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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.'"
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 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.
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.
I posted a response to someone else's MS hating/Apple loving post that basically stated this article's points and was modded -1 Troll. I went back to my mom's basement and cried.
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.
"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!
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.
I really don't understand why people think that Apple are innovative. Would someone like to highlight which products are truly original Apple innovations?
Surely they "invented" vendor lock-in with Windows.
However, Linux was too geeky way back when, so a non-starter. OS/2 would have been nice, but IBM messed up the install routine (why did it flash up saying my CD-ROM drive was not recognised - how did it read the file from the CD to write that on screen message then???), and BeOS 5 was really good but by then Windows was too dominant. Apple was seen as a niche as it sold on specific hardware and at premium prices, so not many touched it.
I think many people don't begrudge success, but it's HOW Microsoft managed to get it is what gets at people.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
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.
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.
He was spot-on in what would make him obscene rich, not what's right..
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.
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.
[President Bush's] 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. Um, I'm no Bush supporter (and it's sad that I have to run a disclaimer for even being fair to the man), but in the interest of fairness, are you saying you want to be able to just walk in no questions asked and stay as long as you want in any nation?
Sorry but no, I expect and want to be permitted to enter through legally established means, so that I may be an upstanding guest of the place I am visiting. My difficulty in affording Apple products make me think they are discriminating against the poor. What? Discriminating against the poor? Has discrimination become this catch-all now? Everyone hates discrimination, therefore, anything I don't like, down to the price someone asks for their wares is discrimination? You think someone at Apple is going "You know, we could produce these things for virtually free and give them away, but forget all that profit and paying our employees shit, what we really have to avoid is all those poor schmoes sullying our good name by using our product with a low disposable income!"
Discrimination is when you use an irrelevant attribute to make decisions. The ability to afford the product at a profitable price(*) is hardly irrelevant, and distracts from real discrimination -- and Apple is one the top 10 companies to work for if you're a minority. I'm not a fanboi, I'm just homosexual and love my wife just the same, and wish her capacity for pregnancy did not prevent her from receiving health care (I don't work for Apple, sadly).
~Rebecca
(*) Someone will invariably make a comment of gasoline or food or some such. Please understand that we're talking about Apple computer, which to my knowledge does not produce or sell anything in the "necessary for sustainable life" category. If iPods become as important as the automobile, groceries, or healthcare, we'll reconsider.
Have you ever stopped to consider that IE might be a part of your problem as well?
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Wow. I've never read that. This explains why he thinks linux (the currently prominent hobbyist OS) is rife with copyrighted code. "It *must* be, hobbyists are thieves!"
Then, Windows 95 came out. I installed it and every one of those programs just worked! I was a true believer in OS/2 and I wanted it to succeed and improve, but after that experience, it was Windows all the way for me.
The funny thing is, I am typing this while wearing my OS/2 Warp launch T-shirt, which has outlasted the software by many years. So did the really nice quality cardboard boxes the huge stack of 3 1/2" floppies the product came on. lol
That's a common misconception about Christianity. The "neighbour" spoken of in the buy-bull meant members of the "in" group, i.e., fellow Jews. Nonmembers of the in-group were fair game.
I hate to dump on your rant, but Leviticus 19:34 universalizes the neighbour-loving directive: "But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God"
I think that's pretty clear. Apply the ethic of reciprocity to all, even those from another tribe.
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.
Did you ever think that maybe it didn't 'sneak in there'? I've never had google's toolbar on any of my machines. But you should hear people bitch every times I get rid of it. Hell, even the obviously spyware toolbars people seem to love. I recently switched someone from IE to Firefox, and they kept complaining that they lost their 6 toolbars (Yes, 6!). Google's one that I've never seen 'sneak in' anywhere, but either way people seem to love 'em from what I've seen.
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.
It's nice that they've worked this long, but their capacity, chemistry, and power expense has been long exceeded by many others. If you're still using them, your cost per impression (toner+power) is about 4x what it should be. This is not to put down a long asset life, but they're truly expensive to run when you consider capex+opex-depreciation.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I dislike Windows and most other Microsoft software, but I actually agree with most of this letter. Taking other people's programs when you don't have permission isn't right, and if someone wants to make their code closed source, that's their choice too.
The two things Bill was wrong about were a) that no one would distribute software for free and b) that he would be able to deluge the hobby market with good software.
https://www.facebook.com/digitizeicm -- Show your support for the digitization of the Iron County Miner newspaper archiv
And comparing Iraq to Viet Nam just shows your vast ignorance. There's no draft in Iraq. We never toppled the North Vietnamese government. We never captured and killed Ho Chi Minh, his children, and every important official in his government. The number of soldiers who have died in Iraq are more than an order of magnitude less than the number of soldiers who died in Viet Nam (4000 in Iraq, 58000 in Viet Nam). So is genocide against those in the path of Hurricane Katrina. Economic genocide against those Americans outside Bush's "in" group WTF? Nothing you describe has anything to do with genocide. Oh, I get it, you're one of those radical leftist psuedo-intellectuals who think it's cool to throw out scary-sounding words when you're bashing Bush, even if the actual meanings of those words don't apply.
