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Is Apple Turning Into the Next "Evil Empire"?
jira writes "'You may think you own your iPad or iPhone but in reality an invisible string links it back to Apple HQ' writes John Naughton. He adds: 'Umberto Eco once wrote a memorable essay arguing that the Apple Mac was a Catholic device, while the IBM PC was a Protestant one. His reasoning was that, like the Roman church, Apple offered a guaranteed route to salvation – the Apple Way – provided one stuck to it. PC users, on the other hand, had to take personal responsibility for working out their own routes to heaven.'"
it is not an ongoing process. you should use past perfect tense.
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I thought Google was the next Evil Empire!
I would had wanted to argue "what is there to discuss?", but nevermind.
Is apple _turning_ into the next evil empire?
No, they already are.
Now what?
Is Apple Turning Into the Next "Evil Empire"?
Apple: Slashdot, we're not Microsoft. Do you seriously think we'd explain our masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? We did it 35 minutes ago.
Summation 2
Can we drop this absurd use of the word 'evil' please?
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
It's avoidable. Never buy anything from them that begins with an "i". Anything that begins with an "M" you're ok.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
I think you're missing the link to the original essay.
Wow what a load of flamebait. What kind of conversation do you expect this will turn into with such a leading premise?
Slash can do better... (but I've been around long enough not to get my hopes up).
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
The fact that this question is being asked is, in my opinion, a sign of the times. I never thought I'd see the day when Apple is considered an "evil empire", and Microsoft is kind of the underdog/good-guy. I think, however, that Apple is making the same mistakes now they made 30 years ago. They decided to tie their hardware and software together, forcing the end user to buy their hardware - at a drastically increased initial investment cost - in order to get their software. Microsoft came along and blew that concept out of the water, and now Apple is doing the same thing again with mobile devices and iOS. Then we have Google creating an open source operating system that's totally "untethered" from hardware (I've even seen Android running on iPhones).
I think that we're going to see a repeat of the 90's here somewhat shortly with respect to mobile devices (aka "the next frontier"). Apple will insist on selling iPads and iPhones at $500 - $800 each, and Google will allow their OS to be placed on any device the consumer wants, decoupling the OS and hardware and ultimately "owning" the mobile marketspace, just like Microsoft beat Apple in terms of marketshare and continues to do so to this day.
Yeah, but that was a long, long time ago...
They have been for a long time, along with many others who would love to get to their position in the market. Apple chases profit like all other companies, they just oft have a better UI. The first thing Jobs did when he came back to Apple was axe all the Mac-clones that were being built. The second thing they did was try their best to put all non-Apple Macintosh repair shops out of business, and then open the Apple Stores once they'd done so. They haven't changed business models, they just now have a dominant market position to leverage. Frankly I think they learned a lot of their current tactics from MS, but they've never had everybody's best interests at heart, any more than MS or anyone else did.
Steve Jobs a pedophile? Bill Gates hates Fags? I'm sorry, I just don't see it.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
What do you mean, "turning"? They were never good to begin with. They perhaps turned more evil in 2007 with the release of the iPhone.
I don't think they are overpriced, after all they don't operate in a supply/demand type chain. Apple sets the price based on the development, design and manufacturing costs, plus whatever profit margin they want. If they were overpriced then a lower priced competitor would come into the market and take some market share... like Android has done quite successfully with smartphones, except that the market is not yet saturated.
As for their other stuff, well personally I like their computing equipment enough to think that it's worth the extra you pay (and when I priced up my macbook it was actually cheaper / on par with the competition). On the other hand an iPhone is overpriced for me because I don't see the value in what it does, same with the iPad. But for plenty of others it's obviously not overpriced. If they try to control OSX as they have iOS, then I'll move to Linux if it doesn't work for me, and they'll lose my custom.
I really don't like what Apple are doing in the content space with walled gardens etc. However, that doesn't make them overpriced. Evil perhaps, or maybe just normal corporate. I don't think Anonymous are the weapon to use here, and I didn't like the tone of your comment, people are allowed to buy into Apple equipment and services if they choose to do so. Try your wallet as a weapon instead.
Turning? Like they were not?
Wow! Apple vs IBM... AND Catholics vs Protestants. *grabs popcorn*
See, the author of the article is actually a time traveller from the distant past who is just now realizing what the blood sacrifice he made was for.
There is no -1 Disagree.
Where's the atheist device?
If your iWhatever isn't an open platform with all attached Cupertino strings long since severed, your geek license is hereby revoked.
-
... crappy article.
Can I have a religion-free device or is that too much to ask for? It's bad enough that the whiteness of my iPod reminds of KKK sheets.
Remember remember..
Experiments and other stuff
...so shit gets selected for the front page. Sigh...
The problem is people generally don't think things have gotten Evil until there is some sort of large-scale crisis.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
The Apple logo is just the invitation to this sort of techno-moralism. For natural born atheists and non-Christians, the half-eaten apple is a representation of the Forbidden Fruit. So, yes, Apple is "evil" in that "iconic" sense. You just have to have an iPhone but all you can afford is an Android? Confess your sin and say your prayers, son.
Who is this guy/bot/troll?
I have recently returned to /. after a 7year or so absence and was just wondering what has happening to the site I used to love so much because it provided genuine, newsworthy, information and discussions.
Bad news: you grew up. Then you got old. Now you're in the delusional nostalgia stage. It's not just Slashdot; the music is crap now too and the politicians don't really stand for anything and we've lost the sense of neighborhood we once had.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
They've been all the time. What else would you expect from a company whose handhelds looks like Darth Vader's dildo?
Yeah, Apple charging +$200-400 the MSRP of hard drives, memory, monitors, and all other standard components isn't overpriced at all.
Analogy police, arrest that man. He is abusing analogies like no other human in history!
Monstar L
Apple is the new New Labour. Steve Jobs is the new Gordon Brown. iTunes is the new reliance on banking. The list goes on. Apple has abandoned the ordinary guy so badly they're making Microsoft look good just like New Labour made the Tories look good. Is Apple such a unique snowflake it thinks it can escape reaping the whirlwind of customer vengeance like New Labour took a pasting at the polls?
Apple have a chance to stop being control freaks, sell OS X to the generic PC owner, bring back X Serve, lower their prices, and be useful to the little guy. It's not too late if they do a u-turn now but if they carry on under the autistic decaying leadership of Steve Jobs that won't happen. Steve was a great visionary as far as he went but the world's changed and Steve hasn't. Deep down he probably knows this is true but like Gordon Brown is too proud and out of touch to admit it.
Go Steve. Go now. Let Apple return to its roots. Do it for the people.
So does this make *nix the jews?
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
so... I'm old at 21; and the world is run by teenagers? That explains a lot.
I had a sig once. It was lost in the great storm of '09.
But it's not overpriced, it's just a price. You can buy those things somewhere else. Apple are not the only retailer selling hard drives, memory and monitors.
And granted they seem to be trying to prevent people upgrading laptops using off the shelf components. But that's still not an indication of being overpriced, just an indication of evilness. They don't have a monopoly on Laptops, so you can still buy from someone else if that makes you unhappy.
Yep, you can get old at any age.
If you're going back to websites that you left (presumably because you didn't like them enough to stay around, at least comparatively to other activities) and telling everyone that they're not great like you remember them (again, even though you left the supposed greatness) then you've got old prematurely. Maybe it's reversible. I'm hoping to stay young past 100.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
FYI: http://www.simongrant.org/web/eco.html
I'm on the market for a tablet, spec'd like iPad 2 or better, for $500 or less. Anything but iOS. I'm open to suggestions.
YA, just ask Psystar or some of the ounther Mac clones that tried to get some of the Mac marketshare, sued into oblivion. So yes, Apple is evil by the fact there can be NO MAC compatible market. Where is the RICO act when you need it.
Well that comment just shows that you've never shopped at Dell.
to it's shareholders. Which is the only metric that matters.
Apple isn't evil. It's very good at making money. What other criterion is there with which to judge the actions of a company? I don't like the product they sell so I don't buy their stuff. Apparently, however, some people like the walled, Apple taxed, restrictively licensed, closed products that they sell. The fact is, many people don't care that the platform is closed and Apple can take huge sums of money from them. It doesn't make them less nice, just not a company that I want to deal with.
If you think of companies as nice or not nice, good or evil, you will be constantly disappointed. They are judged on profitability. The products that they produce; however, can be judged as good or not good.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
What Apple sells partially is a designed experience. A desgined experience is when something you do has been considered by someone else about how it makes you work.
Buy a HD from a computer store and it is an experience (everything you do is) but nobody has given it a second of thought how getting the HD in a piece of plastic made you feel. The wrapping is functional, nothing else. Yet, you still probably feel something. Some excitement about getting a new HD to store your porn... eh japanese girl group... eh American Chopper ... not really any better is it.
When I bought a Drobo file server recently, the inside of the box was painted black. The wrapping was had a cloth feel to it and was black. SOMEBODY had chosen to do this. They had not just picked a box to hold the contents and printed what is inside on the outside, they had thought about what I would see when I opened the box and what it would make me feel.
Apple takes this a level further. All their boxes are clearly designed for far more then just holding their contents. Considering they are one of the biggest if not the biggest PC makers despite (or because of) not doing Windows, clearly people like it.
But creating a designed experience, where you control/dictate what the user feels, requires... control! HD makers have little choice in how people experience their product. It might be shipped from the shop in a box. I might get it from the store in just a wrapper. If I buy in bulk it might come in its original bulk packaging. Apple doesn't want that. It 'dictates' that you buy items in their box displayed in a certain way. It helps sell the quality/expensive hardware compared to the cheap crap because... well everything about its presentation shows it clearly must be better. (Lets not start one of those boring conversations about how your core2duo dell is cheaper then a quad sandy bridge macbook)
Controlling the users experience is about control. Obvious but people often fail to see just how far this goes. Take an amusement park ride. You sit "freely" in this cart being pulled along and things happen all around you. But they are controlled by the position of the cart and the cart determines your experience. I have been in "rides" where you walk and then controlling the action is far harder. An animatronic might fire behind or in front of me, I might even miss it, because the director can't control where I am and where I am looking. One ride has a bullet impacting the water a ride boat is floating on. Not nearly as effective if the boat is 10 meters away from it then when it happens right next to you. Control for an experience.
Why do you think Microsoft and for that matter most desktop makers worry so much about the startup sound. The sound creates an experience, a mood if you like, of what you are about to experience. It is typically a bright sound but not very musical that says "lets do stuff" without offending to much. Ubuntu goes furthest with its seemingly African inspired sound but it is hardly a tribal tune. Only the most extreme redneck could object (but no doubt would).
For Apple, creating this experience has worked well and Steve Jobs seems to believe that is essential and what people want. This is up for debate, do they buy apple purely for usability or because of the experience.
To show there is no clear answer, take sugar. You know, the stuff you put in your coffee. My supermarket has at least three brands of white refined beet sugar. There can be no variance in it except granular size because it is from the same factory and the law says exactly what can and cannot be in it. There is no b-grade sugar.
Yet, people buy the more expensive brands because... not the taste, not health reasons, not biologically grown... pure a different package. Experience, packaging, how it is sold. Matters.
Is the iPod and iTunes about a good music player and efficient and cheap music service or about giving the user an experience they like on an emotional level? Yes. The early iPods espec
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
we're holding up ok rob. thanks for being whatever that is you've become? it's all about forgiveness rob, not money, fauxking advertisers, gnu online dating, clicks, goo-goo, none of that stuff. see you at one of the million baby play-dates?
