software for their phone but this group of people don't pay $500+ for their phone. Most of them get them for free or pay a subsidized price by locking into a 2 year plan with their cellular provider. So Apple is left with the people that have more money than sense and just want to have a pretty phone to stick in their suit pocket and Apple's largest growing market, the computer guru. How many people, like me, switched to Apple because they finally took their head out of the sand when they released an OS with a command line? And surprisingly not any command line but a POSIX Unix based command line! I have heard from many of these people. Yes many apple people have never opened their terminal application never mind putting it in their dock like I have but the majority of these people are Apple's existing customer base. I like many people launched terminal and smiled with glee when the found a friendly bash prompt staring back at them.
This Unix savvy culture is Apple's largest growing market. I find it silly to see all these switching commercials aimed towards windows when the majority of the people I have seen convert are people who were running Linux on their desktop. Many believe as I do that with all Linux's great attributes it's still not ready for hard core desktop users. Linux a great server, running headless, performing all kinds of demanding tasks at far greater speeds than competing operating systems running on the same architecture. This is something to be proud of but I consider myself a pretty savvy computer guy and although I have tried many GUI on Linux nothing comes close to Windows not to even mention OS X. With that said most every move that apple makes seems to ignore this market and focus on the idea that their consumer base just wants it to work and be pretty.
Back to the iPhone. Who is going to pay $500+ for this thing? And yes they will have to pay full price because they are by contract not allowing the cellular providers to subsidies phones like they have been doing for years now. It's not going to be John Q Public upgrading his Razor. It is going to be people wanting to replace their pocket PC phone running Microsoft mobile 5.0. But, once again apple shoots themselves in the foot by stating that this is a phone and not a pocket PC phone, even though it has WiFi, bluetooth, faster CPU, more memory, and storage space than any pocket PC phone in the market today. And, since by their statement that it is a phone and not a PC there is not going to be any tools (i.e. a cross compiler and modified XCode IDE). Unless Apple wises up iPhone is going to be shelved along with the long forgotten Apple Newton.
Apple must underestimate the tenacity of their new market share. This is the same group that has been a big part of the proliferation of Linux so that you can run it on any
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
I love when math nerds argue about English. You have all failed to take into consideration the colloquial phrase "last source" or "final source". The last source is where you go for the final say on something. The last source is the ultimate authority on something, colloquially speaking. So therefore, Apple is the second best "final source" on being cool and second only to Rolling Stone Magazine, obviously. You guys should stick to |grep 10101010 etc/host/ blah blah blah ;-)
Its worth your time. Jobs clearly stated about the market opportunity he sees for iPhone. Its 10M units within the 1st year, which is pretty close to just 1% of handsets market. Just download QT and go to the keynote. See for yourself.
Nobody knows nothing
MS: You did good, kid, real good. But as long as I am around, you will only be second best.
...?
BTW wasn't Google "elected" to be the new "evil", or was it Disney or
Carbon based humanoid in training.
It's almost not worth reply to, but if any one has dealt with Apple extensively, they'll know this already. It's a big corporate Microsoft hidden behind some slick marketing.
www.itjerk.com
Ok... I would have bought MS-DOS 6.22 but I was a kid and didn't have that kinda cash. I do however buy Microsoft tools regularly. Microsoft Visual Studio is the most powerful development tool for any platform. I write more Mac OS X and Linux software using Microsoft Visual Studio than any other tool. You wanna know why? Because it can keep up with me. GCC is SLOW!!! in cause you missed that GCC is patheticly slow.
For developing projects that are over a few thousand lines of code, GCC just is too painful to be useful. Sure, it's not too bad when you just change one or two lines here or there, but the second you change a line in a global header file, you're gonna have to take lunch and maybe dinner before you should come back. Visual C++ compiles in 10 minutes what GCC compiles in hours on the same machine. And don't question my make files... they're good, but when I get to the office, I need to use distributed makes for Linux to handle compiling my projects since the machine I'm coding on only has two quad-core Xeons.
As for productivity. Well, I was an Open Office guy... then I realized that my spelling sucked and my grammar sucked, so I bought Microsoft Office Home Edition or whatever it's called. Since then, my letters have gotten much better. Ok, so a bunch of lamers tend to think that Word Processing for the masses is about features. IT'S NOT! It's about spelling checkers and grammar checkers... and well, Microsof has them, Open Office doesn't have anything close to good enough. I don't even think it has a grammar checker, though I could be wrong.
Then you have Microsoft Streets which I bought. Nice program, but I have to admit, they oversell the PDA version of it since it seems to think that a PDA map shouldn't be more than a few K in size. Last I checked, I have a 2gig SD card in my phone/GPS. So it would be mice if they got the product to behave as such. But I have TomTom for that now.
