Slashdot Mirror
Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too)
jfruhlinger writes "Think today's world, where Apple is the innovative underdog, Google is the company that does no evil, and Microsoft sits atop its throne as ruler of an evil empire. Will this state of affairs last forever? You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstart Bill Gates. Don Reisinger muses on the fickleness of consumer loves and hates. 'It's that same [level of] success and its own questionable privacy practices that will lead to Google's PR downfall and propel it into a position of disdain going forward. Trust me, the future of Apple and Google may look bright from an economic standpoint, but these companies will be hated one day too. Sad, but true.'"
Even without the internet, people have been hating Apple for decades. Usenet and forums just made it easier for them to spew their opinions about.
Blind devotion to *anything* is questionable.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
See, Apple and Google wrote their own software from the ground up. Bill Gates bought DOS from another programmer, and for BASIC took a large amount of publically accessible code from the homebrew club, and decided he would put a copyright on it since no one else had bothered. He basically stole the work from other poeple and made his fortune. For that reason alone I will never have respect for microsoft.
I think people feel more invested in a smaller company, as though they personally had some hand in its success.
I mean, Google is easier to see, since it already has a majority marketshare in its main market, but is anyone dreaming enough to think that once (if) Apple gets a large marketshare, it will just be the next Microsoft?
I mean, looking at all their marketing tactics and dirty moves... its fine now, because its mostly aimed at Microsoft, and its with a small market...but if Apple was to NOT change tactics once it reaches 30%+ marketshare? OUCH! Bundling, false advertising, FUD, price jacking, bullying their partners around, etc? That would be fairly bad.
Now to hope that the only reason they do that now is because they have no choice (have to sink to the competition's level), but I somehow have my doubts.
I owned the white, 12-inch 800 MHz G3 iBook. I hate them now.
Honestly, Apple! Soddering the GPU with a ball grid array upside-down? Yeah, thanks for that!
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Nah, I didn't like him in the 80's either. DOS was crap. Flight Simulator was a pain to copy.
mod me funny
They're not religions, political parties, families, etc. They're businesses.
They don't need an adoring cult around them. They need to provide what the market demands. If people want to impute a personality or culture to a company, that's fine as far as that goes. But it's still pretty much bullshit.
Just look at IBM. People seem to love them now. Of course, then there're the likes of, say, Standard Oil/ExxonMobil/Chevron who have always been hated...
People love companies that give them what they want. Simple as that.
Back in the 90's, MS gave us great development tools, opportunity, a series of great Office suites and other excellent software.
Sadly however, software seemed to stagnate somewhat, and Microsoft have become increasingly dependent on their core set of products / cash cows, of Office and Windows.
In contrast, Apple in the 90's had a cruddy product line, stagnating software, and people were migrating away from Mac OS in droves, so the shiny new Windows 95.
However, now, the boot is on the other foot,as Apple is giving people what they want in both software and hardware terms. iPods, great Macs (thanks to Intel, and great industrial design), and great software.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
No one can be president or leader of a nation and be corruption free. An easy target is Bush. His religion encourages him to turn the other cheek but that is not what happened after 9/11. His religion encourages him to love his neighbor and to treat him as he would want to be treated. Yet a fence between his country and Mexico says otherwise. The examples in this case are endless.
The same goes for "large company A." Once A gets large enough, it's not too difficult to start to find evil creeping in. Googles advertisement abilities already upset/disgust me. My difficulty in affording Apple products make me think they are discriminating against the poor. The list goes on.
I don't know if this is so much about the consumer as it is about power--the more you have, the more corrupt you are.
My work here is dung.
Err, no?
Quite a lot of people never liked Bill Gates. Not his person, not his business ethics and not the software he created. There's enough stuff on the Internet about his early disagreements with Free Software advocates, for example.
And far from the article, like it or not, Microsoft and especially Gates are still hailed as the best and greatest in a lot of trade magazines and computer magazines for the non-techies. Despite the crashes and bugs and problems, a lot of "regular" people believe that they invented "the cumputa".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's always interesting when a piece like this comes out.
"Sure you hate Microsoft now. You didn't used to.
Why don't you crazy kids patch things up and get back together?"
Like they think I'm going to rush out and buy Vista
for nostalgic love reasons.
Uhm. No duh.
...but for now, Google is someone to work for, and iPod is something to scoff at (and then buy) and a Eee is the mobility lappy to get instead of the Air. Basically I'm saying we've a bit to go before we hate either company. For the relitivly short time that I've paid attention, I think we'll see a CEO change in these companies who will make policy that will drive us to hate them.
Shoo all you Johnny-latecomers! I hated them before it was the cool thing to do so.
I've been around long enough to remember him saying 'We believe OS/2 will be the platform for the '90s" Yet I don't ever remember people liking him or MS the way they like Apple and Google.
this looks like troll food to me...
The only reason they're not in the same boat as Microsoft is because they're "cool". Their software is bloated and forces you to install items you don't want (Quicktime and iTunes) and now their hardware is really no different than a PC. I'll admit their iPod is a great piece of work however.
Thread hijacked.
Nobody ever liked bill gates.. he made his fame and first fortune writing Altair BASIC and trying to sell it to the Homebrew Computer Club. One guy got ahold of the tape and copied it for everyone else in the club.. nobody even understood that gates wanted to keep his program proprietary because that idea was just completely unheard-of.
"Trust me, the future of Apple and Google may look bright from an economic standpoint, but these companies will be hated one day too. Sad, but true."
Why is this sad? Surely being suspicious of powerful entities is one of the better human qualities.
That's not Picasso, that's Kandinsky!
Here to optimism : http://roboeco.com/ssep
The Future is already here, just unevenly distributed... THE ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY NOW! http://RoboEco.com/slash
"but these companies will be hated one day too."
*sigh*
I have this conversation regularly at work. Whenever I express my distrust of Microsoft inevitably someone will start babbling about how I will hate some other random company in ten years. I can't help but think that these are all just Microsoft apologists.
It isn't the age or size of a company that makes me hate them personally- it's their behavior.
So far Google has never done anything as a company that I think is evil (yes even the China filtering) and all their products have been delightful to use. Given their past history I see no reason to assume that they will suddenly and magically become irresponsible. I also don't see my loyalty to them to be a function of any PR department. As soon as they modify the IMAP spec to make it so only their own email client can connect, or sell my personal information, then I will hate them.
The difference is that I can't imagine Google doing that. I would practically expect it of some companies like MS or Sony who have a long history of such behavior.
Incidentally- I have no opinion about Apple as a corporation.
I always accepted Microsoft because early on they had the appearance of being the only option. They release Windows 3.x when there wasn't anything else really like it available for PC's at the time. I never thought their software was spectacular or even innovative. I'd already seen X11 on Solaris, etc. but at that point X11 wasn't an option on PC architecture. Windows was the only alternative. I accepted Word, Excel, etc. because they were by the same company and easy to get a copy of. Hell, I was even a professional Windows software developer for 10+ years but practically from day one I felt their software was bloated and unwieldy.
I think Google has done some very impressive stuff and I do think they've been very innovative. Apps like Google Earth, Google Book Search, etc. have a lot of originality & creativity in them. However I still tend to be a bit wary of them given their apparent desire to index virtually every bit of digital data ever generated. They may claim that they want to "do no evil" but a lot of evil can potentially arise from the ease at which they make all this data available.
Apple has done some innovative stuff like the iPod, iPhone, etc. but I also question their secretive behaviors. I understand their desire to control user experience by tightly controlling both hardware and software development but unless they are extremely careful that can be seen as monopolistic behavior. They're walking a very thin line, and although I use and own Macs & other Apple products I still question how they'll handle their unique position.
OK, maybe not hate, but I fail to see the excitement around the Apple product line. "ooooohhhh shiny" seems to replace desire for features and functionality.
Google, yeah, they make great stuff. I don't use them because of marketing, I use them because they WORK. I use Google search because I haven't found a consistently better search engine. I use Gmail because it works, and I'm lazy. Google Earth is, at this time, a unique product, and I have relatively few issues with it. And it helps that these services are all free.
Will I some day hate Google? Oh, probably. I used to cling to Altavista until they went south. Will soemthing better come along? Yes. Is it here yet? I don't think so. Ask.com makes a decent search engine, as does ChaCha. I have yet to see consistency in quality search results, so I don't use them.
I use what I like. Today I like Google. Today I also like Lenovo for my computing needs, Sandisk for my music, and LG for my phone. Tomorrow that may change. Such is the world of competition.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Apple has already been a hated company. Remember the iMac? Actually I know a lot of people who still hate Apple because their products are expensive, because of restrictions with iPods / iTunes, etc. There's no trend here. Consumers like companies that provide a good product at a fair price and they despise monopolies that abuse their position. The fickle consumer opinion sways accordingly.
If you love Google and Apple so much, why don't you marry them? Afraid your kids will be funny looking?
is the day they decide to overprice their products and make them "for business". The reason microsoft is hated is because they are business for business, not business for consumer. If google manages to dominate the market (mainly the online part), the seeds of corruption will have been sowed.
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
Their "don't be evil" policy is admirable, but "evil" is subjective. Google really don't seem to be quite in step with most geeks I know when it comes to data protection and privacy.
is anyone thinking they should really remember to "don't be evil" when it comes to all these crap-ass browser plugins? EVERY TIME I get called in to help a user because "my internet is crashing", it's because Google Crapbar slunk in alongside something else they installed, and is crashing on IE's loadup.
I mean, come on. WE DON'T NEED YOUR INVASIVE CRAPBAR, IF WE WANT TO SEARCH THE BROWSER HAS A FUCKING SEARCH FIELD BUILT RIGHT IN.
It must have been back in 1992, I had a Mac that crashed with a bomb icon. No codes, no error messages, just a bomb icon. Gee, thanks, that really helps me fix it.
Compared to Windows 3.11 where you would get a string you could search USENET for, and maybe a hint of the bad program, a bomb is just useless cutesy shit.
I really don't understand why people think that Apple are innovative. Would someone like to highlight which products are truly original Apple innovations?
I already hate apple, a lot. But then I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and attend NYU, so the sea of tight-jeans-wearing hipsters who think it's somehow artistically relevant to be Apple fanboys gets overwhelming fast. It was actually summed up especially well already: the biggest problem with macs is the douche factor.
When you get to billion$$ comglomerate size, it's more difficult. Your shareholders still expect the same record of growth that they saw when the company was younger, smaller and more idealistic. They put pressure on the board for more growth, bigger yields, higher share prices, better dividends.
As a CEO, if you can't oblige the "money or nothing" shareholders, they'll just dump you and find someone else who can/will.
To keep your job, out go the high moral standards, say goodbye to the corporate ethics and adios to the founding principles - all of which are now merely expensive luxuries than your organisation can no longer afford, in it's quest for double-digit year-on-year growth.
If you, as CEO, don't realise that customer loyalty and fanboy-infatuation aren't things that can be traded, don't worry - someone else (why do we emply marketing consultants?) will whisper it in your ear. Up go the share prices again and your bonus is delivered by the very same guy who unburdens you from your soul.
While it's possible to make a million from hard work - without exploiting other poeple, it's not possible to make a billion the same way.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Is that the normal fate of a sucessful company. The love them when they are growing. Then they reach market saturation then they get booring, so they try some things to get more revenue then they get hated. After some good wallups the company goes back to what they are good at and they are liked again.
The problem with Microsoft over staturated the market and it still is. Windows should have 40% Market Share, OS X 25%, Linux 15%, 10% Unix and 10% Others.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates.
That is because there were no such days. From the very beginning, having stolen CP/M and computer time at a university to get their business running, Microsoft has always been regarded as a band of criminals largely devoid of real know-how. The fact that Google and Apple are not targets of widespread hatred in the tech community is evidence that there is more to the anti-Microsoft sentiment than simply rooting for the underdog.
Microsoft hasn't mattered in 10 years. Google is on top of the tech game now and everyone knows it. Apple is expensive and pretentious, but remains, for the most part, respected. The best Microsoft can hope for with regard to public sentiment is to transition from outright, boiling hatred to pity. If anti-Microsoft sentiment were the fickle leftist hatred of success that it is cast to be, then why would we also hate SCO, which is anything but successful?
The hatred of Microsoft is well earned, and its reasons go back to the very beginning of the company. If the SCO experience is any indication, it will long outlast the company's success.
This all sounds like wishful thinking on Don Reisinger's part.
Among people I know, Microsoft has been despised since the early '80s -- mostly because they've been turning out crap software since the early '80s, but increasingly (in the last couple of decades) because of their complete lack of ethics and contempt for their users.
It's likely that the Google lovefest will dim somewhat in the future, but there are some notable differences: in particular, Bill Gates has always been essentially amoral in his approach, whereas the Google founders have at least attempted to set a different tone. I known cynics scoff at that sort of thing, but it makes a difference.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
The movie anti trust reminded me so much of Microsoft. Even the seats in the office where puzzle pieces of microsofts logo. The whole company was based off of other peoples code. Thats why we all hate microsoft. Now they want to buy yahoo.com. They are not an innovative company. They make there fortunes and losses off of other peoples work. The other thing that is funny is we all look at apples iPod. Most people think there the first ones to come out with MP3 players. Don't forget about Creative hard disk MP3 players back in the day. They just new how to market the whole project much better.
I would say that some people already do hate Google and Apple, but in a different way from why people hate MS. People hate MS because of their past actions and monopolistic practices, and not to mention any shoddy operating systems they released recently. If people hate Google and Apple it's because of envy of the creativity and laxity inside the company, and that they sold out and joined the ranks of the higher-ups such as MS. I know the part about the online advertising, but I hardly notice that since I have my adblock with an ad.doubleclick/* filter.
/2 cents
The difference with Google in my opinion is that Google listens more to what end users want to use online, rather than telling them what they will use (toss some comments my way if they don't). And to my knowledge Google doesn't actually sell a tangible product.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Ummm
Anyone in the first wave of Linux users was migrating away from the steaming pile of sh*t that was Windows 3.11 (and below) and finally getting some use out of their computers
The media loved Bill Gates, but people in the industry were developing a hugely strong dislike for him long ago. He was just the poster child for a long time.