I didn't leave /. through choice. I've been 'away' for those years and have now returned. I don't think I got old, although I may well have changed I guess.
They've been evil for years, though they achieved Empire status only recently.
That is AMAZING denial.
"It's not overpriced, it's just a price." Really? How, exactly, do you define "overpriced"?
Generic components that go into Apple devices are overpriced when acquired through Apple when compared to compatible devices from other channels.
They do have a monopoly on laptops running Mac OS X and they defend it fiercely with every legal resource they have available to it.
When talking about Apple, you have to talk about the "whole Apple." Yes, they aren't the monopoly on servers or desktops or laptops or smartphones or media players. But that's not the whole story -- that's just the argument they use when defending their actions and what apologists use when explaining Apple. The truth becomes clearer when you see how Apple responds to parties interested in participating in "Apple's Monopoly Markets." That's when the ugly truth comes out.
I just don't understand the wrath against Apple. They make products that millions of people love. They are making money hand over fist. If you don't like it, don't buy it. What's so difficult about that?
Now the next generation of computing users/makers has forgotten all the lessons of the past and is embracing closed systems, centralised control and restrictive practices as if they were new, novel and somehow beneficial for them.
Insert aphorism of your choice about failing to learn from the mistakes of others.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Q: What's the difference between the Pope and Steve Jobs?
A: One of them has a load of sexually deviant followers who obey his every word without question. The other wears a funny hat and lives in Rome.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
to it's shareholders. Which is the only metric that matters.
its capitalism. its a bunch of people having NO relevance or affinity to what you are doing, having NO attachment to what you are doing, making money over what you are doing, and demanding you to change how you do things in order to make more money for them. Even if its harmful, self-destructive, or contrary to your ideals or the reality/nature of what you are doing.
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I've never been too afraid that Apple would hold onto any dominant market position indefinitely because Apple's one size fits all philosophy simply cannot make everyone happy. Apple success has shown however that consumer electronics supports a one size fits all philosophy infinitely better than the business market where Microsoft trounced them.
Apple has kept their overpriced ipods on top largely by providing consumers with the most physically attractive product. And physical attractiveness has also played a role in adoption of their laptop line as well, especially the Air. Yet, I doubt the iPhone will carry the day on looks.
All the phone manufactures are far more habituated to producing a beautiful product that either laptop or mp3 player makers. Android lets them focus much more so on the looks problem. And people don't want to all look exactly alike.
Apple isn't likely to dominate any markets that actually matter. Yes, tablets remains an open question. Yet, we're seeing iOS's retarded design limits here. Maemo's widgets and integration made it a better tablet operating system than iOS. And that made Maemo ultimately a better phone operating system too. Apple may've needed to approach the problem from the other direction to escape the desktop metaphor, but ultimately iOS is inferior to Android with it's widgets.
We should ideally just pass a law that compiled code isn't protected under copyright law unless the source code is available to anyone who purchases the product of course, i.e. mandate open source licenses. Good luck! lol
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
What? I have an Alienware laptop and I specifically didn't purchase the upgrades through Dell. I saved around $350 and ended up with much better hardware.
Dell is just as bad as Apple is.
While Apple is surely evil, at least toward their customers that wouldn't like to be pure consumers, it's still not an empire.
So my take is that Apple is not an evil empire but could became one if it grows enough.
Here is a trick question:
Give me a few laptop series, same or better battery life, that has the same or better build quality, the same or better specifications and equal or better trackpad.
Here is a hint: You can't, if it has better battery life it also has poorer spesifications and poorer build quality.
If it has better specs, it either has a worse screen, or it lacks the trackpad or it lacks the batterylife.
All the "roughly equal" laptops are pricer HIGHER then Apples, if it identical in spec, then it is more expensive, and it often lacks vital components such as proper build quality.
Apple is not overpriced for a simple reason: You can not get anything that is 100% equal or better than a Macbookpro CHEAPER from anybody else.
Unless you prove me wrong.
Please prove me wrong.
appears to be some for hire 'social impact' manipulation as well, a very dangerous way to 'lead' an industry (learning little (or accepting) from gotti, gates etc...), when one could be replaced with a room of boxes that generates accurate search results instead of FUDged crap like we're getting now. it's like they've tricked many of US into paying them to help us deceive 'outfox' each other thanks.
Well if Umberto Eco argued the case then the verdict must be yes, Apple is the next evil empire, whatever that means. But I love the infusion of religion into global capitalism, and looking at major corps as the new world overlords makes sense to me. Just version 2 of Emperors, Kings, etc. that now make all the decisions for thier subjects. I feel that way after buying into Apple a few years back for my home office. My office now looks like a showroom for apple products: iMac, Macbook Pro, Macbook, iphone, ipod, and all the accessories. That's pretty strange when you think about it, a bit. But like the docile artisan of 1440, I don't think about it much but instead just keep turning that screw and pumping out product...
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
the /. you knew 7 year before, had been fledgling in an environment in which there was great freedom, liberty on internet and in i.t..
/. and people who are actually wide awake, as compared to your apparent sleep state, are concentrated on these phenomenon.
today is a day when big interests and conglomerates are consolidating all that freedom and liberty on their hands, in their terms, and as they wish it to be - practically, ending it.
and all the concerns and issues of
you have a lot of reading to do, mister. in the duration you were away, there has been a lot you have missed. luckily for you, slashdot has all these prepared, readied and indexed for you.
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I am not just talking about Apple here, but with everything in society from religion to just they way you dress... if someone or something does it differently, they are automatically labeled evil.
Sorry, that just isn't objectively true.
Even in a capitalistic context, companies can and should be judged by the net value they provide to the market, and by how responsibly they act.
I'd go one step ahead and add that, IMHO, the way many (most?) Americans buy into this BS about shareholder profitability being the only measure, is one of the major sources of problems in the modern world. Yes, many people buy into it outside America as well, but there it's less damaging, because in most countries with any economic/social influence, this is not the prevailing view. Maybe China could deserve to be included in this “part of the problem” too, I guess. But an European or Japanese companies gets in serious trouble when it's perceived as not serving its market well, or not being a responsible “corporate citizen”.
You've highlighted the transformative power of the corporate structure and how capital can take certain morals and values (e.g. being open and hacker-friendly) and twist them beyond all recognition. All behaviour becomes explained and justified in the context of profitability. Tax avoidance becomes inevitable, unethical actions are deemed to be perfectly acceptable, and spokespeople are trotted out to smooth over any dissonance (what cognitive dissonance they must suffer themselves when they think about what they are saying. Oh well, they have bills to pay like the rest of us). It will happen, has happened, or is happening to Google and the same applies to Apple. Once you pass the point of scrappy, alternative underdog you are initiated into the club in which there is only one language and one set of customs.
Apple's transformations then can be seen as the natural progression of things, made all the more absurd by their earlier incitement to 'Think Different' and smash the coddling over-bearance of the dominant player(s).
Apple vs PC flamewar... BEGIN!!
Apple's general SOP has ALWAYS been "evil empire". They simply weren't as financially successful as Microsoft. So Microsoft kinda took lumps for general tech company bad-neighborism.
Believe me, Apple WISHES they'd had Microsoft's success and capital. Had they done so, home computing would be an irrevocably stunted market.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
While it is all well and good to say that Apple is not evil, Apple is more like the Chinese Government than Microsoft EVER was. Microsoft never put limits on what you can or can not install or run on a Windows based computer, and the only reason there is any sort of lock-down on the Xbox 360 is primarily due to copyright enforcement reasons.
Apple on the other hand, has been doing things like saying, "We will not allow Adobe Flash on our mobile devices", not because of any true technical reasons, but because Apple does not like Flash. Flash allows applications on web pages, which means that Apple does not get an automatic cut of any revenues from said applications. This is a VERY monopolistic policy, and Microsoft would have had thousands of lawsuits if they tried to do something similar. Even back in the days of the browser wars, Microsoft never BLOCKED the installation of Netscape. Apple has also started to force content publishers into going through the damned App Store, where Apple gets a 30 percent cut.
So, you may not call it evil, but I'd say that Apple is using tactics that INVITE people to call them evil, or monopolistic in its policies. Looking to improve profit is normal in business, but doing it while screwing your customers is generally frowned upon. It is like Best Buy increasing prices on products that are in short supply in their warehouse.
So how about instead of pointing out who is Evil, we try to find someone who isn't evil? Any suggestions?
It's like some kind of new fashion / management trend.
Scene from a golf clubhouse:
Executive #1: "Hey, were you Evil today?"
Executive #2: "Oh, I was exceptionally Evil today! Evil, with extreme prejudice*!"
* "extreme prejudice" was a term used in the Vietnam war by the US forces, which was a euphemism for killing someone. It was used in Apocalypse Now. Martin Sheen was told to "terminate Colonel Kurtz's command with extreme prejudice."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You can buy those things somewhere else. Apple are not the only retailer selling hard drives, memory and monitors.
This is self-evidently true, but so what? I can understand the appeal of some Apple products, regardless of what one might think of their business model or of Steve Jobs personally. If you happen to be in the market for a sleek laptop with a non-clunky design that can run any standard unix shell out of the box, and is capable of running just about anything that can be compiled with gcc, the MacBook is hard to beat.
They already are! I buy nothing Apple. Hate their business practices and will not support them. They can take their monopolistic practices such as tethering the device you buy to only being able to download music or apps from THEIR source, on THEIR preferred network, and shove it. No Ipad, Ipod, I-anything for me until they straighten up, fly right, and make things that use MP3 and Jpeg and etc. that process standard files from any source and can be used on anyone's mobile phone network, and with which any software, book, tune, whatever can be downloaded from here, there, anywhere.
My Alienware M11Xr2. I get AWESOME battery life out of it. And the power? i7. Trackpad is pretty awesome too with its textured feel... oh wait, I'm responding to an Apple fanboy... you wouldn't listen to what I have to say.
As for Apple screens? Please don't. When Apple delivers a 15" 1920x1200 display on a laptop, I might think about buying one. What is the highest resolution you can get on an Apple's 15" display? Don't talk about display quality.
"Proper build quality." Really? Did you ignore the more recent articles showing the shoddy quality of Apple gear that has been coming out lately? Or for that matter, the ones from last year? The year before that? The exploding apple battery stories? The exploding ipod/iphone stories? The colossal design failure of the 4G?
In short, your argument is "It's not expensive, it's better!" This is classic denial. It's the same denial that created the Lexus market from Toyota.
as soon as we accept (or pay for it to happen?) just one inaccuracy, consistently, without address or remedy, we give the green light to a descent (looks like a shitslide from our vantage) into being totally mindphucked (ex; trying to make 'sense' of fake data/#s ?), almost bot-like. think it isn't? whois benefiting?
I'll try as much as possible to stay neutral in this debate, assuming there is something to debate about.
But I find it quite amusing how one day I read "Apple is insignificant. Apple has no market share. No one care about Apple in the world. 's products are much more accepted / popular / better." and the next day I read from the same people "Apple is evil. Apple will ruin everything and make our life miserable."
So. Which one is it? Either they're insignificant or they are so significant we have to worry about their every doing, but it can't be both.
And Apple's even got their coalition of the willing. Take BoingBoing for example. They massively reported about the iPad 2 update. There were a lot of comments questioning this coverage. They got all removed and BB even closed the comments after cleaning.