I bought Windows Server 2003 to have terminal services on my home server. This means that I have access to all my software whereever I go. Sure you can talk about X-Windows all you'd like, but frankly, these days, over 512k and 1mbit connections, it doesn't hold a candle to the Windows RDP implementation. Sure there's VNC... but noone focuses on making VNC work very well anymore and I spend far too much time programming my other projects, so I don't want to program on that as well.
I often buy Microsoft games like Ages of Empires and others. I find them really quite entertaining. I do prefer the old style of starcraft and warcraft better, but well, they don't make them like that anymore.
I bought a Zune... it's a peice of crap compared to my iPod.. but my kids watch films on it, so... it's all good
bah... you're a waste of my time. If you're happy with the software you use, keep using it, but keep in mind, a lot of us buy Microsoft products because they are in fact better than Open Source alternatives.
P.S. - As a developer (at one point of an XML/CSS/DOM rendering engine), I swear, I can't imagine how the OpenOffice team can produce such a horrible layout/rendering engine as they do without specifically trying to make it look that aweful.
but steals the press from more competitive
Now that's what I call journalism.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
No
even if Apple became evil, the allpervading smell of mediocrity in any Microsoft product is competely absent at Apple.
Bye
Bart
P.S. the only exception I can think of is Excel.
Some mod kid not being able to move his .mp3 files to a new player doesn't stack up against Fortune 500 companies being completely tied to 3rd party crap software written in VB. Or to tens of thousands of government documents tied up in a proprietary format that only Microsoft can properly support. Or legions of people who know nothing but IE and Outlook. Or all of the businesses that run themselves off of highly customized crap Access databases. The list goes on. Reality whould have to turn inside out and doughnuts would have to rain from the sky before Apple even got in the same ballpark as Microsoft.
Apple could be just an evil or what not, but I'll prefer it over MS any day.
At least we'll get shiny machines that actually works.
- Anonymous Coward
OS X already doesn't require a key to activate. You put it in and go.
Actually, you do require a key: The computer itself.
That's why you can't install the copy of OS X Tiger which came with your MacBook Pro onto your MacPro, and vice versa. Your MacPro would boot off the CD, and then happily tell you the copy of OS X is not for that model of Macintosh.
Apple products don't usually suck.
Something folks might forget these days is, that Apple needed to have some sort of DRM built into the iTunes store at the time in order to get the record labels on board. Otherwise, they wouldn't have supported it. Fairplay is much less restrictive than other DRM systems. E.g. You can burn your songs onto a CD and the copy protection is gone.
Standard Oil - broken up by the courts in 1911
AT&T - broken up by the courts in 1984
IBM - hounded by the Justice Dept in the 70s to become paranoid about antitrust concerns, giving breathing room to a tiny company called Microsoft
Microsoft - ummmm, okay, so they don't have the same thread
I think Microsoft is on the wrong side of history and is at the beginning of a 20-year decline, but 20 years is a long time, and a new leader may emerge there who can effectively leverage their (still) overwhemling dominance on the desktop into whatever comes next (after mobile and Google).
Yesterday I was at the doctor's office and noticed that their patient management software runs on DOS. Even in the the world of super fast computers, change takes time. And time favors the monoply.
Heck, we share an office with a small record label (another dinosaur) and all their computers are pre-OS X iMacs.
They were already doomed to getting displaced by IBM, with or without Microsoft's involvement. It's only IBM's poor business decisions and other hardware manufacturers' competition with IBM specifically that gave Microsoft the de-facto monopoly.
Apple would likely have had a bigger marketshare and be a larger player in a more fragmented marketplace, but there was absolutely zero chance they would have been a monopoly. Little chance they'd have been a majority the way they are with the iPod, either.
Apple's dominance of the iPod isn't nearly as threatening as MS's dominance over the desktop. There isn't as interesting a set of apps that someone could build on top of an iPod-like device as there are on the desktop. The iPhone is being rolled out into an existing market with very strong competitors. In Apple's wildest dreams they might end up with a similar share in phones to the one they have in computers. That'd be good for competition, not a threat to it.
If Apple continues down this road of ignoring security reports of independent researchers and either not patching or taking too long to patch Mac OS then, in the long run, Apple is going to end up with the same bad reputation Microsoft has.0 7
Apple has not been serious with regards to the recent issues.