Might I eventually be forced to reconcile an evil Google or Apple? Probably. Do they have a long way to go before they're even in the same league of virtiol that Microsoft evokes? Ubetcherass.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Outside of the linux/slashdot/open source community and Sony/Nintendo/Apple fanboys, there really isn't that much MS hate going around out there. Despite the RROD fiasco, I think MS bought themselves a lot of "goodwill" from the gaming crowd with the release of the Xbox and Xbox 360.
They do all kinds of questionable stuff, the latest being that quicktime update tries to install Safari to windows machines of unwary users (I just noticed the update name was "Safari" as I was about to click "OK" on the update and didn't update. removed quicktime from my computer for that). I really, really, really wouldn't trust Apple even a little.
:)
But know what? I still support it. Why? I don't like it at all BUT having two evil companies at 50% share is always better than having one at 95% share. Anything that divides the monopoly of one allmighty company to several less powerful ones makes it easier for the better ones to rise to the surface.
Besides, I kinda like the Apple-logo.
ps.
From the point of view of someone who works in internet marketing and search engine optimization for living and thus have slightly better insight into search engines than many, I would very much love to see Yahoo gaining a bit on Google there. I like the results more but also, currently Google makes the rules alone, for example that manually appliable +20 filter that moves site 2 pages further in results can suddenly and alone completely ruin some e-businesses here where google has 93% share... Seen that happen. (For the record, Microsoft's search engine still sucks. Who gets to the top of results is pretty much decided by who wants to google the most link directories and spam their links there... Thank god I don't need to care about it's 1.7% when I work.)
Utter nonsense. Apart from the obvious massive differences in approach to quality between MS and Apple, it's actually primarily about competition; companies generally stay in line when there are true competitive pressures. If the industry manages to become competitive (we're not there yet but it's certainly improved over five years ago) then there'll be fewer reasons to 'hate' any particular company, market forces will help make sure they behave. The current trend towards improved support for Web standards is just one example. If we end up with say 15% Linux, 30% Apple, 30% MS, 10% Androi, 15% 'other', that would be a good balance - things like interoparability will be literally forced by the market, and they'll also be forced to actually improve and debloat their respective products.
We don't hate MS "because they're big", that's what marketers want you to think. We hate them because of their unethical abuse of their dominant market position to push inferior products which we've had to suffer with for years.
The day they change their attitude and start producing quality standards-based products, is the day we start liking them, no matter their size - it's really as simple as that.
It is not success that push people like me to hate a company, it's factual commercial decisions and practices. For example I have been an Apple fan because of its open hardware Apple ][. The Mac was a big disapointment in this regard so I stopped to purchased Apple computers and to admire Apple. I switched to PC's loaded first with the cheap Microsoft Dos and W95 until I saw that Linux was providing better what I was expecting from a computer. Up to now Google is behaving fine in the sense that Google services are very useful and the privacy concerns are still moderate. Obviously if Google would become unbearable I would also hate it.
It's pretty simple, really. As I keep reminding people:
- when companies are at the top of their niche, and have their nice walled garden and penned sheep to shear at will, they want to keep their garden walled and their sheep penned. Then they want proprietary protocols, incompatible tweaks to the "standard", and they want those sheep scared shitless of even thinking about the world outside their pen. They want you to think "oh shit, if we switch from IBM mainframes to cheap Unix workstations, we'll have to retrain everyone, rewrite our software, rip out and change the whole infrastructure, etc. Naah, let's buy another workstation, it's cheaper." In fact, they don't even want you doing that kind of maths, they want you scared of what might pop up later that you haven't foreseen, and unsure if you even know the right sum it will cost you, and whether you'll get ass raped without lubricant by your clients _and_ accounting department if you changed anything.
The term FUD, now almost synonimous with MS tactics, was coined about IBM tactics. That's not even the tip of the iceberg of FUD there, but the very phrase "nobody got fired for buying IBM" carried the thinly veiled threat that you _might_ lose your job if you go with something else.
- when they're at the bottom and scraping a living off the niches outside the pens, then they want access to those rich guys gardens and sheeps. Then they start screaming that such fences and walls are an abhomination and evil. Then they want open protocols, and ISO standards, and generally everything that will make it easy for them to get to those penned sheep.
And a company's attitude can change at the drop of a hat, if their position on the food chain changes enough. IBM was the big bad monopolist, as long as it was the king of the hill. IBM became the champion of open source and open standards when it got enough of their lunch money stolen by the likes of MS.
And occasionally you even get to see the schizophrenic fits of a company that just slowly slides somewhere around the middle point. So they're starting to covet the neighbour's penned sheep, but aren't quite ready to free their own penned sheep too. Sun was for a couple of years at that point, but now it seems to have mostly resigned to being in the latter camp.
So what I'm saying is that, yes, things can change with MS too. If one day it finds itself at the bottom of the food chain, then MS _will_ become the champion of open standards. And then a bunch of nerds will love them.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue later, I'd say Gates was spot on.
I like Gates. I wouldn't necessarily think him to be the most ethical of business men but in business you win or you die. He plays to win.
Nowadays Apple does about as much evil stuff as Microsoft. They just have less power, so the amount of evil they can do is more limited.
Google? As long as there isn't a better search engine I'll use Google. I used Infoseek when it came out, then Altavista, then Altavista/Hotbot, then Google. I don't trust Google in terms of security - they have not had a good track record with that.
As for Microsoft - I don't recall ever liking them, though the first programming language I learnt was Applesoft Basic.
How dare you! I am Apple and Apple is me! Without the existence of Apple, I wouldn't exist! I would have to use Windows and I wouldn't be cool anymore: I'd be like everyone else. Besides, Windows does not go with my black wardrobe! Do you honestly expect me to buy new clothes? Even if I did, buying all black makes life sooo much easier and it's slimming. I'd to go on a diet if Apple went away.
I'm also an artist. I cannot create without my black outfits and Apple computers. Geeze!
He was spot-on in what would make him obscene rich, not what's right..
However, Microsoft has always come across as a two-dimensional, mustache twirling villain if you are in the tech industry and aware of them as more than background noise. (Background noise is what they are to most non-tech inclined users, although this might be changing.) It's not that they are involved in anti-competitive practices, its that they openly revel in this. They are the guys who will tie you to the railroad tracks cackling maniacally, who'll say, "Even if they pay me the money, I'm still going to flood every city on earth with molten hot magma."
If another company is flooding your city with magma or tieing you to the railroad tracks, they just won't be as openly gleeful about it.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Steve Jobs is a genius, I love apple products, but here are my experiences. I am a linux nerd sysadmin. I bought an iMac when they came out, as a cute toy and to run OSX for fun. One day during the update from Apple (automatic updates) the machine crashed and upon rebooting it said KERNEL PANIC. I had to wipe my hard drive reload my os. when i connected my 30G ipod, the newly reloaded iMac DELETED all my music. i sold it, took the money and went and bought an AMD64 with XP, reformatted my iPod to FAT.....
on the iPod, i noticed the sound wasn't as good as the mp3s played through my computer, once I loaded RockBox on iPod the sound was better than APPLE's firmware!!! WTF!!!???
I found the Cowon D2 which has a *separate* EQ chip (not done in software like iPod) and BBE sonic maximizer and full touchscreen + custom EQ for $190. iPod doesn't even have custom EQ and their EQ settings are horrible.
So apple does some stuff right and gets other stuff wrong. if you are rich go with apple. if you are poor/middle class go linux and customize your system to look cool.
Crappy, closed-technology machines. The cult of the single-button mouse. Reseller programs from hell. Lovely laser printers that became ultimately useless. Two wire AppleTalk networks with all of the speed of ISDN on a good day. Cute little useless Newtons. Servers that could never rise above simple workgroup needs. Special connections and exceptions needed to network with anything else but perhaps NFS or wicked Novell patches. Wonderful and proprietary (given few others used them) PPC CPUs. I'm sure others can count the way. Others can see the bloom on the rose, and I still have marks from the thorns. Oddly, I still use a PowerBook G4, alongside a heavy-duty (and less expensive) HP core-duo notebook. Only for games, of course....
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
How about if you guys just give up on the groupthink instead?
The socially-reinforced need to pick out people or organizations to hate seems like something you might want to grow out of at some point.
If Apple or Google actually send assassins to kill your wife and children, go ahead and hate them. If some opinionated Internet comment-posters and the folks you chit-chat with at the office decide to hate Apple and Google, why not just encourage them to worry about reality, live their own lives, and stop the schoolgirl clique nonsense?
Don't you have anything better to do? Can't you find something before the "hate-Google" and "hate-Apple" memes get started? You have time. Now is your chance.
By William Henry Gates III
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.
Bill Gates
General Partner, Micro-Soft
Many Apple fans hated Apple under Skully's leadership.
He killed their most profitable platform the (Apple II) and almost destroyed their second most profitable platform (the Mac) with crap like the Performa boxes.
Those Performas made Packard Bell PC's look good!
Hate Apple? Been there, done that.
Who, exactly, is Don Reisinger? And more importantly, why should I care about his opinion one way or the other?
Oh, wait - his name sounds like he might've been one of the bad guys back in the old black and white Zorro TV series - is that it?
#DeleteChrome
And love Microsoft. It's not the products (Apple computers are great and VISTA SUCKS) but the "guilt by association". Windows users tend to be real human beings. Apple users tend to be elitist snobs.
Microsoft hasn't been despised since the early '80s -- it started in the 70s. Google "Bill Gates" "Open letter to hobbyists"
"Sad but true"?. This was a lazily executed piece of wishy washy emotionalism. Let these companies show their real faces over time, and we then we can judge. MS has such a large catalog of infamy that it would take any Google or Apple out there decades to catch up. Gates and Ballmer aren't going to slow down one bit.
The sacred and the propane
Microsoft: Because backwards compatibility is always > then innovation. Translation: Stagnation
Apple: Design over usability. Let's also not forget the Safari forced installation through update from a few days ago. iTunes and Quicktime border on malware these days.
And Google..... the haters are it's competitors cause Google gives away what Microsoft charges $400+ for.
I never knew the days when MS was liked as an underdog. Compared to Amiga, Atari, Mac etc their stuff has always been crap, their policies always been deplorable, and Gates has always been hated. Basic assumption of article wiped out.
As for Apple, I'm currently trying a switch from Ubuntu, and I'm only partially happy. Some of it may improve when I get some hacks installed (e.g. to get click-anywhere-in-window-to-drag and other real conveniences), but I'm quite worried about their closedness in general. They may have better bling-bling than MS will ever get, but there's very much a "we design it all" attitude towards third-party work.
The article is just a string of unrelated generalisations that may strike a chord when you first read it, but as soon as you think a bit longer it doesn't hold up. First, as many previous reactions have pointed out, Microsoft was never really liked in tech circles, starting with Bill Gates' letter against copying, even when it stood up to IBM. It was more popular in business circles and still is, despite decades of ridicule of BSODs, using the "Start" button to shut down a computer, and Microsoft's business practices. Apple has been loved and hated ever since it was founded around the same time as Microsoft.
Reisinger relies on people having a poor memory or being too young to remember the eighties and nineties to make a point that doesn't hold up and since his initial premise is faulty, the rest of the piece is no longer worth reading. To add to that, he puts in sentences like "[a]s I've shown, popularity and success breeds jealousy and disdain" even though he hasn't demonstrated that at all - in fact, it's the first time he mentions it. Apparently he has "shown" this in another column in this series, in which he merely claims that Google's popularity and success bred jealousy and disdain in Microsoft, which may be true but hardly supports the point he's making, whatever it is. But anyway, I should have known that I could stop reading when he said "going forward" and didn't refer to a vehicle.
Mac computers sales are primarily being done by consumers, and their old standby... schools. IT pros are def picking up macs too(lot of mbp's running around), but not in spectacular numbers. Business uptake is still low. Course, it's not like Apple doesn't know this... that's why they've been pushing so called 'enterprise' tools in their latest updates. I think it's the right step, but it's not enough.
Been prepping for a boring Vista cert(paid by boss), and it isn't as BAD as they say. Disable UAC and Aero and change a few settings and you gain back quite a bit of cpu/mem. It's more akin to XP vs 2K, than the ME to 98SE everybody has been saying. We'll see more uptake from businesses mid year, and it'll be a shut case by the end of the year(that businesses aren't moving to Vista).
Please note that last year I was posting on here how we had so many customers paying us to remove Vista and reinstall XP... havn't had one of those in a couple months now. We get occasional people requesting XP, but usually they're elderly or computer illiterate types.
This whole Mac vs PC argument will continue for years to come.
Haven't we all been hating Apple and Google for a good while now?
Not religions? For all you know Apple could be the next Scientology lead on by the great leader L. Steve Jobs into the volcano!
Apple is the innovative underdog
But at one time they were on top. What was the name of the spreadsheet that made computers necessary for business? Before IBM? I don't remember, but I do remember it ran on Apple.
Google is the company that does no evil
No, their motto is "do no evil". It's corporate bullshit, no different than "at Ford, quality is job 1". They may in fact intend to do no evil, they may be the least evil of all corporations, but they do in fact do evil. Thay did, after all, help China censor people. Not as evil as Yahoo who ratted out a chinese guy who went to prison. But make no mistake, no matter how hard they try to be benevolent, it is impossible for a big corporation to not do evil.
The love of money lets corporations live, but it is the root of all evil.
Microsoft sits atop its throne as ruler of an evil empire.
Well, they will most likely not rule forever, but I don't see them not being evil any time while I'm alive. Maybe in my unborn grandchildrens' geezerhood.
Will this state of affairs last forever?
Nothing lasts forever.
You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates.
Nobody is loved by everybody. Nobody has ever been loved by everybody. But I do, in fact, remember when all Microsoft had was BASIC. At the time I neither loved nor hated him, and in fact still don't. I think his company's business methods are disgusting and his wares are the worst in the business, but I don't hate him or Microsoft.
It's that same [level of] success and its own questionable privacy practices that will lead to Google's PR downfall and propel it into a position of disdain going forward.
I tend to agree.
Trust me, the future of Apple and Google may look bright from an economic standpoint, but these companies will be hated one day too.