One of the articles:
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/02/ipad-2-hands-on-demo-3.html
Screenshot of some deleted comments:
http://i.imgur.com/QI3ZN.png
Some articles later they criticized Slashdot for censorship.
While we all argue over the "who's on top" battle between Microsoft and Apple... Google is quickly and quietly taking control of other major markets and companies, and that's just how they like it ;)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not just the cost of the component, you're also paying for the installation. With most new Macs, it's cheaper to buy a RAM upgrade from a third party, install it myself, and throw away the RAM it came with than to get a built-to-order Mac. If I took it to a shop and got them to do the upgrade, it would probably cost a similar amount to what Apple charges. BTO configurations have extra supply chain complications (if I order a stock configuration, it's shipped from a relatively nearby warehouse, if I order a BTO configuration, it's shipped from the factory, or from the main European depot). The upgrade price reflects this, which is why it's usually a good idea to buy the smallest amount of memory and upgrade yourself. That said, the SSD prices seem to be quite good. It would cost me more to get a new MBP and a 256GB SSD and install it myself than to get one with a 256GB SSD as standard.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They do have a monopoly on laptops running Mac OS X. They also have a monopoly on tablets running iOS. Or on devices bearing a half-eaten apple logo. Sony have a monopoly on devices running whatever OS they have that runs playstation games. Nintendo have, blah blah blah. So what? Not one of them is the only game in town. Not one of them is essential for anything. No government or bank or monopolistic utility company make you buy these devices or programs. You're able, and in fact welocome, to spend your money elsewhere.
Apple isn't evil. It's very good at making money. What other criterion is there with which to judge the actions of a company?
You are kidding me right? So if I sell land mines and cancer sticks, the only measure of my success is my profits and if my customers come back for more? With apologies to Niemöller:
First they locked down the smart phones,
and I didn't speak out because cell phones were always closed.
Then they locked down the tablets,
and I didn't speak out because I didn't use tablets.
Then they locked down the Macs,
and I didn't speak out because I didn't use a Mac..
Then they locked me out
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Both the corporations and the government would love to lock down your PC for profit and control. That Apple is taking their cut is one thing, but their control over the app store should be a much greater worry than the Great Firewall of China and things like that. What the consoles did to lock down games, Apple aims to do with the rest. You just wait, if the Mac App store is a success you'll soon see them introduce a new iDevice that's almost like a Mac except it only runs app store software.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It is not a religion. :)
After many years with DOS, OS/2, Windows, misc. Linux desktop pc's, I now have a Apple computer, phone and tablet at the moment. But it is not a static thing. I might have a android tablet and phone in the future. I might even get Linux on my desktop, who knows.
But at the moment the most important thing for me is to have devices with maximum stability so I dont have to spend my percious sparetime tinkering/fixing them.
I am beginning to get a bit annoyed at the stupid limitations of the iPhone such as why are wifi scanning tools now banned and why am i not "allowed" to download more than 25 mb filesize over 3G, I have a good data plan. Otoh it is not really a problem but i think i should be able to so perhaps my next phone in a year or two is not iPhone, know knows.
we never tout anything. we find the iphone to be a significant step in gadgetry. as for att, & the .net?, a ways to go yet. mr. jobs should start his own 'net/skype(whatever) 10$ mo. simmamajig?
&, not to embarrass, but we hope you're feeling ok/better. at least one of us knows some of what you've gone/are going, through. it would be easy to see why you might not be fussing about inventing a whole bunch more stuff right now. you've done well by us, thanks.
If Catholic equals Apple, as suggested by Umberto Eco, what do you expect? Catholics are more prone to referring to good and evil, heaven and hell, gods and devils, and holy objects, aren't they?
but the Android OS is free is meaningless. iOS is free on iPhones too.
Free as in beer, but not free as in Speech
The reason that I disagree with you is that thinking that a company needs to be "good" diminishes personal responsibility. A company exists to make money, people make decisions. If you don't think that Apple makes products of value or you don't support their actions, don't buy their stuff, but it's your decision to make.
If Steve Jobs causes injury to a person through his actions, he should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. If Apple hurts Google, on the other hand, that's fine. Google is not a person, Apple is not a person. People should make decisions about what they support, not expect organizations who are only out there for profit to do it for them. I've stopped buying from Apple because I don't like what they do but I don't expect them to hurt their bottom line to make me feel better.
Needless to say, if a company causes injury to a person (poor safety conditions, etc.) then those in charge are responsible in a legal sense. Furthermore, a government can enforce trade practices, but don't expect companies to self police.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Wow! Way to drink the kool aid!
As for better specifications. Which particular goalpost did you want to set and then move?
As for the trackpad. FUCK TRACKPADS. They're only marginally useful in the absence of a mouse. Trying to turn it into some huge selling point highlights how simply pathetic your argument is.
As for "better specifications and build quality".
Browse out here: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-Early-2011-Teardown/4990/1
Then tell me about how great Apple's build quality is. It's simply another machine that's built in a sweatshop by badly abused wage slaves.
Then you'll start arguing "well none of them run MacOS, therefore they lose by default". I've heard it all from you refugees from the RDF before.
In short, your idea of what constitutes "better" is vastly different from mine.
And please don't try throwing the bullshit "average user" argument either. Because that's just an attempt to co-opt a nebulous non-class of users for who Macs may or may not be an appropriate purchase.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Here is the article -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/06/john-naughton-apple-dominates-market
While I do think Apple has gone quite a way down the road towards being a corporate control freak, I think this is a bit exaggerated. They haven't come even close to the kind of manipulative behavior the MS started pulling in the mid-90's. MS basically had the entire IT industry under its thumb for many years. They could kill other products just by making a vapor ware announcement. Good luck trying to get a system with Windows installed from anyone. Good luck trying to find a computer publication that didn't grovel before their feet and lick their boots. Apple has never enjoyed that kind of power with the possible exception of the mp3 player market. They may be a bit restrictive and manipulative with their own products but hardly "evil". I've had owned two Macs but I'm hardly a member of their cult as some see it. There's nothing on their platform that restricts you unless you go there voluntarily. I have migrated all of my data over to one of my Linux machines and lost nothing in the transition. No lock there. That said, I wouldn't tether myself to anything from their iTunes store.
If you want to talk about evil corporations, google some of articles on the stuff Monsanto, Haliburton or many of the Wall Street banks have done for profits. Once a business is in the business of selling stocks, the company is no longer about products or services or anything other than shareholder value. All other activities are merely means to achieve the end of increasing profits or share value. There is no morality once this path is chosen only expedience.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Interestingly Eco's article was from 1994. And it was "Macintosh users vs MS-DOS users", not so much "Apple the company vs IBM".
This is a link to an English translation of Eco's article
Things were a little different back then, than I see it today. Today, definitely "Apple the company" is defining a selling their route to salvation as a full multi-media company. This did not describe Apple in 1994, which was to be honest struggling under the "Macintosh" brand, I don't think anyone in their wildest dreams would have imagined Apple ever become so broad back then. And today the "PC-clone" users (this is the obvious descendant from the "MS-DOS" religion) includes a multitude of religions that battle each other quite strongly (e.g. Linux vs Windows).
I would say, if anything, it magnifies personal responsibility. The company needs to be “good”, therefore you as a decision-maker for the company need to be “good” not only because it's the ethical thing to do or for fear of legal accountability, but also because it's part of your job.
I don't think the mobile carriers care much about what OS your phone is running, or could do much about it if they did care.
The difference I see between the current situation and 30yrs ago is that there's no behemoth like IBM to roll out their version of the iPad/iPhone/iEtc... Microsoft would have been just another mediocre OS if not for IBM. When Apple-II came out, they ruled the market for a few years, but most "serious" business types were waiting for IBM to come out with their own PC (back then "PC" simply meant personal computer, regardless of brand). Once IBM launched it's "PC" brand, they quickly crushed Apple's market share, and Microsoft just rode IBM's coattails to the top.
Another key element then was IBM's decision to license their architecture to other manufacturers -- something that Apple has always refused to allow -- which played a major role in the IBM/MS platform's dominance by making "commodity" hardware cheap and ubiquitous.
Google/Android has the second advantage (openness) but not the first. There's no 800lb gorilla like IBM waiting in the wings. In this case, Apple IS the 800lb gorilla...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Google comes from an era where choice is the norm. While not completely open, they make fairly heroic nods in the direction of enabling user choice.
Microsoft's record of enabling user choice is significantly poorer, though there have been exceptions.
Apple never left the "bad old days" of the late 70's and early 80's where vendor lock-in was the norm.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I think there are two Apple's.
One is selling Unix machines. Since MS has a dominant position in this market, Apple business model is to provide a higher value to the customer.
The other Apple makes mp3 players and phones. Having just acquired a dominant position, it can do whatever it wants. Locking you in as much as it can to get as much revenue as possible from its users. Without the Jailbreak my ipad would be useless!
Both MS and Apple behave in exactly the same way when they are dominant: proprietary formats (even when marketed as "open"), aggressive patent litigations, data retention (think about the similarities of IE and iTunes in this respect), etc etc.
The only thing that matter is how the dominant guy remains such. If it suffocates the underdogs instead of competing with them I'd call them evil.
Apple is evil because they force you to program in objective-c for the iPhone. No on but a sadist would willingly subject another to such an awful language.
we told ya so and look at Sony you might as well go buy a ps3 and enjoy slavery
GP is a frothing retard but the m11x isn't the greatest example because it sits in its own self-defined category. If you want a 10-12" laptop which plays most games at maximum settings then it's literally the only option. I wish there were more options like it (esp. ones with better screens).
It seems like any tech company (we stick with that since this is a geek/tech site) gets this adjective attached at some point. Either a company is not a threat or they are evil. Are there big companies that don't fall into this? Microsoft has been evil forever at this point, now they are falling by the wayside a bit in browsers and devices, so no one says it anymore. Google was great, until they weren't. Now they are evil because of ads and clouds and random other buzzwords depending on the article. Apple was the well designed underdog until they got popular, then they became evil because 'hey my iPhone and iPad are locked down'.
I think the problem often is 1) we are not normal users 2) we have our own biases and can't agree on a damn thing. The user part you can get past. Just go to the store with your spouse/friend/mom and you can see their reaction to devices/features and get a better understanding. The bias part is much more difficult. We all know (and maybe you are) someone who you can't have a discussion with because Apple/Google/Microsoft/Sony/etc are Evil (TM). End of discussion. Nope don't tell me about the good points, I just want to be happy in my hate towards them because you know they do it just to spite me.
Everyone thinks someone else is evil, so in the end either everyone is evil or no one is because our definitions need to be adjusted a bit.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
we'd be pleased to 'see' you at any of the scheduled million baby+ play-dates, consciousness arisings, photon sharing sessions, georgia stone editing(s) etc...... have you seen the babys/LSI/w+dog list of pure intentions? it's really no surprise, as due to the pressure most of us are under, their tiny dna/intellect appears to have evolved to the point that they're calling the shots now, because we obviously are not doing something(s), even mathematically correct, so our 'proposals' to determine their 'future', have been rejected unanimously (a majority of several billion+ by the way), thus far.. did you read about that .5 billion 'cap' ('maintenance?) on the world's (baby?) population, listed as a 'commandment' for some corepirate nazi glowbull warmongers? that type of miscalculation has the bips breathing deep, looking skyward (many are doing that nowadays?), stuff like that. they seem to be remaining unafraid? we all hope to see you. thanks again.
