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

Yes and no

[aliquis]

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?

Re:Yes and no

[AmiMoJo]

Remember back in the 90s when Microsoft was evil because they locked people in to their products? Proprietary document formats, incompatible HTML extensions, secret APIs that only they could use? Ring any bells?

Apple are trying to go one further by not even allowing competing products on their platforms. Opera had to fight to get on to iOS devices, Google Talk was initially rejected... MS products were terrible but because Apple products do mostly work reasonably well (in a limited way) they somehow get away with it.

An interesting question.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:An interesting question.

[node 3]

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"?

They already were?

[celeb8]

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.

Re:It's like being at school

[drinkypoo]

1.
morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked: evil deeds; an evil life.
2.
harmful; injurious: evil laws.
3.
characterized or accompanied by misfortune or suffering; unfortunate; disastrous: to be fallen on evil days.
4.
due to actual or imputed bad conduct or character: an evil reputation.
5.
marked by anger, irritability, irascibility, etc.: He is known for his evil disposition.

Apple conforms to #2 and #4. Steve Jobs conforms to #5.

Apple is Evil as per the dictionary. Thank you, please drive through.