Apple MAY be some day hated, but I don't see it. There's no telling what the future holds, but they've been around as long as Microsoft but have managed to not piss off all their paying customers
Sad, but true.
What's so sad about it? They're corporations! Why is it sad that a corporation may be hated?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If they keep making decisions like this (pushing Safari as an iTunes update), then they are sure to join the hated ranks of Microsoft soon.
Where does this hilarious double standard of "human rights" stem from? Why does the Bill of Rights say "Men" and not "Americans" when it talks of equality?
I guess we just fundamentally disagree. I guess I'll just go back to reading Samuel Langhorne Clemens & Thomas Paine and try to imagine how it used to be. It's a good thing they're dead and don't have to face today's America.
My work here is dung.
I hate Apple NOW, and I'm a happy Mac and iPod user.
Never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to ignorance or stupidity. (don't know who I'm (mis)quoting there)
The idea that corporate power causes corruption is slightly off base. Corporate power causes greed, which in turn spawns unsound business decisions. Any successful product, it's launch, it's essence will be copied. iPod => Zune as an example. When the beta launch of Google products worked (Gmail as an example) it's success spawns similar product launches. And so the song plays on until someone notices "Hey, they are not innovating much anymore" or the internal standards for cost and pricing continue to spiral in the wrong direction. Eventually it becomes too much. This is not due to corruption nor greed per se' but is more about momentum. Huge corporations are notoriously difficult to get organized, and once in place the organization rarely ever changes direction. As the organization grows it costs more to keep moving. There are very few execs that want to report upcoming profit losses, that is not what they are there for, so prices spiral upwards till they can't be supported.
In truth, $75 USD for a copy of XP would have been perfect, more or less. OSX on x86 at $75 would have been great. All that with the caveat that they keep their crap-proprietary-call-home-buy-our-other-lock-in-products shit out of it. The problem is that this does not drive further sales, nor protect revenue streams. In the end, to maintain the profits and growth things have to be costing consumers something, somewhere. Google has offset this by deriving revenue not from customers but from advertisers. If Google became a $10/month subscription I'd pay for it, if there were no ads. The trend on the Internet is zero customer cost. Google can sustain that. MS could never sustain that, though you have to wonder how they got so big when everyone used to copy their software illegally and with impunity?
Evil does not creep in. It's just too much momentum to turn back away from bad when you get started off in that direction. Large corporations are NOT nimble enough. I think that Google will finally figure out just how many ads people are willing to put up with, and what types work and don't. Google continues to innovate and compete (whether that is from within house or by acquiring a few pieces here or there) where others are not doing as well. It's a shame really, as I believe that if there were fierce competition to Google at every step from other companies (plural) then we would all benefit greatly.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I don't hate Apple or Google. They are jsut companies and to be honest I do too much other stuff to waste energy "hating" them. Now being afraid of them is a whole other issue. What I mean by that is, how many sites do you go to with "Ads by Google" written somewhere? I know it's the majority of sites for me and that scares the hell out of me. To me, the amount of information Google could potentially collect on me is downright terrifying. Worse, I have no choice in the matter. Not being the website owner I cannot do anything about their choice in advertisers. How yes this can be avoided with adblock and other solutions but the very idea that Google is capable of collecting so much information about an individual shoudl be cause for concern.
Apple is in a similar position with the iTMS. Now I don't use it but what happens when your choice of music is your local Clear Channel radio station or the Apple iTMS? Both companies are rapidly gaining monopoly power and I'm afraid by the time people wake up it will be too late.
That means I'm going to have to start caring about it at some point, right?
Once Apple eventually does overtake Microsoft's market share, I have no doubt in my mind that they will be a Bastardly Organization From Hell to deal with. I'm through with closed, proprietary operating systems. Once I decided to ditch those systems in favor of GNU/Linux, I never looked back.
I've pretty much hated Apple since the iPod, which was about the same time I started hating Microsoft for reasons on than the BSOD. In hindsight as I'm concerned Apple an Microsoft are two of the same shiesters that bet on different ponies. Both had in mind to control the PC market. Microsoft did so through the OS but Apple threw a Hail Mary betting in could control the hardware market too. Both companies were playing the same game, but Bill's pony came in first.
If you look at their practices now Apple seems to be looking up to Microsoft. The iPod is a great player, and I'd own one if it wasn't so tightly linked to iTunes. That and the licensing behind the iPhone SDK are just two examples Apple trying the same tricks in Microsoft's play book.
In fact, we all remember when Bill Gates announced to Homebrew that he was planning to sell his BASIC interpreter for cash. Trust me, there were quite a few displeased people - not because they wanted "good stuff for free", but because it corrupted a community that was sharing its work for the great benefit.
I thought it was fair - even smart - but I also concluded that his approach turned off the exact community that he was trying to sell to. "Customers be damned" comes to mind.
And that was back in 1976. Don't get me wrong - Apple also had a crappy dozen years, when its machines were named Macs with a number. Apple was despised, even by its strongest supporters.
But Apple later learned that you have to have great products that your customers love. Google knows this too. GM? Not so much. Microsoft? No, not any more. Maybe someday they'll come back.
GM has been in the dumps for decades - so can Microsoft. Apple and Google will continue as long as their management knows that you have to strive for excellent products.
At least, I never liked them. My entry into computers was through the "home computers" of the 80's and variants of Microsoft BASIC was used in most of them. This was boring, it was much more exciting with e.g. the BBC Micro which had a much better BASIC, or even more the Jupiter Ace which had FORTH.
When DOS became popular, I had started at the University, and my frame of reference was UNIX. Obviously, DOS seemed extremely bad in comparison. It took 15 years (with the release of NT 4.0) for Windows to come out with an OS that wasn't complete crap in every way except hardware price compared to the Unixen of the time.
So the change has that I used to dislike Microsoft for making boring and crappy software, but now dislike Microsoft for their systematic use of illegal business practices.
I have known Apple for almost as long (our University had a "Apple Lisa" room), and loved them for the user interfaces, but disliked them for their programming interfaces (until they bought NeXT) and their closed platform.
I still love Google for making it obvious that public information is public.
Apple is as much an underdog as the Brotherhood in Nineteen Eighty-Four. You feel like a rebel when you choose to join them, but in fact it's all part of the same system.
The unstated premise here is that people are being unfair for disliking the monopolistic corporation. After all, if Google and Apple become uber-rich monopolistic corporations, we'll hate them too. I can't speak for anybody else, but I like competition, and any organization that becomes successful enough to deprive the market of a healthy competition will attract my animosity.
I do not dislike Microsoft because they're "evil". I dislike the situation they are in.
The pukes always get beat up by the jocks. People will always feel resentment towards those who are more successful or stronger than they are, and the backlash can be quite appalling (Pol Pot?). This is why we elect people that appear to be dumber than most. Intelligence and knowledge are frowned upon. And weak people resent having to be protected by the powerful. The oppressed become the oppressor. yada yada yada.
What?
no someday google and apple will not "be hated" just like the Microsoft's of the world.
sorry.
It is Intel and AMD who will provide the tools to ruin the computing industry.
All it will take is some hardware DRM or secure computing initiative and support from Microsoft or Apple.
Microsoft's monopoly was built from having some pretty restrictive OEM licencing deals and some tricks to see off the competition (see DRDOS). Being there so early on means it is hard to diminish their market hold.
Anyone that replaces Microsoft will have a hard time locking in people to their platform, especially now the internet is here. That is unless the DRM and secure computing platforms take off, these make lock in a lot easier. You can argue Apple has this already on Intel Macs.
People can talk smack about MS all day long, but the fact is that if you sell software you owe a debt of gratitude to MS. Before Gates came along software was "sold" to the hardware companies and each system was totally incompatible with each other. Gates came up with the idea to "lease" instances of his OS to IBM so that he could then also sell to other hardware companies. They opened the door for hundreds of PC builders to come into the market place withouth having to direclty compete with IBM. Also, unlike apple, MS opened the door for any software developer to create applications to sell to consumers running his "IBM compatible" OS. Even now that we have linux which is a "free" OS many developers and consumers simply find MS products easier and cheaper to work with. So go ahead and hate MS all you want, but think long and hard about where your paycheck actualy comes from.
Did you enjoy all the comments?...I sure did. In the end, we all learned that people already hate Google and Apple. Someday is now! Now where's my flying car?!
blah blah blah
I doubt engineers came up with a good reason why IE had to be integrated into Win98. I doubt engineers came up with a good reason why Apple is trying to force Safari onto my computer (Vista). It's marketing folks that come up with this stuff, and they are everywhere.
Companies must create earnings growth to maintain high P/E ratios, and gimicks like the forced Safari download naturally sleaze their way to the attention of CEOs. The only defense is an educated consumer.
You and I never had any affection for Gates, but the suits definitely loved him. (And in their world, anyone who is anybody is a suit.)
PHBs/suits loved Gates because he was one of them, and was still sort of successful at pretending to be one of us.
(Not that we are the homogenous group of geeks they perceive us to be. But somehow we are "them" to the suits.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The article reads like a msft sponsored PR piece. The point is that people don't hate msft for any good reason, it's all just the public being fickle.
Like hell.
Have you followed the OOXML scam? The SCO-scam? The Acacia scam? How about msft lying to the US-DoJ in video taped testomony? What about the letters from dead people campaign? How about microsoft stealing Stacker technology? Then there are: fake TCO studies, fake benchmark studies, fake think tanks, Bestbuy rackteering, msft customers sued because of msft patent violation. How about msft saying computers where "Vista Ready" when they weren't. How about the Peter Quinn scam? And, right now, msft is lying to congress about a "tech worker shortage" in order to have congress double the number of H1-Bs, and even further hurt US tech workers.
Have Apple or Google done that sort of thing?
People don't hate msft because msft is big, people hate msft because msft really is evil.
Blasphemy
In my experience, the companies people hate are the ones they have to pay periodically. Cableco, telco, airlines... It's that feeling of not having enough choice and being forced to pay. If they grow to hate a company which has never charged them one thin dime, that'll be quite the feat!
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Unlike Apple or Google Microsoft did not startup as a snowwhite company ran by angels. From day one Microsofts history is littered with corps all over their road to monopoly. It was built around a knock off CP/M clone that would have been sued out of existence would it happen today. Their history is littered with broken laws, broken agreements and a total disregard for right or wrong.
To place companies like Apple or Google in a group with Microsoft is an enormous insult against them. If Apple had done business like Microsoft does they would no doubt have ruled the PC computing space now. Their biggest "mistake" was that they did not behaive like MS and took the high road. They did a faulty assesement about the laws in the US and did not break them while MS have broken many of them and not suffered more than a slap on the wrist.
This guy must have been living under a rock for the last 15 years.
HTTP/1.1 400
I don't hate MS per se. I hate their monopoly and all that comes with it. For instance: End users, customers and partners following every wim of MS blindly.
That is a big fault and it needs to be attacked perpetually at all times with as much force as possible until the monopoly falters. Until then MS is our prime target. I don't trust Apple (or any other corp) any further than MS, but Apple doesn't have a monopoly and thus are forced to act smart and resonable at times. Which actually caused Apple to choose a Unix variant as their OS. That combined with the neat hard- & software integration is what made me an Apple customer with that G4 iBook and my recent purchase of the 'smaller' MacMini (both cheapest of it's class, regardless being an Apple).
If Apple as much as twitches in the wrong direction and attempts to lock me in I'll gladly be back to regular Linux on a regulare PC, Laptop (or my MacMini). As with all other opinion-leaders and experts in the industry I've been in the business to long to be paranoid enough about lock-in and greedy IT corps. As far as I can tell it's the same with most professionals I deal with.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The reality seems a bit more complicated than an either/or disposition. For those of us that appreciate simple designs with high levels of functionality, Apple has done a number of things correctly.BUT:
I think the upshot is that consumers appreciate being treated with respect, and given toys and tools that work well without having to expend, oh, for instance, hours trying to figure out why Ubuntu Heron generic kernel doesn't seem to boot, yet Heron 386 kernel does (but without SMP). Google and Apple both touched parts of our psyches that wanted to be stroked. At their best, they helped us feel competent with little expenditure on our parts. Google, like Apple, just worked - it found what we were looking for most of the time, with little fuss. Apple similarly. Apple began showing what I would call clear disdain for their customers - the $1.99 802.11n patch, the $20 firmware upgrade on the iPhone/iPod Touch, stacked dock view, Leopard Finder, abandonment of Newton, the MacBook Air, abandonment of OpenDoc, abandonment of HyperCard, Brushed Metal, no user support for Appearance Themes. The Apple Way or the Highway does tend to piss one off from time-to-time, especially when Apple screws it up badly.
sloth jr
...I haven't read the article just yet. But, I've personally NEVER liked Bill Gates or Microsoft's products. I was an Atari ST user from 1988 to 1994. Then when I graduated from college, I couldn't afford a Mac, so I bought a PC and went with DOS/Win 3.1. It sucked ass. Windows 95 was a slight improvement but I grew tired of the unstable and backwards nature of Windows so I moved to Linux. Other than a handful of key applications that only ran on Windows (and the fact that I still can't afford a decent Mac) I was nearly 100% Windows free. Those key applications have now been replaced with good alternatives that run on Linux and now I have no need of Windows other than the occasional virtual machine session to run iTunes. I've never looked back. In my opinion, Bill Gates and Microsoft suffered one fatal flaw: they were never original or well intentioned. They still aren't.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
People hate msft because msft is evil. People hate evil small companies as well.
A few msft scams:
1. scox-scam
2. lying to the doj
3. letters from dead people
4. fake tco studies
5. fake benchmark studies
6. Bribing and ballot-stuffing to win OOXML approval
7. Vendeta against Peter Quinn
8. Bestbuy rackteering
9. Msft customers sued because of msft patent violations
10. Msft steals Stacker technology
11. Msft rigs Windows to not work with DR-DOS
In a publicly-traded company, you have the concept that today's profit is for today's owners. That means any movement in stock price HAS to come from NEW growth. If you really want the stock price to go up, you need to go beyond repeating last year's rate of growth, you need to IMPROVE upon it. Nobody likes a stock whose price just sits there. So the CFO applies pressure throughout the organization and pretty soon there are bunch of customer unfriendly things going on, but by golly they made budget for the year. Next year's budget depends on all of the cannibalistic behavior of last year, with the added pressure to "take it to a new level". Is this sustainable? No, but if you can unload your stock fast enough it all makes sense.
