Apple is just Microsoft with better marketing
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Way I hear things, Apple hasn't completely gotten rid of Carbon yet. iTunes is still around, in all it's terrible glory.
The only way to be free of artificial restrictions is to use OSS.
The only way to be free of artificial restrictions is to be technology agnostic, to not subscribe to any one camp for religious reasons, and to simply use the right tool for the job.
tl;dr backward compatibility keeps customers, no backward compatibility makes them flee, for Windows.
What Apple products are we talking about here? Are you implying that people who own mass market consumer electronic devices like iPod and iPhone are more technically inclined? I think that is an inaccurate statement: it is nearly impossible to hold the kind of market share in that space and somehow do it with only (or even mostly) "technical" users... there just aren't enough of them. Not to mention that it flies in the face of Apple's "it just works" marketing mantra.
In the world of PCs, you might have an argument. But I would say, once again, that your assumption goes against everything Apple marketing has been saying for 10 years. If the marketing has been working, then they've been attracting non-technical users into their user-base for years.
"[...] as Windows's featureset is much smaller than its competitors' [...]"
In what way?
The problem is that Microsoft used to say no as well. The larger the (software) company is the less humble and wise it becomes as its realizations are stretched across multiple divisions.
I primarily use windows, but I have a virtual machine with Linux specifically to run Sage. I know its not the same, but it is a very similar concept.
It didn't work for their desktop business 20 years ago, why should it work now?
Also, remember there are a lot of people that want a walled garden. It makes them feel safe and shields them from needing to really understand any of the details. I am certainly not one of those people, but that market segment will exist even as new tablets come out and the competing smartphones gain marketshare.
Apple on the other hand develops its own hardware and software. I think they have every right to control their environment, even if I don't agree with it.
Developers are not locked into developing for the iPad, iPhone, etc. Don't like Apple? Develop for Android. Apple doesn't owe you a living. If you want to sell on their marketplace, you need to abide by their rules.
I don't disagree that it would nice if Apple was more open, but comparing them to MCSFT is somewhat of a red herring.
Same applies to the other Devs aren't locked in to windows, IE, etc. MS doesn't owe them a living. Develop for Linux.
Entity(MS, Apple) has vast majority of sales in the market place(os, phone applications) sets rules that favor themselves and you can either go along or die in a corner(develop for Linux, develop for WebOS.) Personally I prefer die in the corner with freedom than happy subjugation.
The Mac hardware remains as open as Windows.
There's a huge difference, and their behavior with the app consoles is entirely defensible.
The app consoles are not general-purpose computers, and that's a better "experience" for great majority of their users.
If you look at it objectively, Apple use far more open standards than Microsoft, and rarely resort to inventing standards to implement the closed systems that they want to.
Look at their open source releases: http://www.opensource.apple.com/
Yeah, they clone or buy ideas and are known to beat their competition through illegal practices ... but no other company I know can be so infected with the NIH syndrome and get away with it.
"far more open standards" is really subjective. Microsoft invented Ajax. And before IE 6, when they've stopped caring, IExplorer kicked Netscape's ass.
And to me, standards are also relevant for hardware ... Microsoft is know to favor standards and openness in hardware. That's how they've beat both IBM and Apple.
So in the grander scheme of things, we don't know which company served a greater good. From my perspective computing wouldn't be as ubiquitous as it is today without someone like Microsoft.
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/2010/04/chargin...
Getting the best software developed on your platform is half the battle and history of Microsoft is to develop to market trends not to enter the market first.
Computing would not have been so ubiquitous without IBM, credit where credit's due.
Steve Jobs: "We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers."
Yet, it is just fine with Steve Jobs if every iDeveloper is at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when their enhancements will be made available to their customers.
Yeah, my car can do 150mph but if a cop stop me cause i'm speeding over 65mph i'm not going to cry cause the USA aren't an "open" country where I can't decide how fast I can drive the hardware I own.
I'm sure Adobe could make the same argument to Apple. If you only do what's in our interests then we'll probably update our 3rd party libs within a reasonable timeframe. And don't bring up that one time we didn't bother supporting something in your API, that's just one feature out of thousands we did support.
