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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.'"
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?
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'
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.
The 'flamebait' was when Apple decided that '1984' was an instruction manual.
...so shit gets selected for the front page. Sigh...
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.
People have been saying this for over twenty years now. Nothing new here. What would be interesting is if common perception is that this is a valid question, and it's most definitely not.
forcing the end user to buy their hardware
No one has ever been forced to buy Apple hardware. In fact, most people don't buy their computers.
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.
Three problems...
1. Market share of the OS is a simple, but incomplete metric. Apple makes more money than any other PC maker, and is just shy of greater profits and revenue than MS. So claiming MS has "won" is not so cut and dry.
2. You are comparing iPhones to Android. You should be comparing iPhones (and other iOS devices) to Android phones and other Android devices. That an iPhone costs $199 and $299, but the Android OS is free is meaningless. iOS is free on iPhones too.
3. iOS has outsold Android. So your conclusion has yet to come to pass. But even if it ever does, you end up with the first point, how has that benefitted Google greater than iOS has benefitted Apple? Even if Android outsells iOS 5 to 1 (and it most certainly does not, and won't any time soon), how is that an example of Google beating Apple? Apple will still make far more from iOS than Google will be making from Android.
And, more on topic, what does this have to do with Apple being "evil"?
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
I read TFA and have to agree that it rates pretty dang high on my flamebait o' meter. I mean if forced to choose between one or the other Google is scarier by far because even without having anything to do with them Google can get tons of data on me whereas if I don't like Apple (and for the record the only Apple device I own is a Blue&Silver G3 Tower giveaway I got to play with PPC) I can simply not buy from them, end of story.
This is why I never understood those "ZOMG Apple! ZOMG M$!" types, as the answer is simple if you don't like them don't buy their products its JUST that easy. Hell never before have we had so many choices and if I want a Pad style device (which I don't) then I have tons of choices, same as there are plenty of little shops like System76 that'll be happy to sell me a laptop that has never had a Windows Sticker or WinKey.
So to me this smells like nothing but an article to piss people off and stir up page views, like Nichols on the Linux Troll side or Thurott the WinTroll. in all three cases the point is to stir as much shit per paragraph as possible to crank up the views. The only way to win against this kind of trolling is to quote Wargames: "Not to play".
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.