In a private company, the pressure to do this is somewhat delayed, as the owners may be quite content to make money in a sustainable way and keep cashing their dividend checks. I worked for a privately held company, and made great money as a stockholder. When the owners started to position the company for sale, things got CRAZY.
When the owners decide to sell, it's time to juice the earnings because they will get paid a multiple of the most recent years' profit. In that final year, every extra dollar they can squeeze gets multiplied by 5 to 30 (depending on the business). The old owners are not concerned with sustainability and the new owners have lots of debt from the acquisition. If they paid full price for the business, their profit comes from someplace that the previous owners had not yet exploited. At that point, there has been at least one year of unsustainable customer unfriendliness, with several more on the way just to try and earn enough to outrun the debt and provide some return on investment.
Early warning signs: When you see an invasion of MBAs, walk calmly towards the exit. When you see an invasion of consultant MBAs, run.
You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates
Err...really? When was that? Were some sort of user opinion polls taken at the time?
I've got a copy of DOS 4 sitting around here somewhere, and remember using debug to partition old ESDI drives, so certainly I'm one of those folks that should have been in love with that scrappy fellow back in the day...right?
Bill started out under the radar, where the general population didn't really understand what an OS was. IBM was like Borg; they certainly seemed to be evil, but there didn't seem to be any evil purpose, or evil leader, one could pinpoint. Microsoft coasted through until the 90s with few really caring he was there. BG wasn't "loved" by any sort of fanbase until relatively recently, well after his dominance was established. Meanwhile, there were people philosophically disagreeing with that model long before then.
So just when was all this love taking place? I call troll. But eh, sensationalism is all they teach in journalism schools these days.
I remember the day I saw the first Halo trailer... with Steve Jobs introducing it... WOW! If that had gone to Mac first, as planned, we'd all be playing the iBox and the XBox would have been collecting dust next to the used Jaguars. Oh, and Vista never would have happened.
But to his credit, Bill saw that coming... and squashed it.
I feel sorry for all the people that "hate" Microsoft.
Besides, if you don't see the threat posed by Google, you're really a fool.
Oh yes? Really? And where's the evidence to support those statements?
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Just finished reading it. The article is not talking about the technology side of things. It's talking about the business end. Since that's not of any interest to me and it's completely irrelevant when evaluating the quality of a product the article is pointless. Personally, I evaluate businesses and products by their willingness to make life better for their users. That means not just paying attention to the mainstream users who have typical habits, but paying just as much attention to the oddballs who have unusual expectations from the product. Apple and Google are good at that. This is one area where Microsoft fails miserably. They only seem to focus on the mainstream users.
The fact that they singled out "hobbyists" as an undesirable group of consumers sent a strong message that they don't care about anything but making the most money. That's all well and good, but they should then not be surprised when the users who are ignored defect to other products or free alternatives. There is no reason to remain a captive consumer when there are options. If Microsoft really wanted people like me back as customers, they'd pay attention to things like: video, audio and music production and improve the subsystems in the OS to make those uses more palatable. They'd create new licensing schemes that allow more proliferation of their software at a reasonable price. Assuming that there was decent software on the Windows platform for my needs, I'd easily run multiple copies of Windows if I knew that I could go back to them and pay $20 per extra installation for a legit license. They'd also make licenses easily transferable between machines since I tend to shift my apps and OS between machines as needs dictate (easily accomplished with Linux).
So while the article focuses on the business end, that's not really what drives the users to love or hate a business. Apple users are catered to by Apple. The day that Apple stops allowing their users to do things they've been used to doing, is the day that Apple will become the "bad guy". The same applies to Google. The day that Google offers a better search but decides to charge for it, or they reign in their GMail space, or they lose a bunch of user data and say "oh well" (a lot like Microsoft does with Hotmail), is when Google will fall from it's throne. Nothing about their profits drives the end users at all.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
We still love Bill, it is his no-tallent asspuppet stooley of a replacement Steve Balmer that is rocketing Microsoft into the toilet at warp speed.
"It's that same [level of] success and its own questionable privacy practices that will lead to Google's PR downfall and propel it into a position of disdain going forward. Trust me, the future of Apple and Google may look bright from an economic standpoint, but these companies will be hated one day too. Sad, but true."
I am so sick of hearing this. It is not success that makes me dislike Microsoft. Oracle is just as dominant in databases as Microsoft is in operating systems, but I like Oracle. Why? Because Oracle competes on merit. I use MySQL both at home and in the office, so it is not that I am a mindless fanboi, but I do respect Oracle. I do not care how successful a company is. I care about how honorable they are. Being a monopoly enables a dishonorable company to do more damage, and less successful companies generally do not have the lattitude or power to be abusive, but it is not the success itself that I hold in contempt.
I find it as infuriating as hearing someone who supports the Iraq war say they support the troops or that they want to fight terrorism. We all support the troops. We all want to fight terrorism. And we all support honorable companies regardless of their success, and most of us dislike abusive companies regardless of their success. The only real double standard is success fanbois who cannot see the abusive nature of Microsoft because they are too busy wallowing in adulation of Microsoft's giant $-peen.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates.
ITYM "upstart".
When exactly was that? I guess maybe back in the '70s before he went ballistic over people copying Microsoft Basic. Microsoft had a decent reputation through the early '80s - C80 and L80 were solid, and for a while they were shipping a really good (for the time) UNIX port, but I don't recall Gates personally being "loved"... at least not by people who actually had to use Basic or DOS.
I'm pretty sure that by '82 I'd been ready to kill him at least once, probably after the DOS 'format' command decided to format the current drive instead of the drive I told it on the command line.
Someone please run a grammar check on that first sentence.
My God. I've been on the internet since around 1996, and nobody has EVER hated Apple before!
Are you kidding? SOME day? I've hated Apple since GRADE SCHOOL. I dreaded having to use those god-awful machines, I swear not one essay was ever typed without that goddamned you're-fucked-bomb popping up. "Sorry, a system error has occurred." Yeah, I agree. The first error was buying 100 of these goddamned pieces of shit. Apple recovered a little with me when the iMac came around, I really liked that little machine, or at least I wanted to. Then Apple went and started their whole smug, elitist asshole advertising campaigns and they've been riding that train ever since. Goddamn it I hate Apple.
It's not the age of a company, it's the actions of a company. Also, I already dislike Apple because A) I consider the Mac to be too expensive for what it does, and B) I have a childish hatred for the 'i*' names. As for Google, I dislike their AdSense ToS, enjoy the search engine, and I am slightly miffed by their giant, ever-growing, half-of-the-Internet ad network they have.
Although, that still doesn't come close to Microsoft monopolizing the desktop for over a decade while also charging ridiculous prices for a disc, doing their best to lock people into their proprietary, ever-changing formats, forcing a horrible browser on the world to shape web 'standards' and kill off competition while not even paying attention to how secure said browser was, how stable the OS was, or how efficient the office suite was (...is). On top of that, there's also the current 'everyone on the planet is breaking our super-secret patents' thing.
If Apple/Google want to be hated like that, they have a lot of catching up to do.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
As I'm sure everyone else that has to try to port software to their so called "Unix" operating system.
Win or die?
I call upon the excrement of the male bovine!
Many businessmen and women have lost business opportunities and not lost their business. If your business goes bankrupt you are not strapped into the electric chair.
Business is NOT win or die, it isn't even win or lose. Yes there is some competition in business, quite a bit of it actually, but being second best in business does NOT mean that you are going to go under or lose your shirt.
Ethics matters in terms of gaining and keeping a reputation with customers and employees.
It isn't a race, it isn't a game, there is no one winner and the end is the same for everyone.
ever generating the kind of affection that other early computer companies did - almost certainly because Microsoft didn't make hardware.
Think about it. You had Atari fans and Amiga bigots and C64 freaks and Apple lunatics all fighting to the death on Usenet - even TRS-80 users and Exidy Sorcerer users - and don't get started on Sinclair fans and Acorn users.
I don't remember anybody caring that much about Microsoft - after all, it ran on all (or most) of those machines, didn't it?
Later with the advent of the PC, it was still an **IBM** PC, not a Microsoft PC. Even when Microsoft basically owned the personal computer software market it didn't really have fans - people use it because there was no choice or because that's what runs on generic hardware.
Clear, Dark Skies
"You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates."
I have been in this business since the late 1970's, and I can't remember a day when anyone loved Bill Gates. I, and most of my colleagues, thought he was a grasping self-promoting, devious, backstabbing asshole from day 1, from MBASIC on.
Wait.. A record label? Are you thinking of the Apple record label founded by the Beatles? Totally different company, in fact there was some legal wrangling a couple decades ago between the two, and some more recently when Apple Computers decided to start selling music. Also they don't tell you how to store your music, they make a recommendation that you are free to ignore. Go ahead and hate them, but at least make sense.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Because it takes time to formulate an opinion of a company's behavior (or any entity for that matter) we generalize and create opinions in their infancy based on other immediately measurable factors such as product quality. That's why we *liked* MS and we currently *like* Google. As great as it'd be to see Google remain in our good graces, it would seem unlikely given historical perspective and current trends.
;) I'd start it off with a few but that's where rationalizations and zealotry come in. If you dislike them there's enough to justify your position and rationalizations just as much as if you do like them.
To those that claim Google wouldn't pull the anti-competetive tactics of MS I ask that you think back to the 80's and tell me whether their tactics were a foreseen evil. That is, were we all sitting there with a list of their now known evil deeds wondering if they'll try to pull them off? Nope. In general, most were using the old "evil company actions" dictionary to judge them which didn't include those tactics much like we're now using the second revision of the manual void of Google's new and innovative evil company tactics. Before you site millions of examples of MS' tactics being used before them, Standard Oil and antitrust, blah blah blah, bear in mind we're talking about generalizations made by the masses and thus they don't use the "smart person who does due diligence to evaluate a company manual." My point is that what Google is doing now, much like MS' actions in the 80's, only Monday_morning_quarterbackers in the future will recall as being evil and righteous justification for their hatred.
P.S. I'll spare you the details but if you truly want to know what they're doing now that could be evil it takes, ironically enough, but a little Googling and an open mind
That's just my POV... no more, no less.
Hmmm, could be...
Top Operating System Share Trend for April 2007 to February 2008
The Bet Applications stats show Vista poised to claim 20% of the market world-wide. Five times that of the MacIntel platform. Twenty times that of Linux.
Microsoft revenues are up 68% in the client division over Fiscal 2007.
60% of Microsoft's sales are outside the U.S. MS is seeing 30% increases in sales in markets like China, 20% in Europe, 15% in the states.
Microsoft Q2 2008 By The Numbers
Apart from the widely questions "scrappy upstart" bit, Apple's had mixed success on the "innovation" front, and there's plenty of people willing to lay the mantle of "evil" on Google's shoulders.
You missunderstood my point. My point was _not_ "people like small companies." Of course you can hate a small company too, but that wasn't the point.
My point was more like that the companies themselves, at least the ones who are anywhere near successful, change their own behaviour based on where they are in the food chain. What a guy needs to be successful at the top, is the opposite of what he needs to be successful at the bottom. Basically, it's profitable to be an evil monopolist when you're at the top, but it's counter-productive to be an evil monopolist when you don't have a monopoly yet. What's good behaviour for the king, isn't good behaviour for the serf, and viceversa.
There are, of course, exceptions.
E.g., SCO's pump-and-dump adventure indeed doesn't really fit the pattern I was describing, because they didn't really try to find a new survival strategy. They just wanted to go with the biggest bang, and make siphon the most money from the sinking ship to their own pockets. But the key ingredient in that scenario was scuttling their own ship. What I was talking about is strategies for keeping your ship afloat, not strategies for when you decided to sink it for the insurance money, so to speak.
E.g., MS too had the chance to avoid being the nice champion of open standards on their way up, mostly because it never had to breach someone else's walled garden. It started in a market which was all for grabs and staking your own claim, and later was co-opted by IBM as keeper of IBM's nascent PC walled garden. And from there it just had to work on squeezing everyone else out of it, IBM included.
But if you look at the companies which enjoy some measure of success (i.e., among other things, _not_ those who just want to sell the shares and sink the ship), I think you'll see the same pattern everywhere. The guys at the top want to keep you locked in, the guys at the bottom want access to the big players' locked-in customers.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'd have been impressed if the author had the guts to say when that might have been. I remember those days too. Gates wasn't that admired (not much amongst the geeks of the day at least). Those days didn't last long. I'm not saying he's wrong about apple and google, but I think his reminiscing is a tab skewed.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
First to market with a revolutionary new product guarantees you an entry in wikipedia, nothing more.
-- QED
Maybe, then, everyone, the everyone who today love Google and yearn for a Mac, will starting using Linux and OSS.
Apple is not more a record label than your local record store is a record label. Apple cuts deals so they can sell music, that's about it.
There are plenty of evil things Apple does. Selling iPods is not one of them.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
What about a company's reputation with its shareholders. You know, like, you, if you have a retirement account. The first ethical and moral responsibility the executives and the board of directors have is to the shareholders who have entrusted them with their treasure in anticipation of an increase in value. Only legal requirements supercede that responsibility. The ethical and moral responsibility to the public, customers and employees should be in concert with the responsibility to the shareholders, but the thing about ethics and morals is that occasionally they can contradict.
What do you do when you are faced with a moral dilemma? I.E. break a promise or break a heart. The contractual duty of the board and the executives makes this somewhat easier. It always should be to protect the shareholders.
There are only 6,863,795,529 types of people in the world.
Overpriced and unreliable. I'll stick with my oranges, thank you.
to debug the problem, maybe it was just an outdated dll file that needed replacement.
With the bomb, what could you do, reload software?