To continue your analogy, it's like you were driving the speed limit, then a month later they lower the speed limit and ticket you for your driving speed last month. Unless you're Sports Illustrated.
As much as I dislike its present course, Apple has always pushed the boundaries of what's possible since the day 1 (Apple I, Apple ][, Disk ][) and continued pushing, sometimes crossing that border (certain aspects of the Lisa are more advanced than OSX, for instance, but its 68K wasn't fast enough).
Microsoft started life cloning BASIC for 8-bit computers, gained relevance cloning CP/M for 16-bit computers and became mainstream cloning MacOS for 32-bit PC-compatible computers, by entering shady deals with OEMs, by misleading competitors (Lotus developed 123/G - "the future", acording to MS - for OS/2 while MS developed Excel for Windows) and by hurting genuine innovators by announcing vaporware and half-brained products (like Windows for Pen Computing and its latest descendant, Courier).
No. As much as Apple has been every bit as evil as Microsoft, the two companies share a completely different ethos.
I have always liked Apple for the Woz age of hacking and the ethos that produced, but this is not the path that they appear to be walking recently.
I would love to agree with your disagreement, but I find myself agreeing more with the concerns of the article. It may be a far-fetched rant but it makes a few points that presently fall not far from the target.
There is a gray area between "clever" and "dishonest". Lotus trusted Microsoft, as did IBM. In retrospect, we know nobody should trust Microsoft.
Frankly, I am surprised that, at that time, IBM trusted Microsoft after the PC-DOS/MS-DOS PC-clone thing.
Not many people can fool me twice.
And, I have to say, Apple did fool me once: http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/i-really-want-to-lik...
IBM doomed OS/2 with their earlier promise to MIS managers (as they were called then) that the PC-AT would be the last personal computer they'd have to buy for a long time.
Microsoft correctly hated the diversion of effort and compromises needed to get it to run on the 286 (which was truly awful when not being just a fast 8086) and didn't stop their Windows effort and at some point started up NT (well, we know the point, when DEC killed the Prism project, I just don't remember its relation to the other events).
This all came to a head when the 386 was the standard minimum CPU in a machine. OS/2 did not run competitively on it, Windows 3.0/1 could take significant advantage of it, was less complicated and imposing and I'm sure cost a lot less. And it could run multiple isolated DOS boxes.
That set the stage for what then happened.
Microsoft's keyboards are much better than Apple's
Every single computer I installed Ubuntu,
since the 6.x releases, has worked flawlessly ...
My wife has a Macbook. I tried to use Macs for work, but I prefer a more traditional Unix desktop, one with X and select-and-middle-click goodness.
We are a multi-platform household here ;-) I even have Windows on a VM.
It's why Linux still suffers on the desktop. Linux support is incredibly wide. Gnome has to keep this into consideration, as does KDE. They don't have the easy route to development that Apple has: a closed, controlled world.
Apple gets credit for that final polish, and they do deserve it. And at the consumer end, they end up with great products. I'm not saying their approach is wrong. They live and breathe DRY. But I don't see that they are pushing boundaries. They let other people do that. And when the other people succeed or fail, Apple takes note of that, and then comes out with their own effort, usually lacking significant features.
Maybe one of those people can explain why it's harder for Apple to develop for a single ecosystem on a closed platform then it is for someone like Canonical to develop on multiple ecosystems on an open platform?
Or maybe someone can explain how they are impressed that Apple is able to offer the performance they do in their limited environment when they control every aspect of that environment?
Or maybe they can explain why Apple shouldn't get credit for a final, polished experience? Maybe someone who disagrees can explain why they shouldn't live on DRY.
And finally, maybe someone can explain what boundaries Apple pushed when they came out with an MP3 player, a mobile phone, or a touch pad computer?
> why Apple shouldn't get credit for a final, polished experience?
I think you were downvoted for the rest of your comment. I agree with you here.
> what boundaries Apple pushed when they came out with an MP3 player, a mobile phone, or a touch pad computer?