There are 11 unpatched advisories in January, 9% of high criticality, 36% executed from remote, 31% involving privilege escalation, 8% system access.
http://secunia.com/product/96/?task=statistics_20
As a Mac OS user I'm concerned. I guess I'm just spoiled by the open source operating systems I am used to, where security officers take security advisories seriously...
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
A few years ago it was all about Linux replacing Windows on the desktop. I guess since that didn't happen now they have to predict that Apple will replace Microsoft.
....and it does not share power! /jump
I am really tired of the BS on the internet spiralling out of control.
Where does this statement that Apple warned people not to upgrade to Vista instead of fixing the problem with iPods becoming corrupt themselves come from?
Here's the story behind that situation:
Vista no longer issues "stop" commands to mass storage devices. XP sent a USB "stop", but not a mass storage stop. The iPod has a small write-behind cache in it to improve performance. This cache needs to be flushed or else the iPod can become corrupt.
Apple flushes this cache often (every second or so). They also flush it if they receive a mass storage (RBC) "stop" command. They also flush it if they receive a USB "stop". But in Vista, the device receives no stops at all, even when you select "prepare device for removal". Windows does suspend USB devices though, which means they have to stop taking power.
So, if your iPod battery is very low, it is possible that after a write, but before 1 second has passed (when the write would have flushed), Vista can suspend the device, causing the iPod to stop getting power, run out of battery and shut own with the storage unflushed. If your iPod does have enough battery power, the first thing it will do on a power cut is to flush the cache, and thus the problem won't happen.
These problems will only exhibit in very rare circumstances. However, it could cause corruption when it happens. So Apple warned people about it. They already had in all the code that was needed to make this problem not happen in most circumstances.
To fix it, Vista has to be changed to give devices some kind of signal to devices that they are being prepared for removal, as is in the RBC and USB specs. This will also fix the problem that many USB memory drives which have a "safe to remove" light no longer light it under Vista.
This problem is Microsoft's and dinging Apple for MS' screw up is ridiculous, especially if you carry it to the level of saying it will be Apple's downfall.
Did we read the same article? I dodn't see anything about OS activation.
qz
Jesus Christ on a cracker -- if you lose the license key, if you break the install disc, all you have to do is call AppleCare and provide proof of purchase. Once they have that, they'll issue a new key or, in the case of a lost/scratched disc, send a new one (assuming you're running the current version). Apple also recommends backing up your software. Read the EULA and use the software before you bitch about Apple's methods, or anyone else's for that matter.
It's all in the post that I first responded to. Somewhere in the middle it starts talking about OS X.
Esso is still 'Esso'.. I think there's a few in The Netherlands.. or maybe those are Mobils now..
d id=107060258
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Esso&ol
But this should be a choice, not forced on the artist. A lot of money goes into making blockbuster movies and it turns economics upside down if organizations such as Apple that have built a technology system that allows artists and the industry that supports them to get paid for their work in turn gets punished in public opinion for their system. For all of you who think artists should not get paid -- Why don't you send in your next paycheck to a charity or something. Screw all of you thiefs. Either support artists and the technology systems that allow them to get paid or crawl into a cave.
I realize that Microsoft doesn't sell as much hardware to their customers as Apple does (though they've moved an awful lot of keyboards and mice over the years)... but I don't think it invalidates my point completely.
... but that's just a number we thew out there. Since you bought a Mac from us before, you can just download a free copy instead and that's just fine with us too!"
While Apple does get to sell you a copy of OS X, bundled in the price of a new Mac, it doesn't mean they "don't care where you get your OS X versions" after that! Every major OS X upgrade has been a little over $100 per copy, so I'm sure they don't just say "Sure, we charged $129 for you to go from Panther to Tiger
Nonetheless, you don't see Apple embracing software activation systems and limitations on the number of times you can re-install a given product with you key code. They don't play these games because they know their machines are supposed to make computing "easier". All of these extra activation steps work against that goal. Buy Apple's iWork '06 suite, or iLife '06, or even Aperture or Motion - and they don't have those products phoning home to Apple to activate your key before they run..... Microsoft, however, does do this with all of their Office products.
If they ever produce an OS that everyday people could use without a huge learning curve and partner with software developers to ensure all applications on the Windows platform are available on their platform. Wait, this sounds a lot like what Linux needs to take over on the desktop OS front. I guess the answer is obvious then, no, they could not take the place of Microsoft.
Sorry if this is getting too far off topic.. but, you can. This can generally be accomplished by editing a small text file on the disc (XML, I think..), there's ton's of places that will tell you exactly how.
Once you've done that you've got a "Universal" (not necessarily in the Intel/PPC sense of the word) OS X install disc. After that you're fully functional/supported.. no WGA checks or other BS to bother you.