I remember when Microsoft had more fanboys than it does today, but I don't remember *ever* liking them myself. My first Microsoft experience was using MS-DOS 2.11 on a Tandy 1000HX, because it was my first real computer and I didn't know any better. Windows didn't even exist at the time (at least as far as I knew). From that point forward I went through a string of different x86 operating environments, and the only rule of thumb was "Avoid Microsoft if at all possible". It was always DR-DOS and/or QEMM-386 (and DesqView) instead of the MS equivalents, DesqView/X and/or OS/2 2.x over Windows 3.x/95/NT, and eventually Linux instead of all of that once I found Linux circa 1994.
Another example is programming tools. It's not just the Visual[C/Basic/Whatever] of today that sucks - MS tools sucked all the way back to MASM, when the better alternative that I preferred was Borland's TASM. Microsoft always sucked, and smart people always knew it.
Of course the probability of finding something to complain about in Apple or Google's behavior increases the larger and more diverse the companies get. They'll still never be in the MS category. Google may eventually be "that company that started out as my best friend, but eventually made some sad mistakes much further down the road that hurt their reputation", but they'll never seem to have been evil incarnate from the get-go. Apple may occasionally make anti-consumer moves, but at least they've got a kick-ass design team and they truly love their user community and try to turn out some high quality code (and are using a *nix baseline, that's such a huge plus). MS has been using underhanded evil tactics to shove crappy solutions down unwitting consumers' throats from inception. I won't feel any remorse when and if they finally die off for good.
11*43+456^2
And? What's your point?
It's not like Bill Gates is the only shifty business guy out there. He was just the most successful one, and as such he is the one that people cry about the most.
I don't agree with his practices or ethics, but from a business standpoint, the man is a genius and one of the most successful in the world. There is no denying that he has accomplished the near impossible. Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant: business is business, and in this case, Bill Gates smashed one out of the park.
The fact that he earns more money while trimming his nose hair than most of us will ever see in our entire lives is proof enough of that. Recognizing someone's business success while acknowledging their shortcomings as a person doesn't make you a pussy, you know...it's ok to admire someone while hating them.
Living With a Nerd
Many of Apple's lock-in strategies and their complete disregard for forward compatibility would be unacceptable if they had a larger deployed base.
But since Amiga isn't coming back any time soon, I'm glad there's a presence in the commercial computing world that tries to be innovative outside of office productivity (blech).
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
(I think the subject title sarcastically speaks for itself...)
0100111001100101011100100110010000100001
There is a good point to remember here. Microsoft from the beginning had a goal and has stuck with it until recently. Their goal was to bring make a Computer a Personal Computer to make sure everyone had one. Well they accomplished that goal, but along the way they said "We did it!" "Now let's control what the user does and direct that money towards us" That's kind of how Microsoft became the evil giant.
Apple, well they've always just been plain evil. They sell pretty products but always overpriced.
Google has always been the anti-microsoft. It helps them out with PR because people are not liking Microsoft that much at the moment. This model works for them. Also they aren't as invasive to ones privacy as Microsoft is. Sure they show advertisments but they are off to the side and can barely notice them. They have to pay to run the service somehow. As long as Google sticks to these routines they will never be projected as evil.
However, google did recently try to bring more power to the user by searching with a search. But at the same time, this infringes on Larger companies more than it does the common user, but it still doesn't make it right.
So in the end, if google can maintain it's current stance and not be so invasive into our lives and try to control us, they will be perceived as a great company.
PS. Use Linux. I have for 5 Years. Less invasive into your lives and easy to use.
- Nikitis
One of my earliest "computer" memories was reading, or reading about, Gates' "everyone is stealing my stuff" letter. It was clear then that he was a jerk, and nothing has changed since...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I do not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates.
And I am not trying to be facetious or ironic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Businessman that brakes the law and gets away with it?
I think some gangsters would not be insulted if this or a similar definition was applied to them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That letter always reminds me of the moment in Star Wars Ep. 3 where Anakin force chokes Padme and his eyes turn red. The point of no return in his descent into evil.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I thought that "I was just following orders" stopped to be a dilemma some time ago.
I you allow greedy, immoral shareholders to dictate dubious business practices, you, as a CEO or any other higher official in a company, will be held responsible also for the consequences (either in the marketplace or the court of law).
A shareholder that does not understand that the only way to make money honestly is by offering a good service or product is a scumbag, no self respectable CEO should accept to work for them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Well, the last time the DOJ was this stupid and allowed Boeing to purchase their only domestic competition, McDonnell Douglas, we saw how that turned out. Now look at who is building the next fleet of USAF refueling tankers.
Also Boeing purchased EVERY domestic fighter jet manufacturer except Lockheed/Martin and we have now seen how that has helped with cost and technology competition. Boeing doesn't make fighters!
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
The day is already here for many people towards Google.
Son Nguyen
From a historical perspective, those companies, countries, organizations, etc...that are the largest and most powerful will also be the target of the most hate and conflict. Think the U.S. government, Roman empire, vatican, Microsoft, colonial England, etc... When you become large enough and powerful enough, people become suspicious and mistrusting in their fear of such size and power. It's natural and follows every mega-corporation and empire throughout human history. Technical specs aside, one of the biggest reasons I see first hand for Microsoft receiving such constant flak for the past 10-15 years has been their dominance in the computing field. It's like blaming the US government for any problems we have in financial/social/political arenas or blaming China for unsafe imports. The bigger and more influential the entity becomes, the more people stereotype them and lay blame based on the stereotype. I know this doesn't address any technical aspects of Microsoft, Google, Apple, or other BIG companies, but it addresses much of the human nature that leads to so many college students blindly hating Microsoft and hailing Linux as the savior of the free world (while many of those same people run Windows anyway). If the tables turn and Google becomes the BIG computing company, expect to see the same mistrust shifted to them. If Linux took over the OS market and became that big, expect the same thing to happen to them. Like it or not, it's human nature!
Nearly any company that becomes big becomes hated. Look at Comcast and ATT. I remember the day when IBM was hated. The turning point comes when company employees become arrogant and the company itself becomes less product focused and more financial focused. The people I know that love Microsoft are the same people that are making money from them by either developing on their platform or consulting for them. The people I know that hate them, hate them because of their dominance and their other lack of support for anything standards based. Microsoft has become a money machine and people know it. If you let a finance guy run your company, profits will surge for sure. However, in the long run customer satisfaction will decrease and loyal customers will defect.
I like to think of it this way. Product people look at a product with passion. Financial people look at a product with greed.
Companies that are happy with a slice of pie instead of the whole pie are usually not hated as long as their products or services are produced or rendered well.
...if they promise the moon and continuously put out a faulty product and ignore their user base, as Microsoft does with Windows. The fact is that companies don't fall out of favor with consumers because it's the natural cycle of things. Companies fall out of favor with consumers because the consumer feels they aren't getting what they paid for. It's got nothing to do with price or delivery method, it has to do with low quality products or terrible service. This most recent Safari software push was handled in the correct way, but I admit, it tread the fine line between helpful service and arrogant update. The bottom line is, as long as Apple and Google keep producing quality products (regardless of personal opinions about the product) and providing exemplary service, they will always be loved amongst the consumer.
My ipod is with me in one country and the itunes I used to store music in it is in another country ,before I came to US,
Now I know that there are lot of softwares available to unlock this ipod, or extract the music from this ipod, but it is still bloody annoying.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Oh no, wait, I am working from home from my house in one of London's suburbs (did I mention that London is the most expensive city tolive in the world? Nah, but I hope you get the picture). Darn! I hate not to meet stupid stereotypes.
I have been in meetings (not in basements of anybody's mom, but in technical meetings in big companies and the occasional boardroom of smaller ones), and you could not be more off the mark.
Business people are asking if solutions must be based in an MS environment, and in many situations are dropping MS based solutions for very sound technical reasons. The feeling is not hate, but resignation: the realization that they have been screwed and that they can't do much about it (lack of courage is a contributing factor also).
What keeps the MS juggernaut alive is inertia and lack of regulatory zeal from the part of US authorities. The hate and mistrust is there, but this did not materialize in a legally mandated suitable punishment.
MS was caught with their pants down and they got away with murder based on technicalities about the judge that judged their case and by the providential arrival of an unconditionally business friendly US administration.
To think that hate for MS is a geeky delusion is to completely misunderstand the situation.
People hate so much MS that they have driven its share price down for the last 5 years. There, where it most matters, is where the hate (distrust, disappointment, chose your word) is being manifested.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The consumers aren't the fickle ones.
The upstarts invariably start out with slogans and behaviours that suit their position in the scheme of things. Some rally believe every word at a fundamental level, but for others, it's just a self-serving con job. You really find out whos who when the little upstart becomes the market leader. The former will continue with their self-serving behaviour, it's just that as market leaders their interests become harmful to consumers who would like to see more upstarts and innovatons.
Essentially, MS was always the way they are now, they just didn't show it when they were the underdog because they were too small to get away with it. Time will tell if Google and Apple are like that as well or not.
neanwhile, big hated Big Blue seems to have genuinely seen the light, or at least enough of it to become a 'kinder gentler' Big Blue. They figured out a good while ago that trying to grab and hold 100% of any market is like trying to sweep the tide back. They also realised that it's better to have 20% of 100 dollars than to have 100% of 10 dollars.Strangling the market to get 100% of it is a losing proposition.
MS may yet learn that lesson, but at the rate they're going they may be too badly damaged by then to make the turnaround IBM did.
Oh, stop making excuses for Microsoft!
This smells of yet more Microsoft "you only hate us because we're big" astroturf. Microsoft isn't evil because they're big, and others in Microsoft's position would not necessarily act the same way.
http://outcampaign.org/
The articla assimes that any monopolist or near monopolist is going to get hated just for that fact. And, with DoubleClick, Apple is going to be dominant in both inline and display advertising. Therefore, he concludes, Apple will get hated. But that dominance per se does't wory me, the sucker^Wconsumer. I don't care who isgenerating the ads, I only care if they are invasive - which has no relationship to who owns them. The adverisers may come to hate Google's dominance of web-based adverting. But why should I cry for the advertisers? Indeed, if you believe they have a fixed ad budget, then the more Googel gouges them the fewer ads they can afford - which is great.
Of course, I am not saying that Google cannot get hated - it already is, a little bit. But if they keep their current policy of keeping opt-out easy, there is always a quick answer "then walk, dummy". The things that have made IBM, Microsofs and (looking upwards) Apple hated - things that, intentionally or otherwise, make it difficult to pick-and-mix your hardware and software options. As long as GMail doesn't lock me into uusing Google for search or vice versa, or I find my GMail locked in so I cannot load it into something else, or I cannot use Google without giving all my security information, it is difficult to see a real head of hate building up. Yes, Google is already losing that fresh and innocent look - but it can (if it wants to) avoid becoming actively hated, IMO.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Look at companies like IBM and Oracle. They are still HUGE, and certainly on lots of people's BAD lists. However, I don't think that either of them engender the same kind of hatred that companies like Microsoft do (or the old IBM did).
If Apple and Google follow the same course and start squishing their customers, then they will be hated too. Apple is certainly going down that path with their hardware and software lock-in, and Google is showing plenty of signs of being Evil, but they haven't forgotten their roots yet.
However, trying to write off people's hatred of big companies as simply fickle customers is foolish and condescending.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Mine is in daily use (workdays) since mid-2005, and I'm not particularly fussy with it. It has a few scratches when it fell while bike-racing, that's it. Still keeps a good charge and all.
I've been thinking about a Touch, but can't imagine it lasting more than a few months with my use.
Epic Troll.
+5, Truth
Do you also shrug shoulders when a builder makes a mess of your house?
Or a plumber does not repair a sewage pipe properly?
You know what is the worst part? That in MS they planned and keep planning in creative ways to screw consumers.
And here you are, advocating that we ignore it. What is next? Learn to enjoy it?
What you call group think is based in the experiences of many IT professionals that have plenty of reasons (with anecdotes and all) about situations in which MS products or actions made their life misery. This is not a poetic construct: I have seen people not sleeping, wasting their time (and affecting the bottom line of their employers) due to MS products not being up to scratch or due to specific hurdles that MS puts in your way to make your work more difficult .
You can call that group think. I call it life scars. So allow me to sneer at your nonsense frankly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
or their fans. I've been an Apple user since the 80s. Started by comparing IBMs, Tandys, Commodore,a nd the IIe. Apple has always had better machines, better software usability. Sure the price is high, but when you look back over the last 30 years how personal computing has changed, most of those changes are due to Apple's innovation and quality. MS's Windows was unusable until Windows 98 and half a dozen patches. And even now people are rejecting the latest version of Windows.
I remember loving CPM and Digital Research, and also Unix which I still love.
I also remember loving Apple and the Apple II as well as Atari, C64 and the TRS-80's. And the CoCo's.
But IBM PC's and DOS I have always hated, for as long as I can remember.
I ended up becoming a DOS person for one reason.
Apple scr***ed it's developers in 1985.
I did a lot of Apple II code, and Lisa and then very early Mac's from 128K to 512K.
The Apple, TRS-80's, IBM PC and even the S100 CPM systems were all totally open. Heck even the Amiga shipped with Full Schematics in the manual!
But the Mac started a little open then went closed.
They started charging $5000 for their developers kids and conferences also became also too expensive something like $1000 entrance fees.
I was 18 at that time, far too rich for my blood.
So it was either stick with the kiddy boxes, C64, Amiga, CoCo which were all just lacking that clean professional edge.
The TRS-80's were really showing their age too, Z80's just didn't cut it.
So that left the PC's which I really resisted for a long time. DOS was always a kludge and ugly.
64K segmentation, I want to hurl just thinking about it.
No, I never had any love for Microsoft ever.
But when apple forsaken us upstart hacker kids, I was left with few alternatives.
I don't think to this day Jobs realized he threw away the top spot leaving Microsoft to scoop it up by being more open! PC's also published Full schematics, even gave a source code listing of the BIOS, although not open source it was still working example code. Even DOS came with debug allowing us broke kids a crude environment that we could write assembly language programs and simple scripts.
God knows I wished I could have stuck with Mac's, but I have never been back and to this day feel slighted.
As a matter of fact I disliked Microsoft and DOS so much I was involved in several attempts to get a decent Unix on PC's and was involved early in 386BSD which was the first really useful Unix Port.