The iPod was revolutionary in that it was the easiest to use MP3 player. The iPhone was revolutionary because it was one of the first phones that didn't suck. The iPad is revolutionary because many other people have made touch screen computers, but the iPad is one of the first that was designed for touch in the beginning, not just 'you touch the screen instead of the mouse.'
I expect you also might be getting downvoted because this is 'Apple business analysis 101.' These topics were discussed endlessly ever since the release of the iMac. People are probably sick of hearing, "It's just a phone, wtf?"
With that said, I didn't downvote you, so I can't speak for those that did.
Which is no surprise, considering they control everything. And, considering they control everything, I'm surprised it takes them so long to actually get features in. The point is, they aren't doing anything special. If anything, they aren't doing enough compared to what other people accomplish. The difference is that Apple does it in the only area that end users really see: The end user experience.
"The iPod was revolutionary in that it was the easiest to use MP3 player."
That's debatable. The iPod was, and still is, incredibly backwards in how it needs to load and unload media. The iPod had a gimmick (the wheel), which they've removed in favor of the design they where originally trying to replace.
The iPhone wasn't revolutionary. It was evolutionary. There is a big difference. The iPhone was a natural progression everyone saw from the iPod. Nor were they phones prior to the iPhone that weren't good. What made the iPhone popular was it was Apple, and more importantly, it built itself into iTunes.
If anything is revolutionary, it's iTunes, and everything that's extended out of it. And even that isn't something Apple came up with. iTunes is nothing that hasn't existed in the open source world for a long time. Debians Apt repositories are the earliest I can think of (and I'm sure others can come up with older things). Heck, even Lindows did the same thing with their CNR stuff (though, I think that came out after iTunes, I'm getting my time lines mixed up).
Anyways.
"I expect you also might be getting downvoted because this is 'Apple business analysis 101.'" I don't imagine anything I said is new, but it doesn't mean it's not relevant, or incorrect. It really comes down to Apple doesn't impress. When you have complete control over every aspect of your product, then you should deliver. Indeed, I'd go so far to say that Apple is behind where it should be.
You can make great products, but that doesn't mean you are doing anything special.
Maybe I'm just not as easily impressed?
Yes, they are. They're the only company that's realized that if you want a stable, integrated experience, you need to control the entire product, top to bottom. They're the only (major) computer company that does this, which kind of makes them special by definition, right?
> The difference is that Apple does it in the only area that end users really see: The end user experience.
But ultimately, that's the only thing that really matters. I hate to be utilitarian about it, but the value a product brings to the end user is the only thing that matters.
> The iPod was, and still is, incredibly backwards in how it needs to load and unload media.
From a technical standpoint, yes. From a user's standpoint, it's _awesome_. I just click a button, and wait a few seconds? Great.
> The iPhone was a natural progression everyone saw from the iPod. Nor were they phones prior to the iPhone that weren't good.
It's true that the details of the phone weren't important, but it doesn't mean it wasn't a truly great phone. Remember the ROKR? That's what happens when non-Apple companies design a phone. That's what pretty much any non-iPhone non-Andriod phones are like. Maybe I'm just too hard on cell phones, but until I bought my Nexus One, I still had a really old 'feature phone' because I couldn't bring myself to buy any of the shitty, shitty phones that are out there.
> iTunes is nothing that hasn't existed in the open source world for a long time.
Same thing. It's not about the tech, it's about ease of use for the end consumer.
> I don't imagine anything I said is new, but it doesn't mean it's not relevant, or incorrect.
I mean, I agree. I'm not saying you should be downvoted, I'm just trying to guess why others were. Hearing the same arguments gets really old, especially in a series of articles like these, which are basically just shouting matches of the same opinions, over and over.
> Maybe I'm just not as easily impressed?
Nope, I think that you're just impressed by things that aren't Apple's core competencies. That's okay, I don't think, for instance, Exxon-Mobil is impressive, and they're one of the few companies bigger than Apple. Different people value different things.
I used to be obsessed with technical details, until I came to the startup world, where I realized it's all about value creation, not about the tech. It's disappointing, and we programmers tend to be an exceptionally meritocratic bunch, but really, even in the tech industry, tech is kind of irrelevant.
