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.'"

Comments

Clearly not a question, but just "YES"

[pyalot]

The evil IBM empire: chaining you to their OS and mainframe hardware. The PC insurgence: everybody can have cheap hardware. The evil Microsoft empire: chaining you and your apps to their OS. The evil Apple empire: chaining you, 3rd party developers and your content to their OS, hardware and app-store.

Remember remember..

• The first modern word processor (from apple) was chaining your documents to your macos installation
• iTunes was DRM only for a long time
• Apple stomping on jailbreaking and bricking devices
• The recent rate-hike for app-store apps with services expecting developers to roll over and give 30% of their revenue on services to apple as well
• Apple stomping on free software in the app store
• Apple being uncompetitive against certain apps in the app-store
• The unholy marriage of iTunes, ios devices and the impossibility to offer competing "stores" for ios devices
• hackintosh
• recent app-store outrages where apples app-store review process let blatant impostors/rippers resubmit applications of other people