I am sure a large part of Linux's and later Netscape's success was driven by the same motives, to get back to Open.
So Don Reisinger of ITworld.com, where the hell were you in the 70's, 80's and most of the 90's?
You must have come on the scene in the mid internet boom. 98 maybe and smoked a little too much of the hype.
God I can't remember even a single person other then totally clueless newbies loving Microsoft.
Even that didn't last long once the booze wore off and they realized she was really a pig with lipstick, but it was too late to back out then.
That article isn't worth the bit's it's written on.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
As is blind hatred. Specifically, the level of irrational virtiol targeted against apple on this site in particular is kind of amazing. I don't really understand it,
It's a few things.
(1) Most haters don't get Apple's products -- sometimes because they're not familiar with them, but also often because the product priorities aren't theirs, and they therefore conclude anyone who has different priorities has been duped. Unsurprisingly, people who've been told they've been duped don't respond well, there's a backlash, and self-fulfilling prophecies about rabid fans come into play (see here for longer comment on this point).
(2) PR. What, you don't think there are companies out there who would pay flacks to get out and try to fight the fact that Google and Apple have a better image? I've sure seen a lot of stories like this one lately. Maybe it's because Apple and Google are turning evil, no better than Microsoft! By the way, have you heard suits are back in style?
(3) There are in fact some number of insufferable Apple users out there.
(4) Apple does in fact get it wrong sometimes, and if you're expecting better, it's like when Moz does the wrong thing with a CSS property where IE gets it right, or a friend insults you while an enemy shows respect. Even if it might be rarer, it's extra maddening.
Tweet, tweet.
They want their headline back.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Apple has been an enemy of openness in general for decades now, so it's not that surprising they'd be opposed here. Back when Wozniak had say in how things were run it wasn't quite the same, but since the mid-80s at the latest they've been an all-proprietary shop, with aggressive efforts to prevent third-party anything from even interoperating with their products. Back when the IBM PC was de facto open, the Mac was the proprietary, locked-in platform, and not that much has changed since then.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
GOOG & corporations are perfect. Individuals are evil. We should all be handing celebrity CEO's our life savings.
I have hated Apple since the mid-90's. There is no "some day" about it. Apple is every bit as proprietary and obnoxious as Microsoft.
Please do not mod this as flamebait: it is a legitimate opinion, and I am not saying it to start an argument.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
At times? Seems to me that they're going back to exactly that format when it comes to iPhone software development.
- must purchase the SDK
- must pay Apple a share of the loot if you actually end up selling it (and Apple is free to say 'no')
Yes, I know, Apple deserves a share of the loot for hosting, distributing, blablabla. The problem is that you cannot and even -may- not offer your software via alternative distribution platforms.. like, say, your own website.
1. People like apples image.
2. People think it's 'cool' to bash the OS that everyone knows how to use(Microsoft).
Unfortunately, people don't like apples enough to actually buy one.
.
My local record store is a record label you ignorant clod!
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I already hate Jobs, and that company of his, Apple. The iPod is an overpriced piece of crap, whose sole purpose is to prop up the iTunes beast, and doesn't support any FOSS codecs because it doesn't make business sense to them. The iPhone is pretty, but really, it's about 90% software this thing, and hell if I'm going to spend that much for a fscking phone. And as for OSX, you can have it, I have no need for that either.
... install, update, reboot, update, reboot, reboot, install, reboot ... fsck off with the reboots!)
And yes, I hate Bill Gates too, and I'm old enough to remember when IBM was the big evil empire and Microsoft was the scrappy underdog. Been a long time since I've felt that way about Microsoft though, and I only grudgingly used Windoze through the Win98s days.
Happily windoze free for 8 years, thanks very much, and I haven't felt like launching my desktop out the window once since (an almost daily occurance when I used Win95, 98 and even the much vaunted virus petri dish XP
Go Linux, rah.
Salut,
Jacques
I used OS/2 until I could use Windows 2000. So no, I never fawned at Microsoft.
Comeon! The browser is the os of the future. And Microsoft is rapidly loosing marketshare with Firefox having so many developers creating extensions and Apple driving Safari down the throat of every Quicktime user out there (Itunes came with Quicktime and now Safari comes with Itunes). And Safari is far better than IE, so as soon as some of the users try it many will never go back to IE.
.doc, so it is more like PDF, where one company "owns" the standard, but it is still a standard and many apps work with it).
With the browser being the os Flash is by far the biggest monopoly. And with Silverlight MS is creating an open source alternative. Same goes with PDF vs. EPS.
They are loosing the OOXML-battle (even though OOXML might be dangerous, because they "own" the standard, it is far better documented than
And finally Vista is the single biggest selling point for Ubuntu and the likes, because it is a little too awful and has no advantage except for the eyecandy. Back in 2001 XP was also awful, but at least it brought the NT-core to the desktop. Remember what Windows 98SE was then? Compare that to XP now. Is Microsoft really that evil any more?
wtf! I hate them both right now along with : Bill Gates Rex Tillerson Rupert Murdoch Jeff Immelt Warren Buffett A.G. Lafley
I knew this pretty much from the start. Anyone who thought we'd never hate them was deluding themselves. The point is that it's better to have multiple evil corporations fighting over control of the market rather than one evil corporation enjoying an unchallenged monopoly.
Uh, I already hate Google. I work as CIO for a small brick and mortar company that has decided to make a direct effort to increase our online presence and sell our services online. We've been using Google Ads for about a year and have had mixed success. I think we've probably spent maybe thousands of dollars on ads, generated a 1000's of clicks, but only a 25 leads or so. Not great ROI, but whatever, it is what it is, we probably need a better site to generate leads from clicks. At some point maybe 6 months ago, we decided to take a look at Google checkout to use as the processor of our payments. It seemed like a really sweet deal, since if you bought Google ads, 10% of the cost would go to offsetting the Google checkout fees. Credit card processing fees are a major burden for a small business, and if we can offset that cost with free advertising or vice-versa, it seems like a no-brainer. It took me (who is also the web developer) about a couple of days or maybe a week to completely integrate our site with the Google checkout api's. It all seemed great, was very slick, we could do coupons, it made people feel "safe" to do the payment through Google, etc. We even went so far as to go through their process to get Google checkout "badges" next to our Google Ads. In this process, one of the Google people went through our site, looked at the products/services, made sure we were using the Google checkout buttons correctly and in accordance with their policies. Shortly after, we cut our ties with our existing payment processing company, a 1 man shop that we had a long standing relationship with, he wasn't happy but understood since Google had the free advertising, Google brandname, lower fees, etc. Things were great for 6 months, until last Friday at about 6:30 pm, I get an email from someone at Google Checkout that the products we sold weren't in accordance with their policies and they had canceled our Google checkout account and canceled any pending orders and refunded the customer's money. I had reviewed their policies very closely before we started to use them and we clearly weren't in violation. Furthermore, one of their employees had reviewed everything for our badges and signed off on it. Even if we were in violation, to have them just pull the rug out from underneath us is extremely bad business on their part. Our old 1-man shop would've never done something like that. Then, there is no phone number you can call to talk to anyone at Google, there is no formal appeals process, and it is very clear that they don't give a damn about maintaining any sort of customer satisfaction. Since we had been granted the badges, someone over there at least once thought we were in accordance with their policies, so they are being inconsistent at best. Once we got this email on a Friday night, we replied, and didn't get any sort of response back for 4 days. What kind of operation runs their business like this? An evil one. Anyone considering using Google checkout to process their payments should seriously reconsider and try to find a company that will actually care and not be some faceless giant. Oh, and BTW- even though we can't process payments for our products through Google Checkout, they are MORE then happy to allow us to continue to run Google Ads for the exact same products in services. How is that not contradictory and/or evil?
Their searches are not very good, business pages that deceive you to buy $$$ but say in their google search that they have info or something free . Google is filled with fake pages that lead to google ads
I think so many people dislike Apple right now because of what they have done to stay afloat in thier chosen (computer) market. They had to plunge into technologies that had already been introduced YEARS before. The bad thing is (and this is mostly public perception) is that Apple has claimed these as thier own. The original MP3 players from diamond, sony and creative blew away the first ipods. Same for the Iphone. Im constantly hearing what big POS's they are; both products have very inflated prices, yet the birage of advertising has forced the ignorant public into thinking Apple was the first, the best, or both -- only to find out they were fooled. By then it's too late. The general public has already adopted Apple's catch-phrases (ie: using "ipod" to describe ANY Mp3 player). Apple sues anyone who uses the name "i-whatever". Informed consumers are sick of having inferior products crammed into their heads.
It's math.
Yeah. I know, you're in an all fired hurry to make sure you get one of those fucking Slashdot buzzwords into your post, in order to try to sound cool. Look, I'm not trying to be pedantic, and believe me, this ain't no strawman argument. It's just that I couldn't parse your statement. You made it an order of magnitude more confusing, that.
While I understand that maths is a proper word, nobody here in the U.S. uses it, unless they are trying to sound like a complete dork. And, playing the probablilites, I'm pretty damn sure you're from the U.S. So, please, stop acting like a dick. Regardless, that is not my point. What I am getting at is the incorrect usage.
That kind of math. Those kinds of maths.
If your going to make an ass out of yourself, at least you could do it right.
So all that's needed to become hated is success? I don't hate M$ for it's success; I hate them because they abuse me as a consumer. As long as Google and Apple can avoid that, they can avoid the hate. M$ hate wasn't INEVITABLE, it was EARNED.
I already hate Apple and Google, you insensitive clod!
Let's face it, the world has turned. Some people still wish to look through rose-colored glasses, or desperately grasp to a time past when things seemed simpler...
Microsoft is embracing OSS and open standards
Apple- hardware and software lockin. No independant apps without their approval. Worse than Microsoft ever was.
Google- desperately trying to Not Be Evil, but will ultimately have its purpose subverted. People already fear Google and won't make their information available to its voracious machine... this makes it far too easy for the government to keep tabs on them,.
More like "always says no". In order to actually run your app on an iphone, you need to pay apple and get approval. This is just to run the app, this is completely separate from distributing a finished app on itunes. Apple has rejected everyone I know.
Who here actually has the ability to run their own apps on an iphone?
that a computer would crash any number of times a day with their poor coding and fucked up systems architecture.
They could be big, small or middle sized, it just shouldn't be acceptable that computers crash regularly or even need rebooted. They should just work
When a company stops trying to satisfy the needs of its customers the customers become unhappy. This is not unique and has happened many times it is called arrogance. 3M used to own the automotive body repair business because they made excellent products at a fair price that made the body shops $$$$. When they went to a multi-tier price system to ring the last penny out of the customer while cutting support and innovation they lost control of the market. This is what IBM did, what MS is doing and yes probably what Apple will one day do. Not that complicated. The company loses focus on the customer and gets greedy when competition ceases. This is part of why an open market is more efficient than a centrally controlled market.
Not outside the USA. Yes, I know, it must come as a surprise to you that there's a world outside your borders. And I don't mean "to the americans", I mean to _you_ personally, the sad loser who need the ego masturbation of finding one word to pick on.
In other words, you know it's a proper word, but (A) you're too retarded to parse it anyway, and (B) you need your daily dose of ego-masturbation that badly, that you construct a convoluted layer of false assumptions (no, I'm not from the USA) to build it on? Again, even knowing full well that it _is_ a real word? Heh.
No, I'll tell you what it really is: it's just you who are the kind of loser who needs to find one word (which incidentally wasn't even mis-spelled here) and blow it out of proportion into "look! There's someone more stupid than me! He mis-spelled a word!"
The problem is as follows: the kinds of people I can respect aim _upwards_. It's only the sad losers that need to prove that someone must have been _below_ them. It's only when you're a pathetic waste of sperm, and _know_ it, that you get your daily high out of crap like, "look, but there's someone who mis-spelled a word! I'm better than that!" If what you have to prove is not what you've achieved, but that there must be someone between you and the bottom of the proverbial barrel, then you already know you're pretty close to said bottom.
Far from feeling enlightened or berated by your crap, dude, you amuse me. I appreciate your confession of worthlessness, amusing as it is.
Just, if I'm allowed one humble advice, you don't want to do that IRL. It really spells _that_ blatantly "I'm a pathetic loser and I know it". It's ok to do that kind of confessions on the 'net as an AC, but avoid doing it in person. For your own good. Then again, I suspect most people around you already know it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I remember when IBM was the evil empire. I was in this industry then. But no-one ever loved 'the scrappy underdog Microsoft' because Microsoft never was a scrappy underdog. By the time it had come onto anyone's radar Microsoft had developed a reputation for poor business ethics and sharp practice. It always was a company of wide boys; if not certainly an evil empire in the making, at least a SCO in the making.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
...soon everyone will love Linux. Unconditionally. (Sorry, had to say that :P No flames meant!)
I think therefore I am... a Linux geek.
While I agree with the overall point of this artical (even though I'm a big Apple fan myself), I disagree that it's much like Bill Gates. I associated Bill Gates & Microsoft with IBM very early on, and in those days, IBM were the bad guys. So Bill never seemed the endeering, scrappy underdog.
Furthermore, Steve Jobs isn't exactly the endeering, scrappy underdog either. He's the uber-charismatic spiritual leader of a industro-aesthetic movement. Do I find myself admiring the man? Certainly. But Jobs is a different animal altogther, and therefor, so is Apple. Gates has never been charasmatic, he's never been a really positive public figure. He may be applauded as a shrewd business man, in the very traditional sense, but people never really "liked" him.
Which comes to the ways in which Microsoft and Apple present themselves. Microsoft has much more straight-forward business practices and marketing: divide and conquer, buyout the little guy. Most of their business resources are used to play things out behind the scenes.
Apple, on the flipside, while being no less ruthless, seems to play it's business resources more in the public arena with consumer-aimed marketting campaigns of all shapes and sizes. Sure, they may do a lot of back-door dealings, but their public image is a lot more out in the open. Sure, they may do some weird stuff from time to time (Safari with iTunes: definitely a "no-no"), but they seem to spend a greater percentage of their marketing capital in the consumer market.
