Apple doesn't owe you anything | Hacker News Reader

Apple doesn't owe you anything

itworld.com

16 pointsabennett23 comments

The real story here about Apple is at the end of the article (that is if you noticed to click through to page 2 of it).

"Still, it seems that many people are going to keep loving Apple no matter what, and getting hurt when the company acts to make money rather than loving them back. And, as it turns out, those rumors about 10.6.2 not working on Atom chips might not be true after all! Fall in love all over again."

Apple's marketing trust isn't a bunch of marketers, rather a bunch of psychologists. No one has ventured to write in-depth about this yet, maybe I'll get around to it one day. Apple accomplished two things with this latest action and I'll quickly explain both below.

This is only ONE example of Apple marketing vs. psychology and I will keep it relevant to the article: - Steve Jobs has said before that Apple doesn't seek to create markets or chase them. Point and case regarding netbooks: Steve Jobs said on the quarterly earnings call a little over a year ago that "not a lot of them are getting sold" (which is debatable) BUT then admitted that Apple is going to "wait and see" how the category evolves and "we've got some pretty interesting ideas if it does evolve."

So, on that note, the psychology behind the OSX update that could have eliminated the popular atom chip support in netbooks, potentially locking out a bunch of netbook owners from updating the OS or face inoperable computers...

It has been a year and netbooks (which is now just a buzzword since they are really a recycle of selling smaller screen laptops that fell out of favor and are now made more lightweight and with hardware that isn't overkill for the general population) are popping up like crazy appear to be selling like hotcakes.

Apple knows that OSX is being installed on these and I'm sure keep an eye on all the posts about how to do it and watch the comments on those posts and other forums. I'm sure just how Google monitors search term popularity, Apple does the same for things they are watching.

So, one year later, how do you test the temperature of the market for OSX on netbooks? Indirectly threaten the entire market by potentially not supporting the processors that run them and watch the reaction.

The second thing accomplished by this was what Apple seems to do that I have not seen any other company pull off so frequently: create controversy and then have people fall in love with you again. I don't need to list all the examples from just the last two years alone, I know you know them. Not only could they test and measure the reaction of possibly shutting netbook users out, but then come back to be the hero and give back what was almost taken away. Reaction goes from angry (without merit in my opinion) to "oh thank God" "whew" "thank you Apple".

Hopefully I'm making sense up there. Just wanted to bring the topic up and hear your thoughts as well.

I think that's very far-fetched.

The Atom "problem" showed up in a developer build which would not give Apple any kind of accurate measure of a potential netbook market (ADC members are not representative of the general public, I think it's safe to say). Measuring public reaction would be useless as well as Apple is aware of how easy it is to generate an absurd amount of misguided outrage. Even ignoring those two points, the problem wasn't even blogged about until the day before the following update which apparently doesn't have the same problem (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/11/04/rumors-of-disabled-intel...).

So, if that was their plan it was a horrible idea with bad execution.

To add to your point; the Apple rumor sites spend so much time taking small bits of information (e.g. a developer release is reported to not work on Atom processors) and creating a whole story out of it. This is kinda insane.

Look, Apple likes the profit margin. They are very fiscal minded (witness that Apple rumor sites report on GAAP changes). Netbooks do not make the money laptops make and Apple is still selling a lot of laptops.

I actually don't think they care that much about individual power users creating netbook hackintoshes. Remember how everyone freaked about the TPM chips in the original Intel Macs? That "threat" never materialized.

I don't think there's anything particularly far-fetched about what you're saying. The tactic is so common that there are at least two well-known idioms for it: "trial balloon" and "run it up the flagpole (to see who salutes)".

It would make sense to slip potentially controversial things into ADC releases, knowing that if they are controversial then word will leak out to the bloggerati. Then, when controversy erupts, you have plausible deniability ("it was just a bug") and you can slip another developer release out the door as soon as you sense some backlash.

Never attribute to malice, that which can be adequately explained by indifference.

I know the principle, but I don't see any attributions to malice here, so I had no cause to apply it.

Over the last year Netbooks have grown, but at the expense of laptops. Is Apple the sort of company that would cannibalize their laptop sales in favor of a user experience that people don't like?

And to what end? Their netbook-less laptop lineup is growing faster than netbooks are.

"people don't like"

perhaps you refer to the "mac people" as there is at least one of us out here who "likes" the asus netbook he typed this with and uses every day, and LOVES.

Yeah and I loved my n800 too.

But everyone I know that has purchased a netbook and doesn't know an Atom from Adam has been disappointed. (None of them own Macs, btw) I also noted Michael Dell's recent admission that most netbook purchasers are chasing a price point and are disappointed in short order. So I feel it's a fair opinion, not limited to 'mac people'.

I'd be very interested to see proper customer satisfaction surveys though.

My netbook is without a doubt the best computing purchase I've made in the last 5 years. It's absolutely perfect for what it's designed to do, be a low power, super portable, ultra-cheap mini-laptop.