And people wonder why leftists are persona non grata in American society.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
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.
Crappy, closed-technology machines A bit subjective, but most of Apple's Macs were pretty solid. They last far past their technology (and their tech is goo enough to outlast many PCs.
The cult of the single-button mouse. (turns red). Yeah. But...those who prefer 2 or 3 button mouse could buy one from 3rd parties. Right mouse click does work on a Mac. Multi button mouse just didn't come with Macs.
Reseller programs from hell. I'll bet :-)
laser printers that became ultimately useless Huh? Most of Apple's model were pretty good - I had most of them at work and can only think of one lemon model (one of the last of their laser printers)
Two wire AppleTalk networks with all of the speed of ISDN ha ha. And what did PC have during that time period? The Macs came with networking standard and it was pretty simple to setup and get working. A bit later you could get ethernet.
Cute little useless Newtons Can you say a bit advanced for its time? And for its time the technology was not there to make it great. Only so much you can do in so little RAM, etc.
Servers that could never rise above simple workgroup needs. I suppose that was not its market?
I'm tired. The PPC? It was waaaay ahead of whatever Intel offered and had potential to stay that way. But Motorola and IBM totally dropped the ball on that one. Sorry if Intel stock made you $$, but it was true. Many of the Apple koolaid drinkers kept claiming that the PPC was more advanced than Intel's offerings long after Intel left PPC in the dust - they were hopeful and it was possible for a while for PPC to catch up and surpass. But it did not. Thanks goodness for Apple's sake that Steve Jobs made that controversial move to Intel.
And somehow, you forget the Alt key. Funny person.
I've always thought that if one is good, two is better.
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.
Meanwhile, any old PC that can make use of more than 256 MB RAM can be very useful with Windows XP for several years to come (XP can actually be made very lean, if you know how to remove stuff). No, it won't run the latest and greatest games, but neither will a brand new MacBook.
First to market with a revolutionary new product guarantees you an entry in wikipedia, nothing more.
-- QED
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.
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 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.
This is the worst, most incorrect description of Bill Gates I have ever read. Bill Gates is perhaps the world's leading humanitarian today. He gives incredible amounts of money away for helping people in Africa, etc.
See, that's the thing though. Microsoft didn't become a monopoly (by legal definition) by force. People bought their products en masse. Microsoft didn't hold a gun to their heads...it happend because the consumers CHOSE to buy their products. Consumers have no one to blame but themselves.
Living With a Nerd
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
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.
"no one else to blame but themselves" sounds as bad when referring to victims of illegal monopolistic behavior as it does when referring to rape victims. Oh sure, if they hadn't worn makeup, or put on a dress, and if they'd just stayed home and cleaned the kitchen then they wouldn't have gotten raped. The fact that MS "won" doesn't make it "right" from an MBA perspective. Winning by cheating isn't really winning.
I thought everyone on Slashdot went for the "custom" or "advanced" installation routine as a matter of course?
We learned a long time ago that 9 times out of 10 you can avoid the sub-radar injection of spyware that way and this was a contributory factor in our machines working whilst others fell over all the time.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Even though I love Linux, I still have to carry around a Windows partition simply because most proprietary software only runs on Windows. Why does most proprietary software run only on Windows? Because that's what the dominant market share is using. (circular, yes)
If my parents, or pretty well anyone I know of, heads to a common franchise computer store to buy a PC, they will be presented with pretty well only one option - a windows machine. Windows is bundled with the PC, they don't know of any other options, and it's probably a hassle to get the store to take it off and refund the money.
As for familiarity, I'm sure it can be agreed the drive for consumers (individual and business) to purchase things they are familiar with is quite strong. That's what branding is all about. How did Windows become a brand name? Their corrupt business practices lead them there...
I'm not saying that consumers are not responsible for continuing to support a business known for corrupt practices, but their choice is influenced by a number of factors you are completely overlooking. Things will hopefully change, but I guarantee it won't happen over night...
- John
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...
It's not a cult, you can use a multi-button mouse on Macs, their OS supports it.
You can't take the sky from me...
I would generally concur, but rather say that it makes for more monolithic and inflexible interfaces. IMHO. And I have a PowerBook G4 with the sloppy one button one, and a Microsoft grafted rollerball with three button scroll mouse for an Apple Tower. There is bliss in simplicity, but there's also a weakness, too. Linux: three buttons traditionally from SVR4 and Solaris and X/Motif; two buttons on Windows derivatives, one button must be coupled with keys to offer more choices (with no guaranteed, only implied consistency).
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
And that's a good thing. It's reliable, predictable... which are things I want from an interface.
You can't take the sky from me...
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