When you build something you get to choose who you sell it to, and the conditions and purposes it is to be used for. That's what the Great Free Market is all about.
Clone makers are welcome to ship generic PCs loaded with FreeBSD, GNUStep, and LLVM/Clang to their hearts' content. Maybe when such machines grab a measurable percentage of the market, Apple will stop their 'evil' ways of... what was your argument?
If you really think that dictating the terms of use of your own product is evil; it's time to buy a bunch of transistors and solder up your own Internet.
I agree with the above comments on the misuse of the word evil. Critiquing Microsoft vs Apple, or OSX, Windows, and Linux is ultimately fairly futile given that each provides very different usability to different customer bases. Having used computers running all three systems, I would say that they are all very good and useful at what they do. Apple provides a very simple, user friendly, highly compatible interface which is quite stable. Linux gives amazing access to everything, and in that regard is great for people who know what they are doing - coders, web designers and the like - there is a massive amount of freedom, but for people unfamiliar to the platform there is a steep learning curve, and there is more work to have devices integrate. Windows sits between the two, offering a good amount of flexibility and access to the core systems, but still an accessible user interface. It does have it's security, stability, and bloatware issues though. Regarding the 'evil' side of things, both Apple and Microsoft have some quite ruthless and sometimes ethically questionable business tactics, but this is different from evil, and not that different from any number of multinational corporations. It just seems like Apple is moving in a direction that fans of Apple don't like (myself included), and therefore undeservedly earns the 'evil empire' badge.
The Roman Catholic Church grew to dominance from a diverse field of sects, and did so in part by being the best, at least in terms of "user" experience.
Still today, the Roman Catholic mass is a far more satisfying experience to my taste than the far more boring and sermon-driven traditional protestant churches (Bill Gates?), and far more meaningful than the "contemporary" Churches with their big screens and stage lights (Steve Ballmer?).
Apple is the same way to me. It is the "best" user experience--stylish, streamlined and intuitive, it seems to be the only product that addresses how I feel about using it, as well as being by far the best effort at understanding what a "human" interface should be.
I'm also free enough to make it do what I want, even if I risk excommunication (voiding Applecare) by doing so.
I like Umberto Eco's analogy.
I could go further and say the Linux minority is Jewish:
- We don't believe in salvation. Heaven is finding out your wi-fi works out of the box.
- There's the Orthodox (Kosher FSF-approved distros), Conservative (Debian) and Reform (Linspire)
- Mainstream, pragmatic Ubuntu is certainly like Chabad, which makes Mark Shuttleworth the Rebbe
- We are very few, but really loud
I could go on, but you get the point.
I just love it.... Now that Apple is being called evil their apologist try to change the subject to how childish it is to do so...
I own a macbook and iphone but seriouslly Apple isn't a religion its ok to make fun of them or call them out on their BS.
Why don't they support Blurays but support DVDs? The official line is cause licensing is complicated.... Yeah, the people that were able to convince the entire music industry to sell their music for under a dollar a song can't figure out how to license the same shit everyone else can.
The are in the Board of Directors of the Blu-ray Disc Association for gods sake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association#Board_of_Directors
So yeah... fuck iTunes.
'Umberto Eco once wrote a memorable essay arguing that the Apple Mac was a Catholic device, while the IBM PC was a Protestant one.
He didn't write 'Apple Mac' or 'IBM PC' he wrote Macintosh and 'DOS': he was comparing operating systems, not hardware.
Display some adaptability.
Google, Apple, Microsoft. They do all seem interchangeable these days.
/support/itunes, I'm there already and ..." he interrupts me and tells me to click here, click there, and directs me to a web submission form. Then, he proceeds to tell me to put my first name into the field for the first name, my last name into the field that says last name, and then explain to me how to fill in all the fields and then "See the big button that looks like an envelope? Click that to send the message." All the while, his tone is that of one trying to explain to your dottering old intoxicated uncle that in fact you really shouldn't put your Metamucil in your trousers. I was stunned to silence. 20+ years of customer service work, both as manager and agent, and I'd NEVER talked to someone that way. While managing customer service, and even helpdesk, if I'd heard one of my employees speaking to even the most vapid of customers that way, I'd have sacked 'em. I was fucking livid. I thanked him, told him this was the LAST Apple product we'd have in my office, and essentially that he'd provided the worst customer service experience I've ever had to deal with, and I'd dealt regularly with Intuit and Adobe so that's saying something.
I've been using Apple computers since I first got my grubby, sticky little fingers on an Apple ][ yonks ago. It's been a love / hate relationship, and until somewhat recently the "hate" times were more due to issues I had with the computers and OS themselves more than the company. Think IIfx, nubus, Appletalk and "The Error Of Type 11 Has Just Occurred, Please Kiss All Your Stuff Goodbye". During the hate times, I would go to Windows, then back to Mac, then to WinNT, then on to Linux (so I suppose I should in some ways thank Microsoft). I came BACK to Apple / Mac with Mac OS 10.2, and found I really enjoyed it, so I've stayed with it most of the time until recently with two big issues:
- Apple deciding to make the new MacBook Pro so that you need to be Apple Certified in order to change the damned battery. That's just evil and stupid IMO. I can take one of the things apart in my sleep and put it back together before I'd had my coffee, but I need to get certification just to replace the BATTERY? Or hard drive? I can't even ORDER the battery to keep on hand?! "Oh but the battery lasts for 7 hours!" Horse pats. It lasts for perhaps 2, at best, when brand new, and you'll only see anything even remotely resembling 7 hours if you are ONLY working on a text document and have disabled AirPort and half the other features of the computer. Apple simply wants control, as usual, of all aspects of its computers and wants you to shell out the dosh needed to work on them.
- I had a simple issue with one of my users and his iTunes accounts. After going through what I thought was all of Apple's knowledge base on iTunes, I called with my question and got a person relatively quickly. I explained what I was trying to do, and then that I'd already been through the tech articles. The Apple service rep asks me to go to their support site, to which I tell him I'm already there. He ignores what I'm saying and starts to read off the URL. I say "Yeah yeah,
Yes yes, TL;DR The upshot is I'm sick of them. Rude, contemptuous of their own customers to a staggering degree now. Used to be I could call Apple with an issue and my Mac had free tech support for as long as the machine ran. Getting service for hardware, while slow and you certainly had to have an Apple certified person work on it, things were done at quicker than a glacial pace and something as simple as a laptop battery replacement were things you could do yourself. Add to that what I've seen when getting my hands on the next gen of the OS, and no thank you. Back to Linux desktop for myself, and Windows for all my users.
I felt disturbed reading this post. Apple is no more "evil" than many other companies operating in Technology. What many people confuse is "to be successful = to be evil" and, IMHO, I think envy has a great part in this mistake... We are the real "evil"! As an example, never heard about how the Coltan workers are used for our own technological toys? Does anybody feel resposonsible AS CONSUMER for that?
I suppose it must be an atheist device.
Here's a collegue .. wanted the Apple laptop $2000 version at the time. "I want better build quality", but what they really wanted was the brand logo. Most computers are made in the same plants with the same people (apple and dell share several motherboard builders for example). Most laptops break from dropping. I had suggested the collegue buy ten $200 netbooks and drop or lose them wherever they please and they will still have a few brand new machines the two years later they might want to 'upgrade' their koolaid. The logo was just too attractive for them. Their money.
They might have wished so in the beginning but Apple has been so much more popular than Microsoft in the past 5 years I think they're quite content with their place in the market. The iPod rules that market. The iPhone is the hippest. The iPad owns the tablet market. And these devices have bolstered their Mac business. Apple is a microbrew full of flavor and an all around better experience than the PC, which is more like Bud Light.
The only edit from the original submission appears to be to remove the link to the original Guardian posting. ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/06/john-naughton-apple-dominates-market )
Are they trying to prevent us from RTFA?
I wish to remain anomalous
You dont get to be a big, multinational company without at least a long-haired white cat and a pihrana pool when the prime requirement of the law is to make as much profit as humanly possible. In fact, doesn't Sarbarnes-Oxley require you to build a large underground refuge under the nearest dormant volcano to house your accounts?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
You would see a shit storm of lawsuits falling like rain. Imagine having to buy your computer/phone directly from Microsoft. Imagine how many other companies would go out of business overnight. Yet this is the business model that Apple runs on. For some reason it's legal. Back in 1984 this was fine but this is not 1984.
Was there ever any doubt?
Apple is "evil" because they take other people's ideas, misrepresent them as their own, and then try to exclude others from using them by manipulating the patent and copyright system and through monopolistic business practices.
Apple is also "evil" because they avoid US taxes and don't create a lot of jobs, not even for programmers or designers, they just outsource everything to Asia.
When you build something you get to choose who you sell it to, and the conditions and purposes it is to be used for.
[citation needed]
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
While it is all well and good to say that Apple is not evil, Apple is more like the Chinese Government than Microsoft EVER was. Microsoft never put limits on what you can or can not install or run on a Windows based computer, and the only reason there is any sort of lock-down on the Xbox 360 is primarily due to copyright enforcement reasons.
And when has Apple put limits on what you could install on a Mac? Now you can't get as diverse software as you can on a Mac but it's not because of any limits. As for MS, they didn't put limits on what you the consumer installed; they did hint, suggest, and outright threaten their partners and OEMs not to install certain software on Windows based computers.
Apple on the other hand, has been doing things like saying, "We will not allow Adobe Flash on our mobile devices", not because of any true technical reasons, but because Apple does not like Flash.
In his argument against Flash, Steve Jobs listed six reasons why they were not allowing Flash on mobile devices. The technical reasons he gave were (2) security, reliability, and performance, (3) battery life, and (4) touch. Just because you don't agree with him doesn't mean that there were no technical reasons.
His posting was made in April 2010. By that time, Apple had waited over 3 years for Adobe to release a suitable version for mobile. They never did and so Apple had to move on. A month after Job's posting, Adobe finally released a version for Android devices. From many postings here on slashdot, it's unstable and has quirks for some whereas others have had fewer problems. That kind of inconsistency is hard for many consumers to tolerate. Adobe continues to work on Flash for mobile but at this point, it's clear that it is still not quite ready for the masses.
A point that is in less dispute is that Flash does affect battery life. Even those here on slashdot that have had no performance problems with Flash admit that their battery is affected. I would call battery life a reasonable technical reason.
Whether you want to admit it or not, Flash was not made for touch devices. It was designed and still continues to operate based on a mouse centric model. Future versions of Flash may adjust to this but as it stands, a OS based completely on touch like iOS doesn't work well with an application based on mouse pointers.
Even back in the days of the browser wars, Microsoft never BLOCKED the installation of Netscape.
I would consider threatening an OEM that you will raise their Windows prices if they install Netscape, as a form of blocking. I would also consider strongly hinting to Intel that you will favor AMD in the next generation of Windows if Intel builds a Java VM also blocking. In the same way I consider a mobster hinting that fires are a very bad thing before getting his tribute a threat. You might but we can disagree on that point.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"Android FTW! Global iPhone influence is nil!"
"OSX is for teh gays! Even n00bs prefer Windows! Mac is dying if not for the Jobs reality distortion field, and Jobs is dying, so Netcraft confirms it, OSX is dying HaHa!"