And they still do do some things that noone else has bested. Few companies can really compare to hardware interface design. Though Microsoft approaches it with the XBox360, and Adobe's software interface design may rival it (or did at one time... they've gotten sloppy as of late). Basically, only Nintendo, in following the Apple aesthetic model to the T, has been able to rival them in hardware interface design.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
So I consistently hate everything and everyone as soon as I find out it exists.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Hi there all this is the happy troll pointing out Slashdot already hates Apple. Don't believe me? Scan back over a few months of headlines and posts and you'll see the truth. It's like watching CNN moan about how the press is down on Hillary while they are running endless stories about Obama's dog groomer may be antisemetic. Slashdot defends Microsoft and attacks Apple. In other news the sun comes up even on cloudy days. Guess it's time to change my screen name to troll just so it matches the mod. Killing the messenger is another tradition at Slashdot.
"The first ethical and moral responsibility the executives and the board of directors have is to the shareholders who have entrusted them with their treasure in anticipation of an increase in value." And yet this is recognized as a problem. You spout this as though it is without question appropriate behavior. It certainly is *not*. And you confuse moral dilemas with contractual obligations. As you point out, contractual duty can't outweigh legal responsibility, which is why there can be no contracts related to illegal behavior. It isn't a contract at that point, it is just a piece of paper. Contractual obligations can not exist that require you to break the law. MS behavior is not just a matter of considering "ethical and moral responsibility", it is a matter of violating laws. The fact that stockholders have done well backing gangsters doesn't mean that, for instance, Al Capone should have been allowed an IPO.
It's just a question of time before we hate Mozilla too. If Safari or Opera get close in the browser war they will use the same tactics as Microsoft or any other evil corporation.
It's not math. It's maths. At least it is where I come from.
Regardless, apart from some whining douchebags (that would include you), everyone understands what the sentence means. If you can't, then you're too stupid to be using a computer, and probably ought to be taught how to drool less.
This author is WAY late to the party.
iPod/iTunes DRM? check.
Google collaboration with censorhsip? check.
Windows Vista suckage? check.
This would have been current 5-10 years ago.
Just more astroturf about how "everybody hates Bill Gates because he's rich and smart. Wah, wah, wah, quit picking on the poor guy." They've been saying it for 20 years.
No, there was no evil before Microsoft, though there was low-grade annoyances (IBM and DEC). There will never, in history, be another evil like Microsoft.
There are plenty of evil things Apple does. Selling iPods is not one of them.
Oh yeah? Wait until epidemic hearing loss sets in on the current generation. If I can hear your iPod across the street when there is traffic... you probably have the volume up too high.
What the hater doesn't grok is that having a technical understanding that DRM is pointless and trying to make the business world understand that does not make your publicly traded company immune to due diligence. If Apple do not use the industry-standard copy protection measures, they will be sued for failing to maximize shareholder value.
You can't take the sky from me...
Every time Apple runs those "We're so hip and cool" commercials with that smug jackass bragging about how cool he is versus the fuddy-duddy old PC, they probably loose 10 potential future customers for every one short-term customer they gain.
Apple has been running this campaign for almost two years, and the ads have inspired as many parodies as the "Got Milk" campaign. It's a cultural phenomenon. During the last two years, Apple's hardware sales have increased dramatically, so it is difficult to believe that the ad campaign has been a failure.
I'm not sure there's a distinction between "potential future customers" and "one short-term customer." You either buy the product or you don't. If you buy it and you like it, you'll buy it again. If you buy it and you don't like it, you won't buy it again. The purpose of the ad is to get you to consider purchasing in the first place. If it pushes you toward a purchase, it has done its job.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Why does being successful translate into 'being evil'? It's just good business, quit whining.
Not to mention that Apple sells hardware, the OS is what makes it run. They have no reason to offer the OS they make to run hardware they aren't selling.
And the third reason is that if the OS is seen as unreliable on non-supported hardware, it will lead people to think that the OS, and the company that made it, is at fault, rather than the inferior hardware it was forced upon. And is bad fr the company, and its shareholders.
You can't take the sky from me...
Some of us were never enamored with MS. Their original Basic was OK, but that was about the closest thing to a positive thought I ever had about them. By the time the IBM PC was released with MS-DOS, I despised them.
They will be hated simply because all public companies have a tendency to move from good to evil over time. It's kind of an inflexible rule of capitalism, and it may take a long time but it has to happen.
A public company has exactly 1 consistent goal--to make money for its shareholders. When it is making money the company generally is given some leeway and tends to do good things, but when it stops making money (every market turns a little now and then) the money must be extracted elsewhere.
What are the first things to go? Public programs, customer service, innovative free services, employee benefits, employee bonuses, etc. Basically anything "Good" goes. The "Evil" profit making stuff stays.
So it's not so much that the companies will be perceived as evil later (although there is some of that), it's much more likely that the companies will become more evil over time.
And honestly I think that is what most people who are anti-Google fear. I love all things google--I think they are the best thing since ethernet, but I can understand some trepidation at the concept of blindly trusting them with everything.
On the other hand, I think it's a crime not to reward the most "Good" company to come out in ages with at least some goodwill, so I do get a little annoyed at the anti-googlites, but I can't blame them.
As much as I hate Microsoft, when forced to use a Mac I curse a lot more at it. Primarily, because I have my own idea of what my workflow should be, and at least on a PC I can jerk the apps around enough to make it do things the way I want them done. I don't put *anything* in "My Documents."
Macs are good for people who have no idea how they should do things on a computer. If you do have an idea of how you want things done, you will have to re-learn it the Mac way. Something as simple as moving files from a USB drive into the iTunes "jukebox" (or whatever it's called) turned out to be an involved process as it just wasn't prepared to do things the way I thought about them and I had to 1) realize it was making assumptions that were not at all intuitive (to me at least) and 2) figure out just what those assumptions were.
I've grown up with the computer industry and make my living working with them. I won't let ANY computer system dictate my workflow-- computers are supposed to adapt to MY workflow, not the other way around. At least on a PC there's some hope of doing that, it's nearly impossible on a Mac. I suppose that's great if you have NO IDEA what you are doing, but I find it far more annoying than the worst thing I've ever see a Windows PC do...
Just like the Beatles. Oh wait, that's not true at all. Who brought the Negative Nancy?
You guys do realize that advertising is what keeps using the web free, right? Without ads, many of your favorite sites (to include /. ) wouldn't be able to function. If anything, google ads are pretty non-invasive and lead to a situation where those who make money make it and we get to use things for no cost. Read this:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
People can bitch all they want, but if they have the choice between getting a free lunch with coke ads splattered on everything or had to pay $1, they will still pick the free lunch.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Windows: plug in the drive, wait through a few 'recognized a new device' dialogs, double-click to open it, and drag the files from it. Then unmount it from the task bar and walk off.
Mac: plug in the drive, double-click to open it, and drag the files from it. Then unmount it from Finder and walk off.
What is the difference? You don't like iTunes? Don't use it, it's just an applications, and runs on both Windows and Mac. There are other applications for both platforms.
And I really don't get what you're talking about with the "My Documents" comment. I keep most of my files on my Mac in "/Local". I keep most of my files on Windows in "My Documents" because there's too much clutter in "C:\". Neither system forces me to do it another way... what exactly is it that you've got a problem with?
So no problem here!
(Of course, if you meant to say "half a century" in both places, then I completely agree with the point about Lisp and functional languages in general. Also, while I'm not that much of an old-timer myself, I know there are those who would take issue with the claim of Fortran and Cobol being "forgotten".)
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Apple has been an enemy of openness in general for decades now
You mean openness like:
Webkit (open source, core of Safari)
Darwin (open source, base for )
GCC (used for Apple development tools, significant updates added by Apple for Objective C support)
All sorts of BSD tools
LaunchD framework
Rendezvous
Apache (OS X ships with Apache built in)
PHP, Perl, Ruby, etc (same deal).
Those are all open and strongly supported by Apple. Apple has been one of the most open source friendly companies to come along, of all the ones that also do more proprietary work as well.
I am a huge fan of open source, and also happily use a number of Apple products.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple has not always been "best of breed." Mac OS 1-9 were cooperative multitasking systems,
it's absurd to say OS 9 at least was not best of breed simply because of one technical aspect that a user never even really saw.
I didn't use the OS myself (partly because of that reason) but I knew a lot of people that did use OS 9, and it honestly was a very stable and productive OS, far more so than any Windows variant of the same period. It took years for OS X to achieve the same level of stability and tweaking that OS 9 had reached, which is why it was such a bold move to switch so fully to OS X when they did.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Honestly, who among us was really looking at Microsoft with reverence during Windows 3.1 or 3.11? Certainly few people that actually had to use it! or while Netscape was being destroyed to be replaced by IE?
It seems to me they reached a peak of acceptance with XP, and then it has been a bit downhill from there. But there are plenty of us who disliked Microsoft for a variety of reasons at every stage of operation up to today.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is a reason IBM stopped being perceived as evil. They have a culture of CEO succession.
I know it's more complicated than that but that's the gist of it.
Once Microsoft moves beyond the personality cult of Bill and Steve, things will change.
But not before then.
What third-party things are prevented from interoperating with Apple products? Their OS is now a certified Unix and works natively with a huge variety of file formats both standard and proprietary. Their hardware ports are all standard and you can plug almost anything into them and have it work. Heck they even provide a utility to make it easy to dual-boot an Apple machine with Windows.
Apple has definitely had its problems with NIH syndrome, but I think a rational analysis shows that they are actually much better about that stuff now than they used to be.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I have always hated Microsoft.
"You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstart Bill Gates." You have no idea what you're talking about!!! People "loved" Bill Gates and Microsoft because they didn't know any better. Tech was "new" to the media and most people in the 90's. They flocked like lemmings to what the big box suppliers were selling. People didn't think they just purchased. If you would have looked back at any time you'd see Microsoft using the exact same predatory practices it always has in its quest to OWN the world. You'd also see Apple, either with or w/out Stever Jobs, doing what they've always done trying their best to CHANGE the world. Google to green horned to make a comparison to. So, just because you were a lemming and regret "loving" Microsoft (ah, poor guy sold his soul to satan) an article like this means nothing if neither Apple or Microsoft has actually changed their corporate drivers since their birth!!
I hate Windows (the class hierarchy is way too shallow, which gets you into all kinds of security problems,) Microsoft I think is just a typical big corporation with some buffoons at the top and its devolves from there.
I love the Macs, the iPods, Jonathan Ives and their product design team.
I would quit before working with (make that 'for', you never 'with' someone like) Steve Jobs.
If you're lucky, he's not actively working 'against" you. (Some people have that as their management style. [I have nothing against that, I just know I can't work for someone like that.])
I think that you are quite right not to trust Google. But that's because I don't think you should trust any corporation.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstart Bill Gates."
Nope. I don't remember. I had yet to be born prior to February 3rd 1976.
I hate Apple if only for the way they're spamming the airwaves with their insipid MacBook Air TV ad.
(Yeah, I'm working on building a MythTV box...)
Has /. become "it world" where lame, unsupported opinion becomes news?
It would be one thing if TFA had references to reputable opinion polls which showed popular opinion on Mr. Gates and/or MS to go one way and over time slide to the other. Likewise showing similar interesting data for IBM (and perhaps showing a slide back) and some preliminary data for Google. Admittedly it wouldn't be earth shaking but at least it would be interesting to see opinion data presented that way.
Instead we have one guy, citing no sources shooting his mouth off about something. Something that's at least debatable. BG as other people noted had his haters for openly criticizing software 'sharing'.
Can't we just agree that unsupported blog posts are about as interesting as driveway gravel...or less?
The article mentions IBM, but fails to point out why we don't all hate IBM now. Sure IBM is no industry sweetheart but I don't think they attract the ire of folks like MS does, and they've been around a lot longer.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Hating Apple has nothing to do with the Internet - it's their elitist marketing feats, complete disregard towards consumer wishes and the phony superiory front, all directed towards the global money grab that make people hate them. Of course pretty much entire Apple userbase is made out of simpletons and elitist a-holes, all using the product in an attempt to increase their social "coolness" factor without realizing its limitations and drawbacks, yet blindly defending its once again phony superiority, basing it on nothing except Apple's marketing myths. Just the fact that they actually believe that Mac OS doesn't have any viruses because Apple continuously flaunts the fact, forgetting to point it out that it isn't completely true and is only caused by their miniscule market share being an unwanted target for hackers, makes me never want to be seen with one of those excuses for a computer hardware in my hands... ever... not even mentioning the blaming of Microsoft for the virus-infected iPods back in 2006 or their antitrust clauses in the iPhone SDK... they should learn from Google's motto "don't be evil"...
Why in the world should I hate google somewhere in the future? :)
I've always hated google!
In fact I like Apple more than google.
Oh and don't worry, that doesn't mean I like Microsoft
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I still have plenty of disgust and disdain left for Microsoft. I don't care how many people Microsoft pays to write articles to try and deflect criticism. I'm not done yet so don't be in such a hurry to move on!!
Microsoft ranks up there with companies like Enron and Global Crossing on the old Revile-O-Meter. People may not like other corporations but Microsoft will still rank near the top of the most hated companies in history IMHO. Their greed and arrogance is almost palpable when you hear Steve Ballmer speak.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
I remember when tape-based then CD-based Walkman's were all the rage. You can blame the inventor of the 1/8" portable headphone jack. If these devices had big 1/4" jacks for studio headphones maybe people wouldn't wander out into traffic with them on.
Some idiots ride bicycles or drive cars with them on. And then wonder why they are more likely to get into a collision.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sure. As soon as either of them get enough of a foothold in their respective markets that I'm forced to support their software lock-in, forced upgrades, etc, and turn down superior alternatives because of the need to interoperate with non-standard protocols or data formats, I'll start to hate them.
To be clear though, I don't "love" google or apple, merely appreciate that they make decent products which I can choose to either use or ignore as suits my needs, and if it weren't for the above I wouldn't care one way or another about MS either.
Maybe that's why Microsoft switched to doing hardware for a while. That Z80 card they made so the Apple][ could run CPM was pretty cool.
I already hate apple, though most because of the mess they made when they introduced firewire... to me firewire will forever remain the iconic factor in Apples (lack of) achievement.