I use it in meetings, on the train, in coach seats on the plane (with room for a mouse on those tiny trays), out in the park. It's so stupid small and lightweight I basically just pack into my backpack even if I don't plan to use it. It's never let me down, and done exactly what I've asked of it. I'm not trying to run Crysis on it, but it surfs webpages fine (even Wave runs pretty okay on it), loads all my Office Apps, plays music, let's me compose music if I want. I can even do some lightweight programming on it. Basically all the stuff I want to do in a pinch but never do because carrying a laptop (even a 13") is just too heavy and cumbersome.

The only thing that would make me stop using it is if they came out with a version with a flip screen I could turn into a 9" tablet pc for maybe $50 more.

Plus it fit's into every hotel safe I've ever tried.

You could add to your (self-answering) question "...would cannibalize their laptop sales..." the phrase: "...and that has perhaps 1/3 the profit margin?"

Apple's decision making looks to me more like (as with the MB Air), "can we develop a high-margin product that will draw NEW (ex-Windows) customers (and maybe some wowee press coverage)?"

The gist of the article (which is the gist of the headline, and the gist of several comments I've read about this on HN) is that Apple doesn't support X and don't whine about it. If you want OSX buy a mac, if you want open development don't buy an iPhone, if you want X, don't buy a product that's not X.

That's true in a tautological way--it's true by definition. But it's not useful. I don't want a mac--I want a netbook that runs OS X. I don't want an iPhone--I want a phone with an iPhone-quality software stack with an open software ecosystem. These are not mutually exclusive--they're not inconsistent. There's no inherent property of OSX that excludes netbooks. There's no inherent property of the iPhone software stack that excludes an open software ecosystem. These are arbitrary choices by Apple--perhaps good for a lot of people--but not what I want.

And so I want these things--netbooks, phones--that don't exist. Well, fine. I'll make them. But then there are people out there who are actively preventing me from making them, and thus having the things I want. Not only is Apple saying "We don't care about X" but they're saying "we hate X and will prevent it from coming into being." It's being needlessly antagonistic.

That's where the whining comes from. People want things that don't exist, they try to make them, and something actively prevents it.

Now you could theoretically go the other way--we have an open software ecosystem and let's construct a great software stack--we have netbooks and let's construct a great OS. But this must be harder to do, because (as an experimental fact) it happens much less often.

Apple is preventing you from making your own netbook or phone?

If OSX tests the hardware to see if it is a Mac and fails on Mac-compatible but non-Apple hardware, then yes: Apple is actively preventing people from building netbooks that run OSX.

It's just not a big problem, IMHO. If you want a Unix netbook, get one and install Linux, *BSD or OpenSolaris and get done with it. All three are much better unixes than OSX

you're not building a netbook, you're buying some other company's netbook and running Apple's OS on it.

You are building a netbook the same way a lot of companies do: you are buying it from someone else.

The main difference is that you are not stamping your brand on top of it.

> And so I want these things--netbooks, phones--that don't exist. Well, fine. I'll make them. But then there are people out there who are actively preventing me from making them, and thus having the things I want. Not only is Apple saying "We don't care about X" but they're saying "we hate X and will prevent it from coming into being." It's being needlessly antagonistic.

Two points here I've been mulling over for the past few days:

1) If Apple did nothing to prevent it (if there was no EULA restriction or DSMOS[1]), running a Hackintosh system would still mostly be about finding supported hardware or getting some unsupported hardware to "mostly work", and there would still be no promises that a point release wouldn't inadvertently hose your system. Honestly, aside from feeling better about breaking the EULA I don't see how it would be that much different.

2) Mostly speaking in regards to the Palm syncing with iTunes, but also in regards to Hackintosh systems, if Apple does nothing then they will be in a position will they will have to support these systems on some level. Taking the Pre as an example, who is the consumer going to blame when a future iTunes update breaks syncing? Who will they call for support?

Consider, if the Pre syncing went on without interference with Apple and worked fairly well it would certainly be included in future devices from Palm, and a similar tactic would likely be employed by other device makers. All it would take would be a change in the iPhone OS or iTunes to piss off millions of consumers. You'd get PC World running "Apple update breaks millions of consumer devices" (or worse yet, something resulting in data loss), with single sentence somewhere at the end about how these features aren't actually supported by Apple anyway. Why would Apple allow this? They are already the target of some absurd outrage as it is.

Not speaking to you specifically, drewcrawford, but it seems like most people don't want Hackintosh systems to be quietly accepted, they want them to be supported and tested.

[1] While I run a few Hackintosh systems, I'm not sure what other intentional barriers are in place other than the DSMOS an the EULA.

This is the reason why Windows PCs are pricier than Macs.

Even if the sentiment of this article has some truth to it; you end up looking silly with typos like that.

I didn't point it out, but I too was wondering if that line was a typo.

I have always argued that Macs (at least from when I heavily compared them to PCs from '02 to '06) were in fact cheaper or comparable when you did a side-by-side comparison including software. And, yes, it was only cheaper if that software was relevant to the purchaser.

Anyway...

my statement was more directed to "apple's goal is to make money, not be your friend" then to apple's are more expensive.

Ah, yes, it should be: "This is the reason Macs are prickier than Windows PCs." (Jokes a fanboi.)

Where did you do your price shopping? I wasn't aware Monster Cable sold PCs as well as overpriced cables.

I used to avoid Windows because I thought Linux was superior "technically".

Now I use OS X and avoid windows because it's fucking awful.

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