"It's all just industry standard anyway, Apple doesn't do anything special, there's no difference but the price! LOLZ"
"OWAIT, Apple is teh Eeeeeeeevil! Teh Eeeeeeevil Mmmmmmpire OMG WTF?!?!?!"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Google, Microsoft, HP, HTC, Motorola, Dell, Samsung, Nokia, RIM, and the rest of the Android crowd are all imitators. Without Apple's technological leadership they'd be lost and consumers wouldn't have the great products we enjoy today. If you're an Android user who likes the experience, credit Apple. If you're a Blackberry user looking forward to getting a new Playbook, credit Apple. If you're an HP customer yearning for a new Palm based tablet, credit Apple (which is where HP's leader Jon Rubenstein came from). Apple provides best of class products and those products then serve as roadmaps for the industry at large.
'Umberto Eco once wrote a memorable essay arguing that the Apple Mac was a Catholic device, while the IBM PC was a Protestant one. His reasoning was that, like the Roman church, Apple offered a guaranteed route to salvation – the Apple Way – provided one stuck to it. PC users, on the other hand, had to take personal responsibility for working out their own routes to heaven.'
That is probably the worst analogy I've ever heard in a Slashdot summary (to be fair I've only been here a few years). It's just... Why would... Ugh, there's so much wrong with it:
He has the whole salvation thing mixed up: the Catholic doctrine on salvation says that to be saved you must know/love God (if you're given a chance) and follow his commands. The Protestant (for the most part) idea of salvation is that all you need is to know God (as in, being "born again") and that you can't lose your salvation. The article's analogy has the respective ideas of salvation totally swapped (to be factually accurate; I'm not promoting one over the other, though I will tell you that I'm Catholic).
"The Apple Way"? Give me a break...
Somebody has a religious agenda here and it's definitely not me...
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Gleeson & Geschke have covered this before:
http://www.adobe.com/choice/openmarkets.html ;)
And granted they seem to be trying to prevent people upgrading laptops using off the shelf components. But that's still not an indication of being overpriced, just an indication of evilness. They don't have a monopoly on Laptops, so you can still buy from someone else if that makes you unhappy.
Really? My MacBook Pro came with illustrated instructions on how to replace the RAM and HDD. It was a very, very simple process. Simpler than most laptops I've had the displeasure of upgrading. I even asked Apple if it would possibly void the warranty, and they said "absolutely not, go right ahead".
The MacBook Air... now that's a different story, and a different beast altogether. It's the price you pay for extreme miniaturization.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
People trying to distort reality so their limiting believes fit onto the world are making a huge disservice to society: If we consider Apple "evil" because they sell expensive hardware and people gladly pay for it how are we supposed to call the Gadsafis, Mugabe or Mubarrak of the world that ASSESINATE, HANG, STEAL, RAPE or TORTURE people?. I had to help in a NGO to kids that WERE FORCED TO KILL THEIR PARENTS by militia so they joined and you are calling evil to sell computers?
Now, seriously, get out a little more, talk to real people, not machines, if someone does not fulfill your geek interest, you do not have the right to insult them. It seems you really HATE them for making great hardware("oh no, no, they make BS hardware it is only that they could sell BS to anyone just using marketing tricks", keep with your self delusion). Maybe you think Miele, Tesla Motors, Audi and Lexus are evil too, because I can't stand other people deciding to buy something I do not want.
Hi, everyone. Reading articles about Apple's Post-PC outlook (such as this one), it's interesting to think about where Apple is headed, as it provides a good context for their recent announcements.
First, it should be clear that Apple wants to extend their walled-garden approach to their entire line of products. This would allow them to provide a consistent user interface and good interoperability (something they'll continue to tout to sell consumers on their Post-PC products). It will also allow Apple to translate success in one area (e.g., strong iPad sales) into other markets (e.g., stronger Mac sales with Lion's interface echoing the iPad's). Finally, it will allow Apple to monetize other services (as they already have with 3rd party application and subscription sales).
At the iPad 2 announcement, Jobs gleefully boasted that Apple has the largest number of registered user accounts with credit cards of any online vendor, and Apple's certainly interested in billing those accounts as much as possible.
One obvious area where Apple could try to pull ahead is in data storage and synchronization. Apple is actually worse at this right now than many other vendors (e.g., using iTunes to get a Word document onto an iPad), as they've avoided implementing simple, consumer-centric solutions (e.g., WiFi syncing to iPhones, iPods, and iPads from Macs/PCs) so they could build the infrastructure necessary to implement an Apple-centric approach. The $1 billion data center they're building in North Carolina is obviously for something bigger than just music streaming.
It's likely that Apple will try to pull more customers into Ping and MobileMe. Whereas Google has to implement roundabout connectors to allow users to synchronize their calendars and office documents, Apple actually controls the OS and APIs used on Macs, iPhones, and iPads. Apple could simply force all applications, including 3rd party applications on the iPad and iPhone, to use Apple's cloud data store by changing the SDKs and development agreements for their iOS devices.
In iOS and in Mac OS 10.7 Lion, a multitasking application is supposed to gracefully "suspend" when a user switches to another application. If the application isn't used for a while, iOS/Lion actually can save its state and reallocate its resources for other applications to use. In Lion, this has even lead Apple to remove the open application indicator lights from the dock. In Apple's new computing paradigm, applications merely have a "state," they're never "closed" or "opened."
Now, imagine Apple extending this paradigm to applications running across devices. An end user could open a document for editing in Pages on her office Mac, then, without doing anything, could leave work, open Pages on her iPad on the train home, continue editing the same document, and so on. If data and application states are synchronized through the cloud, users don't have to worry about file versioning, backup, etc. The possibilities become even greater when multiple applications and file sharing with multiple users are involved.
Apple is in the best position to make this sort of computing paradigm possible, since they already have such large markeshare across multiple devices.
Having wireless carriers' cooperation in providing lots of cheap bandwidth to customers will be critical in enabling their vision. In this regard, Apple has recently moved from being at the mercy of a single carrier (AT&T) to having leverage over two carriers (AT&T and Verizon). The WiFi hotspot feature that Apple has just added to the
?? Did you reply to the wrong post? Your reply is a total non-sequitur.
"Apple are not the only retailer"
Unless you're British, please stop. Collective nouns are SINGULAR!!
From wikipedia: "The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product."
"Apple work extended PARC's considerably, adding manipulatable icons, a fixed drop-down menu bar and drag&drop manipulation of objects in the file system"
So to just say Apple just copied those ideas is pure bullcrap. Microsoft on the other hand did do it.
Like the Zune, xbox, xbox360, or the Kin ?
I don't think that Apple (or, the Microsoft of the 1990s) set out to be specifically "good or evil". They simply set out to win at the game of business, and this generally involves creating brand loyalty, vendor lock-in, destruction of your competitors, and control of the market.
Apple will have its time in the light -- maybe for a few years, maybe for a decade, or more -- and a more nimble, cost-effective, "good guy" competitor will eventually usurp them, and the whole process will begin again.
Definitely not so.
Some of Apple's services (iTunes/App Store) sit within Apple's "walled garden" and they wish to maintain control over how those services are used. Some people see the fact that those services are effectively moderated as an advantage, others as a disadvantage, but everyone is perfectly free to avail themselves of those services or to go elsewhere to competitors such as Microsoft or Google.
Microsoft, on the other hand, don't think you should have a choice and have in the past used some very unsavoury tactics in an attempt to destroy the competition and to deprive consumers of alternatives.
It would be a shame if people weren't able to see that distinction, instead basing opinions on hearsay and prejudice.
(Ironically, Microsoft seems to be past it worst and it's Google, who will sell your personal information without blinking, that people should now be wary of.)
To slashdot-dom (and much of government-school-brain-addled America) any corporation which achieves success through voluntary trade is deemed "evil". The claim has been made about Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM, Oracle ... the list goes on. The whines range from: "They didn't really invent that technology, they just packaged/marketed it" to "That UI is not to my liking" to "It's not fair that they can exclude my favorite browser from their default offering". There are many variants.
Rationally, these contentions discount individual choice. Emotionally, they represent naked envy. And somehow, the remedies offered always involve government force. Then, when the principle of government force they espoused comes back to bite them in the ass, they conveniently forget about their own complicity in its unleashing.
If humans are mostly water, and beer is mostly water, then humans must be mostly beer.
apples lack of a desktop mid tower or mate Imac is evil.
Now apple fans will buy a $1200 - $1500 desktop with desktop parts.
The $2500 mac pro 3gb ram? and a $150 video card that apples price is $250? and ADD $200 to upgrade to ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB? the One 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon is about the same price as the i7-920 i7-930 i7-940.
The imac is a nice system but the cost is a little high but that apple but why no mate screen? or ease to get HDD / 2 HDD bays?
Back in the early 90s, if you were a Mac person trying to do Mac work in most large corporations you were treated like the infidel in the Islamofascist world. At best, the PC people would make fun of you and give you sh*t behind your back. At worst, they would sabotage every attempt to introduce Macs into their precious PC/IT environment. I even interviewed for a job and was specifically told that they weren't looking for a "Mac bigot". Bigot? Really? More likely they wanted someone that would be easy to convert to their religion.
But I am sure that if Microsoft had been technologically able to pull the stuff Apple is pulling now, they would have been broken up in 2000. Where are the cries to break up Apple?
When people pay a premium, they feel obligated to approve of the product, because to disapprove calls their own judgment into question, after all, the Caddy buyer paid an extra 20k or more for a Tahoe, so it must be better? Right?
It's always fun to return to (close to) the original sources to see what the discussion is about. Eco's essay on Mac vs Dos (!) begins:
Friends, Italians, countrymen, I ask that a Committee for Public Health be set up, whose task would be to censor (by violent means, if necessary) discussion of the following topics in the Italian press. Each censored topic is followed by an alternative in brackets which is just as futile, but rich with the potential for polemic. Whether Joyce is boring (whether reading Thomas Mann gives one erections). Whether Heidegger is responsible for the crisis of the Left (whether Ariosto provoked the revocation of the Edict of Nantes). Whether semiotics has blurred the difference between Walt Disney and Dante (whether De Agostini does the right thing in putting Vimercate and the Sahara in the same atlas). Whether Italy boycotted quantum physics (whether France plots against the subjunctive). Whether new technologies kill books and cinemas (whether zeppelins made bicycles redundant). Whether computers kill inspiration (whether fountain pens are Protestant). Umberto Eco, The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS, Espresso, September 30, 1994.
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_mac_vs_pc.html
Perhaps this is a statement worth for the SlashDot masthead ?
Apple is luring us into a trap. Remember the Pleasure Island from the Pinocchio movie? (Steve Jobs is in the board of Disney, by the way)
From wikipedia:
The original take to the Land of Toys mixes the aspects of a morality tale with those of social critique. Boys are lured there by the promise of never having to go to school again and being able to spend their whole time having fun. Boys there play hide-and-seek, whistle, watch puppets in canvas theatres, play shuttlecock, bounce on balls, trundle hoops, and ride wooden horses. They never have to do any work or learn anything, and the graffiti on all the walls is proof of that. As a result, almost as a natural consequence, they become donkeys (in Italian culture, the donkey is symbolic of ignorance and stupidity).
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Apple makes an effort to limit people's freedom to do whatever they want
with things they've payed for and now own. I call that evil.
I finally bought a Mac a few years ago when I found that 10.4 had most of my favorite utilities, scripting languages and a reasonable compiler, all either built-in or easily installed. I've been very satisfied with its basic openness and developer-friendliness. The hardware is excellent, and I've been completely happy with subsequent Mac purchases.
That said, I hope it keeps going that way, but I am hearing distant rumblings of trouble in Mac-land: The Mac-app store.