I don't think that's accurate, on multiple levels. First, they aren't the first company to realize that. However, it is easier to have a stable, integrated experience when you control the product line. Which is what I've been saying this entire time. They essentially took the easy way to quality.
Which leads to:
"But ultimately, that's the only thing that really matters. I hate to be utilitarian about it, but the value a product brings to the end user is the only thing that matters."
I agree. And I never argued that. I said that from the beginning. I apologize if I came off suggesting that they made shoddy products. That was never the point nor my intention. =)
"I mean, I agree. I'm not saying you should be downvoted, I'm just trying to guess why others were. Hearing the same arguments gets really old, especially in a series of articles like these, which are basically just shouting matches of the same opinions, over and over."
I understand, but it's still stupid to downvote something just because you've heard it before. I've heard a lot of things before. Doesn't mean I down vote. Should I down vote every comment that has repeated something I've read before? If a comment doesn't add value, fine. But if it's a comment you are tired of, just ignore it and don't upvote it! And, I'm not referring to you, rather, I'm referring to the royal "you". =)
"I used to be obsessed with technical details, until I came to the startup world, where I realized it's all about value creation, not about the tech. It's disappointing, and we programmers tend to be an exceptionally meritocratic bunch, but really, even in the tech industry, tech is kind of irrelevant."
I agree. And that's a good point. I fully realize where Apple's value lies. However, that doesn't mean I'm not an idealistic thick-headed fool that's going to speak his mind, even when it's not the most popular. Being opinionated and stubborn has worked so far. =)
Basically, I just feel like Apple gets a lot of credit for doing things it shouldn't. They do a lot of really cool things, but at the end of the day, I realize it's not really that impressive when you realize the slate they have to work with.
Good questions/challenges. Sorry if you've had this discussion before. I've never really discussed this particular angle. Most of my friends aren't geeks!
I meant within the consumer computer industry, sorry. It's not like they invented vertical integration.
> I agree. And I never argued that. I said that from the beginning.
Okay. It's just with quotes like "they took the easy way to quality," you seem to be saying that the process means more than the end result. That's what this all boils down to.
> Good questions/challenges. Sorry if you've had this discussion before. I've never really discussed this particular angle. Most of my friends aren't geeks!
No problem. The first computer I ever used was a Mac, so I've been having these discussions forever. I was totally the little fanboy in 7th grade, holding my copy of MacAddict with pictures of those amazing new Bondi Blue and white G3 towers, arguing with my friends that (to quote Hackers) "RISC will change everything."
In any case, it's always great to have real-actual, in-depth discussion. Thanks just as much to you.
That's the holy grail of your industrial & operations type.
It's like you're deriding an app for being written in Python instead of C. The easy way is the smart way!
Except they aren't doing that. For 3 version multitasking was bad, and they told you why multitasking wasn't needed. Now, apparently, it's good.
As for others not being able to duplicate it, that's not true. Apple isn't the only place to find easy to us. Heck, half their stuff isn't easy to use. It's just as difficult and confusing as PC stuff. It just appears easier/cleaner. They have less wires. Just one look at iTunes and syncing Audiobooks with your iPod is a perfect example of how they dropped the ball.
I don't choose which products to buy based on how hard they were to make. All I care about is how well designed they are (aesthetically and functionally). I suspect that most customers are the same way.
> Or maybe they can explain why Apple shouldn't get credit for a final, polished experience?
Apple gets "credit" by profit: customers choose to buy their products, and they do so knowing that Apple is selling them for more than the raw cost of material inputs. This is good, because to make an honest profit (wherein all parties agree to a transaction voluntarily) is what everyone should try to do.
Companies should try to make the best products they can, which means making products that present the least hassle to users. Apple does this best because they honestly care the most about the user experience. And it's not just that it's harder to interoperate and make products work well - when the standard is badly misconcieved, no amount of effort to interoperate will make your product work well. So Apple is right in thumbing its nose at things that are either obsolete (floppies, flash, etc.), or just brain-dead (X-Windows). Apple is the one computer company brave enough to think in principle about what people will want in the future.