There is no obscene in rich. He generated profit by providing goods and services. He accidentally, or on purpose, bent the rules here and there and paid whatever fines were lawfully levied. Totally a business decision.
Just like any other company does. Like the evil Southwest Airlines who were caught no maintain their aircraft up to standard. Why? to make a profit. Profit isn't right or wrong. In fact Bill Gates would have been WRONG not to make as much money as possible for the shareholders of the company. He is morally obligated to do so. Will he/the company make mistakes and subsequently pay the cost (either in fines or lost revenue?) Sure.
I don't think they are teaching the basics in school any more. What's good for business is good for America. Wal-Mart is not evil. Microsoft is not evil. They are profitable, and when they are no longer so they will no longer exist.
Re:One day?, posted to Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too), has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Troll (0).
Reliability, duh., posted to Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too), has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (2).
Re:One day?, posted to Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too), has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Troll (0).
Re:One day?, posted to Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too), has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Troll (0).
Re:One day?, posted to Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too), has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Troll (0).
DRM on the OS, posted to Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too), has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Troll (0).
Re:One day?, posted to Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too), has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Troll (0).
You can't take the sky from me...
He's legally obligated to provide maximum money for shareholders. There's a large distinction between that and morally obligated. Also I've never heard of any company being sued for "not maximizing shareholder money", that's just a bullshit line people through out in defense of companies. While it is technically illegal, it is de facto permissible for companies to not maximize shareholder money.
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
But I think that the capitalist system, especially in the US, has features that reward sociopathic and predatory behavior and which, at very least, provide few incentives for behaving ethically. Some people do anyway. I like to think that I do, but I have no expectation of being rewarded for it. I do it mainly because the alternative is so distasteful.
I also find "win or die" armchair social Darwinists distateful, since they talk big about primal struggles but have never really had to fight for survival on any but a metaphorical level. That leads to the phony machismo and lack of empathy that is epitomized by George Bush. People who have faced real threats to their existence tend to be less cocky.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Business is not like Monopoly, everyone can win.
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
It wasn't my Mac and has been about a year so the specifics have faded somewhat-- but my friend with a brand new Mac that I helped set up, wanted to get the files on the flash drive onto his hard drive so that he could play them with iTunes. The first time we tried it from within iTunes, it turned out iTunes acted like it copied the files but had instead only indexed them, so once the flash drive was removed things were confused. While dragging may appear to copy files, that doesn't necessarily mean that's what actually happened to them.
The OS itself isn't so bad, I mean it's essentially Unix, after all. But the OS is not what most people use their computer for, it is the applications that determine how you use a Mac. The Mac people I know don't go anywhere near the underlying OS, they barely understand the finder. If all I ever wanted to do is to drag files from here to there I doubt there'd be an issue. At some point you have to interface with applications-- many of which are supplied with the Mac or otherwise obtained from Apple, and these things are what defines the Mac experience, as they are used as models by third party developers. And Apple has as much history as Microsoft of imposing their applications on you. Apple has a long history of keeping things TOO simple-- the one-button mouse a classic example. Tools are not designed to be modular or Swiss army knifes, but instead very specific tools for tasks done a particular way in order to "keep it simple". But keeping it THAT simple means you often have to conform to the Mac way-- ironic, when often Mac users seem to see themselves as non-conformists...
There's plenty of frustration to go around though. With the PC's "My Documents", there's a tacit assumption that you want to group like files together-- when I prefer to group files by projects in many cases, which may contain a mix of filetypes. Consequently, I've always found the "My Documents" paradigm a less-than-useless mal-assumption. And file selectors often have related assumptions and don't handle alternatives very well either, loading a file from one project and saving it to another, or loading it from a common repository and then saving it into a project often requires browsing back and forth for every file because the selector has the wrong kind of memory for such things-- a more flexible scheme would NOT try to second-guess what you want to do, but allow you to set the various target directories in the selectors. In Unix, I can set an environment variable to remember locations of note, but there is often no equivalent in the typical GUI interfaces, even though its no less important than in Unix. And file selectors could stand to remember where you are scrolled within a directory, as if you are working on directories with hundreds or thousands of files, having to scroll through them to find the one you're interested in, and then re-find it or the "next" one in a subsequent selection is an interface that still needs some work IMHO...
One thing I've been wondering about the Mac though-- the PC has an annoying habit of "stealing focus" when you have multiple things running, and are typing into a text box somewhere. Various things will move themselves to the front and interrupt your work with stupid stuff like "would you like to update now?" or other annoyances. Even many web browsers will do it to themselves-- I start typing in a URL as soon as my browser appears, and while it's loading my home page I get halfway through typing and the page finishes loading and it then steals the cursor and puts it into an entry box on the page that loaded so the second half of the URL I type in ends up in a different box. I want to see a GUI where I can completely "mask" all such interrupts while I'm typing, with an adjustable timeout perhaps that locks focus to where I'm typing until I pause for some period of time. The only acceptable interrupt would be an imminent crash that will cause data loss or loss of the text I'm entering-- any other thing, NO MATTER WHAT that CAN be delayed SHOULD be until I finish typing. How is the Mac at this sort of thing? Better? Worse? The same? If it was better that would certainly be one feature well worth bragging about...
Every thing good has an end, it will happen to Google and any other company. Whoever they can limit the amount of damage they do to others.
You mean these great innovative companies which we once swore loyalty to when nobody knew who they were will someday become so big that we will despise them for their success, hate their occasional abuses of fame, label them sell-outs for being liked by our kid sisters, and then move on to favor a cooler unknown company that really does get it?
Nah, never happen.
I don't want to challenge ITworld.com's great knack for the obvious, but "In an industry where users are fickle and power translates to evilness"??? Fickle users don't hold on stubbornly to old software just because it does the job. And power doesn't translate to evilness, power abused does.
All of this is irrelevant.
Apple and Google will prevail and Microsoft (deservedly) will die. It is a matter of years.
Until we get to that stage, all else is irrelevant.
Anyone who doesn't understand and cheer the two "dragons" who are killing "the beast" are just clueless, know very little about the history of the computer industry, or can't appreciate good programming.
Linux isn't powerful enough to kill off Microsoft by itself. We need to get rid of the install base, and then the computer industry can FINALLY evolve at the naturally fast pace it SHOULD HAVE ALL THESE DECADES!!! (If not for the damned monkey wrenches from Redmond).
Only a handful of die-hards handy any admiration for Microsoft at the beginning. They weren't yet financially successful, their products were abysmal, and their only claim to fame was shady & heavy-handed business tactics. No comparison at all with Google.
There's a difference. Mainly because they won't shut up. It's a tool and a toy, not a lifestyle or philosophical statement.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I've "hated" (read: not seen anything of non-gimmick value in) Apple for a long, long time now. Just waiting for the rest of the fad-blinded retards to see the light.
I already do. Google spy's on everybody, if you think otherwise you do not understand the technology. Apple provides computers for those who analyse value from fashion net result after 25 years of head to head competition with Microsoft: Apple's price is too much for too little for too long.
The first time we tried it from within iTunes, it turned out iTunes acted like it copied the files but had instead only indexed them, so once the flash drive was removed things were confused.
The only way that could happen is if your friend went into the iTunes preferences and turned off "copy tracks". iTunes copies files by default, but it has the option to leave them where they are on the disk so that people can leave their tracks organized the way they have them in some other music program without having them duplicated.
And, really, if you had opened the files on the flash drive in Microsoft Word, would you have expected Word to copy them from the flash drive to the computer?
On the Mac *or* the PC when I'm copying files from a flash drive, I copy them to a folder on the computer first and then pull the flash drive out. Then I worry about getting them into some program or other. That way I don't have to worry about how long the program takes to "do its thing", or the flash drive being temperamental.
The Mac people I know don't go anywhere near the underlying OS, they barely understand the finder.
I think that applies to all computer users. I was a network administrator for a group of between 150 and 400 (depending on the project load) software developers for 20 years, and it is AMAZING how naive computer users, even professional programmers, can be. We had secretaries who were more computer-savvy than some of the Engineering PhDs I had to shepherd. And these were all using Windows.
And that's not a problem with the Mac, that's a problem with the users.
the one-button mouse
One of my bugaboos, but these days it's really a hardware problem, not a software one. OS X supported multi-button mice from the start. And pre-OS-X Mac OS was so bloody horrible that it wasn't even on my radar. I had a Mac years ago... the original 128k Mac... and it was SO unpleasant that until I could get OS X on an upgraded Powermac I bought used there was no way I was going to mess with it for anything but the experience.
the PC has an annoying habit of "stealing focus"
That's something that the Mac is a lot better with. Not all programs follow the human interface guidelines, not even all the ones from Apple, but it takes at least a minor effort to violate this one: when a program wants your attention it doesn't pop up and steal focus unless the programmer deliberately goes out of their way to make it do so. Instead the program's icon starts bouncing in the dock, to let you know that the program needs your attention.
It's not perfect, sometimes programs run a separate program to open a window, and as a new program it opens on top. Some ported programs use toolkits that ignore the guidelines (and Mac users get downright sarcastic about them in reviews). But most of the time your focus is safe.
UNIX - the shell and everything that implies, including all the open source programs and scripting languages. OSX comes with Perl, Tcl, SQLite (Apple uses SQLite internally... you can make SQL queries on your Apple mail database!), PHP, Apache,
Mac OS - Applescript gives you amazing GUI glue to everything. For example, iTunes normally doesn't include podcasts in party shuffle, because they're usually not music. But I subscribe to some Jazz feeds, so I go in and select them and then run this script from the iTunes scripts menu: Mac OS + UNIX: You can call Applescripts from the shell with the "osascript" command, and vice versa. So to put he computer to sleep right now I can do this: NeXTstep: The Cocoa libraries are amazingly discoverable and reflective, and OS X ships with all the debuggers and everything. You can go in and catch calls and make global changes to system libraries. There's at least one company (Unsanity) that sells nothing but cool runtime changes for cocoa libraries. There's also a Smalltalk workalike scripting language called FScript that you can "hook" into any application and extend it using FScript.
More: to make the "focus problem" even less of an issue, there's a third party application framework called "Growl" that applications can use to post notifications, and they come up any way you want. So with an iTunes plugin (growltunes) I get an MTV-style popup at the bottom of my screen when tracks change, but other application notifications get redirected to smoke-grey rectangles on the side of the screen that time out after a few seconds.
And because so much of this stuff is written by people coming to the Mac from UNIX, a lot of them (like growl) are open source.
Correct. Practically the first time I ever even heard Microsoft's name, someone was telling me they didn't like the company (circa 1980, a geek kid was explaining to me why he had no compunction about pirating Microsoft Basic).
Just last night I was listening to the Mark Shuttleworth presentation at BALUG, and -- since he seems to be a guy who has trouble saying anything negative about anyone -- he gave us the line "Remember, Microsoft made software cheap!"
But this just isn't true... if you wanted to give that crown to any one company, I would pick Borland: Microsoft was just one of a number of companies trying to undersell each other. (And for that matter, was MS-DOS such a better deal than CP/M?).
(Oh and by the way... moderators? Why is this man labeled "Troll"? He's actually on-topic. Try RTFM, you know?)
Successful? Right place at the right time, nothing more.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
I have only used one "apple" that worked without crashing in under 30 min's. My lovely Apple 2GS! The apple every made. I submit that I have not trying OS 10. But the only reason that OS 10 is so good is that it is not MAC!!!!! It is NextStep BSD! If in 1998 Microsoft shipped a Win-Linux OS; would you talk about how great the Windows Koral is?! Remember what Jobs ones said: Think different; think like everyone else (just like me)!
I already hate Apple.
We're all going to die. i intend to deserve it.
Apple Killed it,
Nope, they took a little while to release one module of source code, out now. It's alive and well.
If you're just going to lie outright why should I read or respond to anything else you say? And so I don't even know what the rest of your post said.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whaaaaa? Has your experiend of computers perhaps been limited to only Microsoft Windows? How could anyone 'like' using Microsoft software considering the amount of shit you have to put up with until patches are released? It would be okay if they let you stick with older versions of their software, but noooo they only sell the latest version. I'm a little cranky because I've had to deal with computers running Office 2007 having issues, but that was more of an affirmation of my views than the cause of them. From a business point of view, Bill Gates is a god. But from any other standpoint, he's just the guy who ruined IT workers lives in the 90s (though he did pretty much create the IT Support and anti-virus industry so I guess a lot of us should thank him for that).
which is totally what she said
most of the computer science class mates already hate apple.. and a few hate Google too.
As long as Apple keeps their corporate culture alive and doesn't succomb to the disease of the big-business, design-by-committee, process-driven business models of Microsoft and others, then Apple will always be a favorite (and yes, the underdog, and yes, the niche market). Huge corporate successes will imply that Apple has indeed sold out and, by definition, not be as good as they are now.
Mac: plug in the drive, double-click to open it, and drag the files from it. Then unmount it from Finder and walk off.
What is the difference?
It's a shame this is an old thread and nobody will see my response.The difference(s) are: with Windows, you plug in the drive and "hope" that you see "new device recognized". In more times than I care to recall, the most recently being an embarrassing moment I tried to demonstrate my company's USB fingerprint reader, the device I plug into WinXP isn't recognized, or isn't working properly due to some driver issue. With a Mac, an icon of the actual device shows up on your desktop, with no need to "assure" the user that the "new device" is working properly via "a few dialogues", and definitely no annoying driver issues.
Then there's the whole issue of Windows starting to copy files across drives and not telling you there isn't enough space on the target drive until you've gotten 75% of the way done and have wasted several minutes. With OSX, it tells you right up front that there isn't enough space.
Finally, I know it always says not to, but with OSX I've never lost a single bit of data by unplugging a device without "unmounting" it first. I can't say the same for WinXP.
So to the casual observer, yeah, they do the same thing, but the refinement in the way OSX goes about it seems to be lost on most casual observers.
Wow. If you re-read your entry (the sad commentary that it is), you'll probably notice that it says more about YOU than it does Apple, Inc. This is also an unfortunate all-too-frequent attitude that I just don't get. It's a computer, deal with it. If you don't like it, use a different one. I bet you hate people who drive BMWs too, or who live in nice big houses, eh?