If the Mac goes the way of iPod and iPad, then it's over for me because I can afford the price premium for excellent hardware as long as the basic platform allows me to work the way I need to, which is (at the workstation level) cross-platform utility applications to support my day job. The day job is deeply embedded firmware and the Mac supports that work wonderfully.
I don't need to do kernel or major infrastructure development on the Mac; my opinion might differ if I ever ran up against some form of Apple-specified limit to flexibility.
Apple is it's own company, and can make it's own decisions. It's the consumers choice to buy an over-hyped, and expensive product. Everything Apple makes is available cheaper by other companies with similar features. I have an iRiver MP3 player since it functions as a USB drive on a standard cable and has video. Even the iPad at least has competitor products in the works.
So no. Apple is not evil, it's just a business trying to make money by controlling the users options that, for the most part, the users accept.
I prefer MS myself, but dual boot into a Linux based OS. I have a PS3 since I don't agree with the philosophy to pay for live, but do believe in a companies right to protect it's IP. Sorry, the hacker is in the wrong, and as a libertarian feel he has no right to break, or encourage others to break, their encryption. I don't agree with the MPAAs tactics, but some people are guilty: no one has a right to download an others work without paying(theft) just because the song isn't that great.
If you think I'm a troll just because my opinion on these matter defers, then whatever. Rights extend to businesses as well as people: the belief that makes me a libertarian vs mostly business for repub or personal for dem..
they're not very open source and they fundamentally don't care.
If they did care they would clutter their designs with backwards compatibility hacks. They don't.
If they did care they would keep, perhaps slavishly, to existing standards, They don't.
Apple forges on ahead much to the dismay of their existing customer base, which they NEVER consult on anything, and the existing customer base keeps buying their products and setting trends.
Why are they even discussed on /.?
What Apple is and what Apple does is no concern of anybody who comes here, except as CONSUMERS of Apple products or possibly as shareholders. /. attempts at anything with Apple is like trying to guide the direction of an elephant as it wanders through the jungle from a point of view slightly below and in front of its tail.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Back when Microsoft was getting so much "evil empire" press, I was amused by all the angst. I had two thoughts: 1) For those outside of enterprise, you had a choice - quit complaining and switch, 2) Life must be pretty good for the complainers if you can expend this much energy on a subject so insignificant. Millions of users have found technological happiness with Apple's products and their ecosystem. The hand-wringing, I think, says a lot more about the complainers than it does about Apple.
Isn't going to be happy about this!
you, sir, have a heart of stone.
I am really not buying this... If you are going to write about rising evil empires why are you not writing about Google? As big as Apple is, its going to stay a 2nd in line in the tech market, even as it dominates some parts of it. Apple's ways have never really veered from their pattern so none of the "negative" behaviors they are being accused of are the result of their success, they have always been transparent. Accuse them of whatever you will, they unlike Goog are not changing their behavior with power. I call bs on this bit of "analysis".
Content + Container; Content = Container; Content â Container... which is the question?
I'm certain Apple or Sun would be the evil empire if they won.
to it's shareholders. Which is the only metric that matters.
To the shareholders and believers in the all-mighty invisible hand.
Apple isn't evil. It's very good at making money. What other criterion is there with which to judge the actions of a company?.
Oh, I don't know. Possibilities would be how a company treats it's workforce, it's impact on the environment, it's impact on the quality of life of the locals, it's influence on politicians, it's impact on jobs going overseas ...
If you think of companies as nice or not nice, good or evil, you will be constantly disappointed. They are judged on profitability.
By economists only interested in the bottom line. But others judge the actions of company based on their environmental impact, political influence, etc.
Let me ask you a question, was the slave trade simply a matter of what sort of "product" was being delivered? Did it not matter that human beings were the "product"? Was the fact that slavery was profitable the only thing that mattered?
This isn't to say Apple is evil, rather the notion that profit is all that matters is wrong-headed and a big reason why corporations run amok in the world, acting like sociopaths. Because we've defined them in such a manner that all other concerns are irrelevant.
Those are not computers and Windows phone software isn't restricted to Kin hardware.
They decided to tie their hardware and software together, forcing the end user to buy their hardware - at a drastically increased initial investment cost - in order to get their software.
Apple lost their initial lead because the Apple 3 was a complete lemon, not because of their business model!
Microsoft came along and blew that concept out of the water,
Not exactly. MS's big break was getting DOS adopted over CPM/86 for the IBM PC. IBM were slow getting into PCs but they already had a huge locked-in customer base in corporate business systems - customers with nice suits who didn't want to buy computers with psychedelic logos from hippies.
What everybody seems to conveniently forget is that The IBM PC was a closed, proprietary system - yes, the word "open" was bandied around at the time, but it didn't mean then what it means today (I think it basically meant that if you paid IBM lots of money they'd let you build plug-in cards). Yes, it ran MS-DOS and other MS-DOS systems were available, but software compatibility was restricted to command-line programs with character I/O. Any sort of remotely modern user interface, color, animation etc. required access to the IBM BIOS which was very much strictly (c) (r) IBM and only available on a kosher IBM PC.
Then some bright spark found a legal way to reverse-engineer the IBM BIOS and, several lawsuits later, cheap IBM compatible clones appeared. Wouldn't happen today, of course, since you can't clean-room your way around software patents. Of course, the only reason people wanted those clones was that IBM's huge captive corporate market had already turned the proprietary IBM PC, warts and all, into the "industry standard" system with a huge software/hardware base.
Of course, that was the beginning of the end for IBM (for any smaller fry it would have been the end of the end) so a few years later they sold off their last profitable PC line to Lenovo, renounced evil and became the fluffy, lovable champions of Open Source they are today.
Microsoft, of course, still got paid for every copy of MS DOS sold and lived happily ever after. However, this wasn't just because they were a software company who stayed out of the hardware business - they were a software company who managed to license their software to a near-monopoly holder just as the corporate PC market went exponential. Nice work if you can get it - but I don't think its available.
The other thing worth noting is that, at least through the late 80s and early 90s, Apple was using more advanced hardware than the PC world (proper 32-bit 68000 vs. the 086/186/286, then switching to PPC when 68k got old, built-in LAN and network printing) - which was pretty important when their main market was DTP and pro graphics. System 7 on a 80286 would not have been a big seller, I suggest (certainly not on the PC architecture with the 640K limit). You might also bear in mind that while the first Mac portable was a bit of a turkey (although, ISTR, it did introduce the world to active matrix screens) the first Powerbook pretty much defined the modern laptop (with the back-set keyboard and pointing device in front) and one of Apple's important selling points ever since has been that they made damn nice laptops. OK, now they are using essentially the same platform as MS, but if you don't think they've still got the edge in product design (albeit with a more cosmetic than technical bent than in the past) then you should have gone to Specsavers.
The other little historical wrinkle to remember is that Apple have already tried licensing their OS - round about the time they nearly went titsup and had to be rescued by Jobs. Did the licensees make "economy" Macs to vastly expand the customer base? Of course not - they made high-end workstations that just undercut Apple's models and punted them to existing Apple customers (Trying to remember if I ever saw a StarMac advertised outside of a Mac specialist magazine...)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Apple attempts to regulate unrelated markets: (A consumer buying a song from a supplier/musician) to their sole profit. Yes that is evil. Any one that tries that should be shown the exit from the marketplace. These are the practices of the 'Robber Barons' of the 19th century. It is mark of how ill educated we are that we do not make the connection.
You may think that Slashdot is already self-sustaining, but in reality, the more page views they get from posting flamebait blog posts, the happier they are!
Everyone gets the warm fuzzies about Google, when in reality they are much worse than Apple or MS. Sure both Apple and MS want to lock you into the ecosphere with software, and in Apple's case hardware. I don't see how that can be coined as "evil". Google is doing the same thing, but here is where I have exception to Google. GOOGLE'S PROFIT MODEL IS BASED OFF OF SELLING YOUR INFORMATION!!!! That is Orwellian and evil. It is a known fact that they have your search history and it's not too difficult to connect the dots to figure out who you are. There are numerous examples of Google profiting off your personal information and won't go into all of them. But everyone seems to either be ignorant of this fact or choose to ignore it. Google is not an upstart pirate rebel alliance. My argument is that they are much worse than Apple or MS ever will be by profiting off your personal information. And sure Apple and MS does make money from the use of personal information (iAd on the iPhone is a perfect example), but it's not their sole profit model. Google "free" is not truly free, and you are still on a yoke....but one that is much more nefarious. Okay step off soapbox now....
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
Posting this redundant comment to prevent myself from reading & modding any more of this drivel.
TFA is Redundant. We all already know that Apple turned to the dark side a long time ago. Doesn't matter to me if they win the fight to become the next evil emperors or not -- I concern myself not with the power struggles in the dark side.
The dark side is best viewed from a distance, and combatted by helping the good be better; Wallowing in the darkness by using their infernal software/hardware and complaining/speculating about the evil makes about as much sense as wallowing in mud and complaining/speculating about getting dirty.
"This closed system has so many controls, limits & ulterior motives!" =~ "This Mud puddle has so much Dirt & Filth!"
Now, if you'll excuse me, the good side just called & I've decided to donate some free time to provide free support for new-users (w/o support contracts) of my 100% Free-Libre Open Source project (that I created with my Free-Libre Open Source tools running on my Free-Libre Open Source operating system).
P.S. Here is some goodness just for you:
javascript:var TFS=document.title.toString();void(alert((TFS.match(/(Apple|(Google|(Microsoft|(Adobe|(SCO|(Oracle|(.{1,2}nix|(.?Ubuntu))))))))/i) && TFS.match(/(evil|considered harmful)/i)) ? "Troll thread detected.\n\nDo not post in or moderate this thread!" : "It's probably safe to read and post in this thread." ));
To use this as a bookmarklet: Create a bookmark & set that line of code as the "address" or "location" of the bookmark. Before reading & posting / moderating, click that bookmark.
-- Cheers.
Jesus! I hope the last thing I see isn't the Blue Screen of Death.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Comparing Apple vs PC/Android to Protestant vs. Catholic makes me want to defenestrate somone...
Nothing interesting? As Im posting this, this article has over 390 comments. Obviously smartphone fanboyism is verrrry interesting around here.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, Microsoft's marketing department has yet to admit that it's simply not as forward-thinking as Apple's. The Microsoft Way is to allow others to pay the price of innovation first, then move in on the emerging market after analyzing others' failures. Apple woke up, and simply decided not to fail anymore. Rather than play by the rules MSFT (and everyone else) was following, they simply changed the game.
Consequently, there is no more cheese for the second mouse these days.
All of this does NOT mean that MSFT is now being bullied, or that they should get some points on the ethics scorecard. (They're still a convicted monopolist; we know very well what they would like to do if they had the chance.) They're paying the price for their commitment to a failing strategy. Since when do we re-label "the incompetent guy" to be "the good guy"?
It would be a shame to see Apple become truly evil and monopolistic (I don't think they're there yet), or to see Microsoft lumber its way into irrelevance (that hasn't happened yet either). But MSFT does need a massive strategic overhaul -- starting with the repudiation of their marketing strategies to date (e.g. vendor lock-in, risk aversion to innovation), as signified by the canning of Mr. Ballmer.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
First of all, let's lay down our definitions of "evil" here. For me, Microsoft is evil due of *illegal* practices of abusing monopoly status, such as:
1) deals with OEM which includes clauses of avoiding of offering competition products;
2) bribing local politicians and using money for PR companies to curve public opinion about alternatives to Microsoft software;
3) encouraging lock-in in their products, indentionally or unidentionally, trough poor product quality;
4) etc.