If this were so easy, why isn't everyone else doing it?
Wow, great. I'm sure your bile and vitriol will create lots of value for customers. Who will want to pay for an iPad when they can get (metaphorical) death and destruction for free?
OP is hardly alone with his rage; I see lots of people storming and blustering about how Apple is the devil. But I see very few people making a serious attempt to actually deliver the goods that will make Apple irrelevant. If a mobile platform running Clojure-flavored HaskellLisp is the Silver Bullet, can you show us an example of its unique value? Or if a mobile platform running Flash is the Ultimate Object of customer desire, where can we buy it and try it?
(Personally, I'll put my energy into the standardized web. It's out there, it's ubiquitous. The servers run whatever software you like; the clients run Javascript, which has its troubles but is not the worst of all possible worlds. Steve Jobs himself endorses it and the iPhone platform has supported it nicely from day one. We've spent well over a decade building it.)
Of course he can't, because it hasn't been invented yet. But that's the point. Apple is trying to make sure no one can ever invent it.
For Apple to be like Microsoft it would have to take a standardized language (like HTML, Javascript, or Java), fork it so it is unreadable by the original, then use it's monopoly so that no one else can create a competitor.
Here is a rundown of this MS behavior:
MS-DOS vs. PC-DOS
J# vs Java
IE6 vs HTML4
MS JS vs javascript
Now when Apple forks Flash and decides that is the only Flash that will be available on iPhoneOS then they will have become Microsoft.
Although MS may fork something, it does not force you to use their proprietary language - In the examples above, you can still use the original language...the choice remains yours.
I might be biased since I've basically only developed on Windows (Visual Studio, code warrior, borland, etc.), but in the big scheme of things, MS has been more open, had more alternatives and options and better developer support than Apple...IMHO.
As anyone that has had to write parallel code in HTML/CSS/JS for IE vs every other browser your choices are: do it our way.
MS was only open in their willingness to assimilate other good technologies, and then lock everyone else out once they had enough influence.
Or was "Thoughts on Flash" intended to be Jobs's pitch for Core Animation?
There are open source alternatives like Gnash but they are reverse-engineered runtimes. And like all RE'd apps they are at the mercy of Adobe. It already has problems with Flash 10. This is why Jobs argument is so valid. Anyone can write a swf file but it's restricted to running on Adobe's Flash runtime.
PDF is a special case. I still have an Acrobat 1.0 disk in storage with my Photoshop 3.1 floppies, somewhere. Adobe was giving it away at that point. They also gave licenses to PDFs. Only one company took the offer, Next. Apple bought Next and inherited that license from '93.
“If this clause had been written fifteen years ago, the languages then would have been C, Fortran, and Cobol- and how would feel about being required to program in those languages today? Well, that’s how you’re going to fell about C++ and Objective C ten or fifteen years from now.”
Er... ALL of these languages are currently in use. Cobol is finally be deprecated after decades of deployment. C and C++ are still going strong. Objective-C shows every sign of actually increasing in popularity as Clang rolls out and people realize that Objective-C++ actually does some pretty amazing things for you.
That whole paragraph is not only using bad examples, but it also is contingent on the premise that Apple has locked its user agreement in stone and will keep it that way for years. Who knows if that could be true?
It's simple mistakes like these that magnify the spelling and style errors to near intolerability, for me. I—like most readers, I think—can tolerate a lot of errors and awkward sentences if the message is spot on. That really doesn't seem to be the case here.
Microsoft open sources Trident... Not vs Apple creates the WebKit project
Microsoft helps to develop a BSD licensed compiler... Not vs Apple helps to develop Clang/LLVM
<sarcasm>
Both companies are like twins.
<sarcasm>
It wouldn't make anyone even sort of happier, but I can't help but feel it's closer to the truth of the matter than questions of language use. I highly doubt Apple would cry if a top notch app was developed in Haskell so long as the developer knew the burden of maintaining the API divide and still delivered. It makes me feel the whole thing is a matter of lacking trust and legalese, and though language restrictions seem dumb I myself can't think of a better way to achieve the goals Apple appears to be aiming at.
