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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.'"
and in Apple's case, Darwin that you conceded, Filemaker? iTunes (not the store) ?
others are pointing out more.
Are you RDF positive?
Woz wrote Apple BASIC, also known as Integer BASIC. Applesoft BASIC was a later product.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Um, what?
The Apple ][ family was MOS/WDC. There might have been 1 or 2 Intel chips on some of the motherboards, but the CPU was an MOS 6502 (or a second-source clone, usually Synertek or Rockwell,) WDC 65C02 (actually, an NCR second-source clone,) or WDC 65C816 (a VLSI second-source clone.)
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.
Repeatedly.
Unfortunately, there are (and don't say there aren't) certain apps we use that Firefox and Opera just don't like to behave with.
Plus, if you take Google Crapbar and any other "helper" toolbars out of the equation, IE7 runs just fine. It's the crapbars causing the crash, every time - and half the time Google Crapbar turns out to have gotten into the system in some little "tag-along" arrangement, usually through an "automatic update" of Java or Acrobat Reader where you have to go into the "advanced" install mode to DENY the Google Crapbar permission to install.
Apple did not steal any code for Lisa/Mac OS. Apple purchased the right (with a large amount of stock) to look over Xerox Parc's work, hire some of their developers and then reverse engineer the GUI they saw there. One thing they got wrong is that when they saw Xerox's GUI, they thought they saw windows tiled over each other. Apple then had it's engineers go and figure out how this was done when Xerox actually didn't have that happening. Apple also came up with the idea of icons representing verbs or actions as opposed to just representing objects or data files. So yeah, they did build on what went before but they paid for the privilege. And the way Apple stock went up back in the 80's, Xerox did pretty well.
As for MS innovation, MS required Apple to give them their source code for Mac OS so that they could code up the first version of Excel. It wasn't until Windows 1 came out and Apple engineers poked around in it that they found Apple code used in Windows. That was finally settled with the $150M stock transfer back in the late 90's.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Completely offtopic, but when on Windows, I use the IETab Firefox extension. I'd rather use Firefox for absolutely everything that I can, and just have a few open tabs with the IE engine, rather than a completely separate browser. Configured right, and users won't really notice.
Also, complain loudly to whoever's responsible for those apps. It seems likely they won't care, but it seems equally likely that they're just waiting for enough people to complain, so they can make the case to their bosses.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Not exactly. Microsoft became a monopoly through a series of illegal activities. Sure, they didn't hold a gun to anyone head to force them to use Windows, but they did slander and sabotage the competition. They did use their early monopoly power (when they were the only OS for IBM PCs) to sign exclusionary deals with computer vendors to ensure that no other OS could compete. They have practiced discriminatory pricing against any retailer who dared to carry non-MS OSes with the clear intent of driving them out of business for defying Microsoft. They conquered the office suite marketplace by burning it to the ground, and using their OS monopoly rents to outlast their competition. They have a various times deliberately modified their operating system to prevent competitors products from functioning properly in Windows.
In every market that Microsoft has won, they won by being the only choice left.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You could just change all of their shortcuts to launch IE like this:
iexplore.exe -extoff
That should take care of most of the crap addins.