Apple maybe is guilty of several things, but those are not coming even close to this definition. Yeah, they always preferred controlled enviroment - therefore it is not legal to buy & use OS X for your home-made Intel, there is no easy way to access iPad/iPhone/IPod Touch from other OSes than Windows or OS X, etc. But still choice is there.
So are they annoying and controlling? Yes. Are they evil? Not even close. I don't use their products - because I can't afford them and because I value my freedom too much. But still they don't lie about it when they sell or advertise it. They don't promise freedom, they promise certain ease of using their products.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I guess I'm kinda falling along the lines for what someone already said, they already are and its obvious...why make a news topic about it?
...don't care one little bit about the App Stores being "walled gardens".
They don't care that iPods or Macs do not natively support Ogg Vorbis or FLAC.
They don't care about iTunes not having as many features as some linux open source thing. They don't care about linux, either.
They don't really care about no Flash on iPhone/iPod/iPad. As long as they can watch the latest Maru videos on YouTube, they will continue not to care about no Flash on iPhone/iPod/iPad.
They care that the Mac Pro/MacBook/iMac/iPod/iPad WORKS.
They care about the seamless one click purchase and it's on the harddrive aspect of the iTunes Store.
They care about the seamless no click synching of iPod/iPhone to the computer.
They care about the interface that lets them get on with it. They don't want to hear about Terminal or how much better a CLI is vs. a GUI. Because they DO NOT CARE.
The vast majority of Apple users have never heard of Slashdot, and don't care a fat rat's ass what any of us here think about Apple.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Please carry on with the AppleHate/AppleLove.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
I guess I'm kinda falling along the lines for what someone already said, they already are and its obvious...why make a news topic about it?
Slashdot is ad supported and we're up to 415 comments now.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
An empire is not a bad thing. Many human marvels are only realized from empires. An strict well lead empire is able to focus resource and push our vision to places we never reached before. Without empires, people will always wonder and argue where is the direction to focus on.
All empire will reach its dead end when they pushed their focus too far, and then it nurture those rebellions to start new empires with lessons learned from previous ones. The post empire rebellion period is chaotic and painful where most resources are wasted in fighting each other.
Our civilization has been best advanced by these rise and bust of empires, for ages, it must be a law of nature -- a kind of rhythm.
But you don't own the software. The OS your device is loaded with is licenced to you.
"Devotees" of Apple products are more like Beer Snobs.
Users or Windows or Android devices are more like the people who drink Bud or Victoria Bitter. "Quality" PC's from HP and Alienware are like "Boutigue Breweries" that are owned by a Megabrewer. "Guiness" brewed under licence by CUB is an example.
The first time you drink a quality beer from a Microbrewery, you may think, "This is different to the usual stuff I drink; it actually has body and flavour." The third or fourth time you may think, "This is *so* much better than the other crap." The same goes for Apple products. The first time you use a Mac, or an iPhone you think, "This is different to how I usually use a computer or phone.", after a while, something just clicks and "different" changes to "better".
MS dominated because it could sell a cheaper OS for cheaper hardware, and so it reached the Critical Mass level where you had to Lock In to MS because everyone else was. Apple sold a Better iPackage to people, there are lots of alternatives but no-one sells a whole package that works. The Apple empire will crumble when this happens. I also think that it's a generational thing, the current generation wants the 'flash' instead of the cash.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
What other criterion is there with which to judge the actions of a company?
The quality of their product, regardless of profits for old white board members? As a user and a consumer, I couldn't care less how profitable the stockholders of Apple are, as long as they continue to make enough money to keep making products I want to buy.
If you think of companies as nice or not nice, good or evil, you will be constantly disappointed. They are judged on profitability.
There are plenty of companies who put altruistic things ahead of profit.
Yes, Apple hates Flash so much that Adobe Flash (every version ever made by Adobe) doesn't exist for OSX...oh wait....
'AWAY' ???
No internet for seven years. You don't deserve to be on /.
That chart depicts shipments (not sales) of smartphones in a single quarter. It doesn't reflect the installed base or non-phone gadgets such as the ipod touch or the ipad.
What you should compare is all iOS Devices in use to all Android devices in use. That would be a much better comparison.
I own an iPhone and a MacBook. My primary home computer is a Windows PC, as is my work computer; I'm no Apple fanboy, and find myself cursing iTunes about 1x/month. I never buy iTunes music because I despise DRM.
But the success of Apple products is not just about "physical attractiveness". My aluminum MacBook is the best-constructed, most durable laptop I have ever owned, used, or even handled. My iPhone (1st gen) is also extremely well put together, and iOS is very well thought out from a functional perspective. The hardware/software integration is world-class. Add to that the "ecosystems" that Apple creates for its products (iTunes Music Store, iPhone/iPad App Store), and you have a whole line of products and services created with a unified vision and crafted according to high standards.
They don't all work flawlessly all the time, and there are many restrictions imposed by Apple that I find maddening. But there is simply no other company that has envisioned and executed such a level of integration and design quality (and by design I'm including all of the stuff referenced above, not just the physical appearance of products).
I can open and close the lid on my Macbook a hundred times in a row and it will go to sleep and happily wake up every single time. Care to try that on whatever Windows piece of crap or Slackware laptop you are using?
Do you think the Macbook does that correctly because of marketing?
The quality of their product, regardless of profits for old white board members?
The two are inseparable. Or should be at least. Why would anyone continue to buy an inferior product? The point is, Apple, or any other company, isn't out to make you happy. They're out to earn money. Setve Jobs' job description is to make Apple as much money as possible and if he doesn't do that then he isn't doing his job (in fact, he's extraordinarily good at hid job). It's entirely up to you, as a consumer, to make judicious decisions about the products you buy.
There are plenty of companies who put altruistic things ahead of profit.
Like Sun Microsystems. That went well for them.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
"Wake me when iTunes switches to lossless"
you will realize that everyone does everything because it has either a "short term or long term benefit" for them--especially companies. No company is supporting open-source despite it being a detriment to their short term or long term goals.
good vs. evil in this context doesn't mean "non-profit vs. profit"...never has.
Which means that you can get a job any number of companies that are getting spanked by Apple nowadays.
PCs beat out Macs because they were supported by a larger company (IBM) and there was a perfect storm of architectural lock-in (x86) and OS lock-in (Dos/Windows) and application lock-in (Microsoft Office-based de facto standards) in a world where software compatibility and backwards compatibility was king.
iPhone's and iPads are nothing like that world, they look far more like appliances than platforms. Yes, they host thousands of applications, but there are almost no barriers preventing those apps from being ported to other devices (nothing compared to the issues for competitors to Wintel) and there's no substantial lock-in due to file formats (Apple uses standard formats for web browsing, music, video, etc.) like there was with Microsoft.
This means that the barriers to fair competition are nothing like they were in the Wintel issue--so other companies will probably carve out their markets and do fine. But the 'appliance' part means that Apple will continue to be quite successful because they are the only company that sees devices as more like Microwaves and Televisions than like a desktop computer.
Your typical Android fan is a technical person who wants to be able to fiddle unconstrained with their phone and they want a plethora of hardware options, even at the expense of usability (in this case upgradability). They want a Linux PC in their pocket.
Your iPhone fan wants a usable appliance first and foremost.
There's no reason that these two can't coexist.
Now here's the kicker. There is no iPhone fan anywhere who thinks that people shouldn't have the option of using Android--and frankly most wouldn't insult them for doing so. The reverse is *not* true for Android fans.
Before the iPhone, changable faceplates and $4.99 ringtones was the extent of the features and choice provided to a US cellphone customer. If you don't think things have changed for the better then you just aren't paying attention.
my old pjbox still rules for sound. no expandibility, but oh well. with a 60 gig drive in it currently, I can put my entire mp3 collection on it.
If you want audiophile level sound get an old pjbox. Nothing these days can touch it.
Of course, it is rather large, can't do video, photos and takes forever to load up with music (USB1.1).
The iPod is a fine machine. I haven't liked some of the other mp3 players I've played around with. A friends sansa I was playing with was cheap crap. And not nearly as intuitive.
The iPod hits the sweet part of the market. It is more like an appliance than the other mp3 players. So people buy them because they are easy to use and easy to understand for the average user. iPods integrate with many more things on the market.
Relying on anything-but-ipod to pull your info from obviously comes with a pretty clear slant.
We self-select leaders of these companies to be sociopaths, that comes pretty close to 'amoral monster'. Maybe if we didn't want them to be we should create mechanisms to keep that from happening...?
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
lol how did you manage to get modded up
http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1299447303171&chddm=996659&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NASDAQ:MSFT&cmptdms=0&q=NASDAQ:AAPL&ntsp=0
also aapl has about $100B more in mkt cap than msft.
what do you mean "turning" evil ? Apple has be satanic for decades.
Yes Apple wants / needs to make money just like any other business, this is their business model and that revenue allows them to invest in R&D and develop useful technology this doesn't make them better or worse than any other company looking for profits, get over it .
Just wondering :)
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
In short, your idea of what constitutes "better" is vastly different from mine.
Obviously. You appear rather emotional in your reply. Anger management might help... ;)
You do not HAVE to buy your computer from Apple. There are a multitude of competitors. Running other OSes.
You see, it is not illegal or wrong for software maker A to force hardware maker A (the same company) to use their operating system. Apple is selling an OS + hardware combo - which was the common practice back in the day.
But what Microsoft did back in the day was forcing hardware makers B, C and D to use their software, excluding competing operating systems (DR-DOS, CP/M-86 etc.) By the time they were slapped for doing this the damage had been done and DOS had "won".
Had Microsoft made both the hardware and software they could have "forced" themselves as much as they wanted. But they chose a different business model where they provided software to other companies - but did not want to compete.
realy you don't understand the point hes making between Catholic and Protestant? maybe it only works for those brought up in Europe or the States i think his analogy is a realy good one.
the only sane post in the entire discussion. Slashdot has certainly gone downhill in recent years.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
It is a religion.
You can do everything you can do on OSX on Microsoft Windows, or Linux, and there are other choices. So the only reason you'd be complaining that the components are overpriced is because you want them from Apple. Otherwise you wouldn't care. And people are willing to pay those prices to get machines running OSX, so there must be some value add (even if it's just the warm glow of belonging to the Apple cult?). Who cares about the components inside it.
To use a car analogy: I have a Toyota Echo. It's not very nice to drive. But it does take me everywhere I need to go, keeps me warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and it goes and can exceed the speed limit. I'd rather have a (insert favourite car brand/model). It'd be much more expensive. But it can only do the same stuff, going at the speed limit it can't get me anywhere faster. It's just nicer to use. It isn't overpriced, it's just more expensive.
The quality of their product, regardless of profits for old white board members?
The two are inseparable. Or should be at least. Why would anyone continue to buy an inferior product?
Great question. This is the reason many of us think Microsoft sucks. They make bottom line decisions that benefit the board and not the customers, yet the customers lap it up for year after year.
My experience is the more popular something is, the more inferior it is. People are cheap and cheap sells. Quality sells to a smaller select group of consumers, which Apple has tapped into quite nicely.
i.e. Cute and nice looking when you first come across them but vicious little bastards if you give them the chance.