If flash not utilizing the latest features of iPhone OS is a problem, market will kill apps which don't use them (assuming they are worth using) on its own.
And in my opinion, Apple is a monopoly or on it's way. But I almost don't care they've done so much to improve mobile quality they deserve to reap much of the benefit.
Microsoft didn't disallow netscape from running on it's platform. It came out with a competitive product and leveraged (what turned out to be illegally) it's position against it's competitor.
If Apple were behaving the same way, they would allow Flash (or other programs) to be installed on the platform duke it out through business processes to allow the market determine a winner.
All you young people crying "monopoly!" and "anti-competitive practices!" could really use a dose of history.
Just like a blogger removing your comments is not censorship; just like Apple refusing your app is not censorship; Apple refusing to accept cross-compiled apps is not censorship, anti-competitive, or monopolistic.
Apple does not have a monopoly.
There are many, many other smart phones you can use and develop for. Apple does not control them at all, in any way, and has no agreements with their manufacturers. Apple has no exclusivity agreements with telcos, either, as to which phones the telcos will sell in addition to the iPhone.
Apple has nothing to do with twisting the arms of third-party companies who sell computers. There is no illegal monopolistic action going on, like charging OEMs for Windows licenses per computer sold - regardless of whether Windows is loaded on the device. Safari can easily be deleted and replaced with any browser you like on the Mac.
If you want to look at a company that is gunning for Microsoft-type monopoly, look at Google with their Android and their questionable licensing scheme for OEMs.
Blocking programming languages is not the same thing as blocking a competing browser.
Apple does not have a product that competes with Flash in the world. They are only disallowing it on their platform. That is their prerogative, and completely legal and ethical in every way considerable.
Furthermore, Apple and Adobe do not compete head-to-head on the products in question. Don't tell me "They would compete if you could use Flash apps on the iPhone!" because that argument holds no water at all. You'd still be using the iPhone, is the point.
If you don't like it, you are free to vote with your wallet and your code. Develop for Palm Pre. Develop for Windows Mobile. Develop for whatever the hell Blackberry runs. Develop for Android. Or how about Symbian?
Did I miss any?
This choice, by the way, is how you can tell it's not a monopoly.
Just because you WANT in, on your terms, and Apple says no, doesn't make it a monopoly. Just because it inconveniences you doesn't make it wrong. And just because it's happening to you doesn't make it important.
No arrow keys on the first Mac KB. No Floppy in the iMac. No BluRay now.
Again, Apple is ok with using power to leave off features that they don't 'see' the point of. Microsoft is ok with using power to leave off competition.
Google Voice / Android is Google gunning for Apple [1]. You've got the roles reversed.
[1] http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531...
This is just ludicrous:
> Microsoft may have destroyed Netscape, and Digital Research, and dozens of other companies, with illegal abuse of their monopoly powers. But nothing they did threatened to bring the industry to a shuddering halt, ceasing all development of new and better ways of doing things. Microsoft never made Haskell illegal.
Yes, they strongarmed every OEM within an inch of their lives -- and they actually stifled competition -- meanwhile Apple just won't let you crosscompile apps for their phone.
Yikes.
What I don’t understand is why Apple haven’t done a standalone version of their Macbook trackpads. I’d buy one of those for sure.
Not sure how those work if you're not using a Mac. Maybe you can remap the right Option to Control? Control isn't near as important for most Mac users since Macs use Command where windows uses Control.
That said, once I did the ctrl/caps remapping I've used that keyboard extensively with emacs and only occasionally did I feel any real limitations.
I don't particularly like iTunes, but it does two jobs for Apple: it syncs iPods and makes Windows look bad.
Granted, it's not third-party since Apple owns the Carbon layer and iTunes, but then again, Flash isn't third-party for Adobe's in-house developers for the very same reason. Perhaps this is what Jobs means by "painful experience".
OSX is great software, the iPhone is a great product, the original Macintosh changed computing forever. That, IMHO, is not "just better marketing".