Ugh. As a long-time "all in on Macs" person I've dreaded the day this would happen. As much as I am an Apple whore, the world is worse off when important things are too tightly bound to monopoly players. It's not like I want to ONLY ever have the option of buying Apple products.
I am, however, glad that these values are being "proven right" in society and culture. I just wish they would percolate up through Big Tech more.
They are the ones that might currently do less than the other two, but history shows that giving one company too much power means it will be abused sooner or later. Google seemed a really, really nice company in the late nineties. When it developed, people were fascinated. When the first versions of Android came out, I was coding like a crazy, happy to own an "open phone" I could simply copy MP3s and ebooks to. And look what a monster they became. Now I do whatever I can to get rid of Google from every aspect of my life, and believe me, it's not easy at all.
The writing on the wall has been there for a long time. They just had a very large stockpile of goodwill.
But it got SO MUCH worse around 2005 for some reason.
-2 : I don't really see Apple as very different from Amazon or Google or any other tech giant. They are here to defend their bottom line and IMO they have remarked that ads were an easy critique of their rival so they are tabling on it.
If only they could :
- stop changing their TOS every 5 minutes and make them actually human readable.
- let anybody distribute an app on iOS, even outside of the app store, even if it competes with iTunes, Safari, etc
I would be way more inclined to cheer for Apple and call them a defender of our liberties. Another issue is that as far as net neutrality is concerned, this is scary.
That said, I fully support Apple in their pro-privacy stance. Now if only they'd produce professional notebooks/equipment, I'd be re-considering them for my next purchase (having owned a PowerBook from 2003 onwards, and still using a Mac mini for graphic work).
This is stated as if it were fact, when it is clearly an opinion with many complicated factors behind it that vary from person to person.
the new specs for the Mac Book pro are also a joke for the price, and wtf is that touch bar crap.
also, paying 800-1000$ for a phone is ridiculous
- Also the Google Pixel is $749.
Yes, of course. These two statements are not mutually exclusive.
Ignoring the hyperbole ("evil"? Really?) all removing the headphone jack was was proactively responding to market forces (because BT headphones have outsold wired for a while now) as it gave them more leeway in industrial design (the port is large and repeats functionality the other port already has anyhow).
> all of the monopolistic app store practices really aren't awesome.
You don't understand what "monopolistic" practices are. Sorry. Apple controls their own platform but that's not monopolistic.
> the new specs for the Mac Book pro are also a joke for the price
Not if you compare like for like it's not. Sorry, doesn't hold up under even a cursory examination of the competition.
> wtf is that touch bar crap.
Awesome is what it is - I have one and it's freaking great.
> also, paying 800-1000$ for a phone is ridiculous
That's literally the price range of most major high-end smart phones (ok, $700-$1000, but still). The flagship phones from Samsung, HTC, and Huawei are in that range. You have to go to LG or Oppo (much much smaller sales and they are selling at a loss) to get below that (and only into the $600 range, even then).
Apple does plenty of evil, as you're about to find out when you realize the amount of freedom you enjoy on your Mac will not in any way translate to your iPhone, and further discover the business model to which Apple would want to gravitate (hint: not the Mac model).
They're arguably less evil than Google and Microsoft right now, but to say that they're "adhering to 'do no evil'" is by no means accurate when they still push their walled garden and treat their mobile users as incompetent children needing their hands held.
That's such an odd idea. I'm not sure how you arrive at it.
Apple, in this case, is simply setting itself up as a gatekeeper for advertising. Just like Apple is the gatekeeper at the app store who takes 30% of everything.
Apple isn't going to stop ads. It's going to charge advertisers a cut to reach Safari users. In the process, it claims to protect users of Safari from the "evil" cookies. Essentially, they're taking shots at Google's business model and trying to get a cut of Google's income at the same time. It's purely a money grab.
This is also great news for server side trackers. This will be a big boost for their business.
http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/59289f0379474ce7238...
Diversification doesn't hurt. Especially if it's at the expense of one of your largest competitors. Especially when your core market is mobile phones. Ask Motorola or Nokia about how being #1 in phones works out in the long run.
And it's well diversified. It's third largest business is Macintosh, which is the fastest growing and most profitable personal computer company in the world.