Actually, that's quite a good analogy thinking about it - because let's say you went and re-watched "Return Of The Jedi" with all of the Ewok bits cut out, you'd certainly notice if they weren't there any longer but it wouldn't ruin your overall experience too much.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
..seriously? Who fucking cares is their hardware is tied to their software or walled gardens or whatever. There are too many choices in this market to start branding Apple of all people as "evil". If you don't like it don't use it. I personally use a mix of Apple and other technologies but only what I want to use and what makes me productive and happy. Much like my own religion, to extend the metaphor, there is no one between me and salvation, it is mine to make for myself, on no ones terms but my own. Let's talk about Comcast, or the shitbag, satan-worshippers in the recording industry who are actually, actively trying to create a monopoly where they can perpetrate evil. This other discourse is yawn city.
As the title
Everything everyone just said is either obvious or wrong!
(Grampa Simpson,"The Scorpion's Tale")
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
that "considerably popular" doesn't mean 0.0001%.
Lock in means what it literally says, the users are prevented from moving their files to something else. There's no such lock-in with Apple because they use a non-DRM-encumbered standard format implemented by several other players. There are plenty of utilities to convert your OGG files to something playable on an iPod.
You aren't Ganhdi, stop acting like you are oppressed. Discover girls, learn to drive, grow up.
I guess Apple - whose legal obligation is to maximize shareholder value, is just supposed to violate its fiduciary duties and give away its products and its 100+ million credit card database for free.
Can I come over to your place of business and demand to pay nothing for your services? Or are you evil too?
When Apple spies on people and customers, and capitulates to Chinese censorship demands like Google, then call me.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
and big government for the other guy I disagree with.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Alex: name all keybindings not used by emacs.
Me: What is the empty set?
For those of us who stupidly ripped tunes, often hundreds of songs, into AAC, or bought AAC songs from Itunes, lock-in to Ipods is no joke.
I'd love to buy a cheaper portable MP3 player, unfortunately I have a lot of Itunes ripped AAC songs, and don't want to convert them and have them all lose even more sound quality.
Ipods are also the only portable MP3 players that work pretty much out of the box with Linux, and various apps like GTKPOD and Rhythmbox, Amarok, etc.
Yeah Ipods are over-priced, Apple is taking advantage of those of us stupid enough to rip AAC when it became available. Sigh.
Two words for you.
Boot Camp.
Microsoft is Muslim, Google is Jewish, GNU is Hindu and BSD is Buddhist.
Any takers for Rastas and Mormons?
Protestants don't "[work] out their own routes to heaven". There's one way of salvation, simply humble trust in Jesus' death and resurrection, that both Catholics and Protestants believe. You just might be getting it confused with polytheism.
Disagreement between Apple and Microsoft though, is certainly a religious war.
I guess Apple - whose legal obligation is to maximize shareholder value, is just supposed to violate its fiduciary duties and give away its products and its 100+ million credit card database for free.
Legal obligations do not make activity moral.
Can I come over to your place of business and demand to pay nothing for your services? Or are you evil too?
You can demand anything you want, and I can laugh.
When Apple spies on people and customers, and capitulates to Chinese censorship demands like Google, then call me.
What's your number? Apple has censorship built-in, and they have numerous mechanisms for spying on customers; they're built into practically every product. OSX, iTunes, and the iPhone when forced into Apple's software ecosystem all give Apple information about you during the course of normal operations, with OSX providing the least and your phone probably providing the most (though since you HAVE to use it with iTunes if you stay in Apple's world, the two are really inseparable.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Lots of repeated statements. No evidence.
Yes, you said and many (many, many) others have said the exact same thing.
But I don't think the number of mobile phones is that close to the number of iPad sales, so how come the numbers in the phone market are so far apart, yet (according to your insistence), when including the much smaller number of iPads, the numbers are suddenly reversed.
So apple users love religiously Apple. And people hating Apple hate it for reasons.
And somehow, you think this is somehow helpful to Apple?
> then you may find when you next try to sync it with iTunes that it has turned into an expensive, beautifully designed paperweight.
I don't understand this fascination with working people up into a rage when it comes to Apple. The article is a complete troll. Apple do not remotely brick devices.
As for the subscription system. The publishers can easily work around this by just offering the magazine in web format. You don't get charged for web apps. Only iPad apps bought through iTunes.
I am not interested in buying from Apple unless it is required. Increasingly, in certain cases, it is required. Furthermore, what you see as "consumer choices" I see as consumer and market abuse. I think it is only somewhat relevant that their markets are strategically limited so as to prevent government intervention, but as you point out, they maintain their "not necessary" status.
By allowing and enabling this sort of abuse in any area of any market without calling it out for what it is, other markets feel more free to participate in such practices. This is why the telecom industry started its competitive "race to the bottom." (The race to the bottom is a negative form of competition in which they compete in their markets by delivering the least at the highest possible cost. "What the market will bear" in this case means what the consumer will put up with before quitting the service. This can be seen in their ending and new interpretations of "unlimited" and more. And since they are all racing to the bottom, the consumer choice is limited severely and results in almost no consumer choice in the matter.) I see similar trends in the PC, server, handheld device and other markets moving forward. I find these trends to be disturbing. And the most obvious players in this trend are, as you have pointed out, Sony and Apple.
And by the way, did you miss the part about Apple actually being bigger than Microsoft which has already been recognized by justice systems world wide as "an abusive monopoly"?
And there is another problem with Apple's behavior -- the setting of precedents. What Apple gets away with, others are sure to follow. I see standing up for consumer rights as nearly identical to standing up for civil rights. I am sorry you don't see the similarities as the way we define "normal life" increasingly includes the use of technologies and services that are not yet covered by civil rights protections. (This will change when "the internet" is ruled as a utility the was land line phone service is presently, as is regulated by law as a result.)
Look, if you don't like Apple's rules, then don't buy an Apple. All this article points out to me is how upset everyone is that only Apple has enough sense to make a product people want. There are rules I can disagree with, but in the end you just have to take them with a grain of salt or try to find a Windows device that will work the same. I don't like driving the speed limit, but I don't like walking either. And since I can't make the cops NOT give me a ticket, I'll just have to FOLLOW THE RULES.
Good Luck with your non-apple devices!
waaaaaah! waaaaaah! waaaaaah! Apple makes great products that make it's competitors look 2nd rate, and they are. They can't attack them on product quality, usability, or anything substantial, so they pick pick pick at the edges hoping to unravel something.
These guys are to the PCs that they've mistakenly tied their existence to, as FOX Noise is to Republicans.
Whoa whoa whoa.. nobody ever calls Microsoft the good guy, except in a relative sense. But if that if is new to you, then .. well, there's just no way to say this nicely, but you're extremely ignorant or at least missed some pretty humge news stories. Remember the "look and feel" lawsuit?
The complicating factor in all this, is that Apple, for all their much more extreme evil, also happens to make vastly superior products. Microsoft's evil has been manifested as keeping good computer tech out of the hands of the masses. by flooding the market with absolute garbage. Whereas Apple keeps good computer out of peoples' hands, by offering them evil tech (heh), of slight-above-average quality and which is primarily intended to work against the interests of the users, combined with cognitive dissonance, to change what people think they want. Microsoft corrupts by hiding what personal computers can do; Apple corrupts by twisting what personal computers can do.
They're both pretty harmful to progress, but once you get into a situation where lawyers are involved, Microsoft really are the relative good guys. They're Wal-Mart -- they're useless but if you give a damn about anything, you pretty much have to take their side whenever people start talking about using force against them, or else you'll be next. Apple, OTOH, is almost always wrong whenever their lawyers' lips are moving.
I want to say this as someone who generally enjoys Apple products but does find them a bit overpriced, so please withhold fanboy accusations in one direction or another.
An executive at our company recently gave a speech to our team about how impressed he was with Apple's sales theories. He says that he sees Apple as successful because they don't just make products that fit into a certain line - they make new products.
As in... what's an iPhone? If you had to describe an iPhone to someone, what would you say? You would say maybe, "It's a smartphone that functions using a touch screen instead of a keypad and has access to a very large number of small applications and games." Go into an Apple Store, though, and ask a rep what an iPhone is, and he'll say, "Well, it's the iPhone. Here, try it out." Then he'll give you one and let you play with it for awhile.
When you watch a commercial for the iPhone, you never hear things like, "blazing fast 1.5 Ghz speed," or "some of the largest capacity on the market." You also never hear the word "smartphone." When you watch an iPhone commercial, you see people browsing the internet or playing games or chatting on IM. By the way, you might recall how the original iPod commercials never said the words "mp3 player" - they just featured silhouettes of people dancing. And when has Apple ever referred to an iPad as a "tablet computer?"
Whenever Apple markets a product, they don't describe it to you. They tell you its name, they show you what it does, and they try to get you to think of it as a brand new device that has no relationship to anything else on the market. Getting back to our executive at our company, he talked about developing our product suite with a new name that hadn't been used before, and talked about how he'd set up their booth at the last major trade show to have tons of demonstrations, where people could just interact with the product rather than reading a ten-page fact sheet about all of the new and interesting things that product can do. We had a ton of interested customers at that booth this year.
You can't help but compare that stuff to Microsoft, who is always playing catch-up. "Here's OUR mp3 player! Here's OUR user-friendly OS! Here's OUR smartphones!" Microsoft markets its products as the MS iteration of products that always exist, giving them that special MS touch that makes those products better. Apple markets its products as... Apple products. I don't care whether you love or hate Apple or something in between - you have to respect that strategy.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Apple has long been evil. So the real question: Are they turning into an Empire? Market-share-wise, no. Cash-wise, maybe.
-Dave Haynie
Job's supposed technical reasons for not allowing Flash were, simply put, bullshit. Flash is no less secure than iOS itself has been. Cracked at every patch and jailbroken due to various bugs. Flash mobile performance at the time was not exceptional, I'll give it that, but it was acceptable. All mobile versions of Flash on touch phones have allowed touch input. As for battery life, Flash video using H.264 is only slightly more battery intensive than watching a video using H.264, in other situations it's similar to playing a graphic intensive game or watching large videos on your mobile device, it's going to use your battery. Anyone who knows what Flash is knows that Flash is far from perfect.
You can go on about mouse-centric, reliability, or battery life. But what it boils down to is that all these supposed technical reasons are reasons that a consumer might weight in their mind when deciding whether or not to install and use Flash. They are not, in any way, reasons to completely prevent a user from installing it of their own volition. If they really want to, it's easy to put a message stating whatever they like before you install it, but still allow the user to install it. The only reason to prevent Flash from being installed is to be monopolistic and Apple trying to snuff Flash out. There is no technical reason to prevent Flash, only to not package it by default.
As for the rest of your post, I agree completely about the blocking. Hell, Microsoft was slapped with an anti-competitive behavior fine because of their treatment of Netscape and bundling of IE. =P
You do know that the SSDs that Apple is including are quite old, right? They don't even support TRIM, which everything made in the last 2 years does. So yes, it's a less expensive SSD (I assume, I haven't actually checked the price), but it's an inferior model compared to anything you can buy in a store today.
I think you have a warped view on reality.
Just adding better materials for the screen, and some other nifty "tricks" would do a lot.
But hey, lets ignore battery life and my entire comment....
So where is this 200$ netbook which has equal build quality(if i do not drop it) and has the the same spescs and better battery life?
Hint: It does not exist until you link it.
Alienware laptop, completely alone in 12 inch gaming laptop segment.......... :(
But what about in 15 inch laptops then? Battery life?