Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too)

jfruhlinger writes "Think today's world, where Apple is the innovative underdog, Google is the company that does no evil, and Microsoft sits atop its throne as ruler of an evil empire. Will this state of affairs last forever? You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstart Bill Gates. Don Reisinger muses on the fickleness of consumer loves and hates. 'It's that same [level of] success and its own questionable privacy practices that will lead to Google's PR downfall and propel it into a position of disdain going forward. Trust me, the future of Apple and Google may look bright from an economic standpoint, but these companies will be hated one day too. Sad, but true.'"

One day?

[Pope (17780)]

Even without the internet, people have been hating Apple for decades. Usenet and forums just made it easier for them to spew their opinions about.

Blind devotion to *anything* is questionable.

Re:One day?

[91degrees (207121)]

This is indeed true.

Everyone can find someone to hate them. The important point is that Microsoft are hated by their own customers, and it's probably true that Google and Apple will be too.

Re:One day?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blind devotion to *anything* is questionable.

Amen!

Re:One day?

[je ne sais quoi (987177)]

Blind devotion to *anything* is questionable.

As is blind hatred. Specifically, the level of irrational virtiol targeted against apple on this site in particular is kind of amazing. I don't really understand it, I guess it's a backlash against the advertising campaign that apple runs with the hip guys and girls wearing black turtlenecks? Or does Jobs rub some people the wrong way? I mean, he is a salesman after all and that kind of behavior is annoying.

I myself think that apple could do some things better (being less of a control freak on the gui for one). I buy apple products sometimes because the hardware works with an acceptable rate of failure and their software is usually easier to get running than linux but less irritating to use than windows. These are my opinions, I recognize that not everyone feels the same way. Anyhow, the point is that I'm no apple fanboi even though I buy their products sometimes (e.g., my home PC is a linux box I built from parts) but then I'm not an irrational hater either.

That said, I do tend to hate Microsoft sometimes. Mostly when Ballmer was going on about the "patent infringments" in linux. That pissed me off. Or when I go to an internet site that has some Microsoft only file or plugin on it, although that's getting less and less as the linux codecs catch up.

Re:One day?

[Sancho (17056)]

There are decent enough reasons to hate Apple. The arbitrary lock-in of the OS is a good place to start. The hypocrisy of wanting to strip DRM from the media they sell while keeping DRM on their own OS is another. iPod lock-in is yet another. And if you hold a grudge, the lawsuits they filed in the 80s over their look-and-feel is another (I only mention this because I hold a grudge against Microsoft for all of their anticompetitive practices of the past 20 years.)

Which Apple supports to a great extent!!!

[SuperKendall (25149)]

Apple has been an enemy of openness in general for decades now

You mean openness like:

Webkit (open source, core of Safari)
Darwin (open source, base for )
GCC (used for Apple development tools, significant updates added by Apple for Objective C support)
All sorts of BSD tools
LaunchD framework
Rendezvous
Apache (OS X ships with Apache built in)
PHP, Perl, Ruby, etc (same deal).

Those are all open and strongly supported by Apple. Apple has been one of the most open source friendly companies to come along, of all the ones that also do more proprietary work as well.

I am a huge fan of open source, and also happily use a number of Apple products.

Re:One day?

[electrictroy (912290)]

Hate Apple? I don't remember anyone hating apple, although they did say their prices were too high in the 1980s.

And Bill Gates:

I never had an opinion about him, but I hated the IBM/MS-DOS empire which symbolized a lack of progress in the 80s (and in some respects still do). While I was creating music on my Ataris and Commodores, the MS-DOS machines were still going "beep" with a mere 4 colors. While my Amiga was running a dozen programs at the same time, Microsoft machines were still limited to just a single task.

By rights IBM/Microsoft PCs should have died while the innovators at Atari, Commodore, Amiga rose to the top with their multimedia machines.

But success and innovation aren't always the same thing.

No, we hated Apple from time to time

[postbigbang (761081)]

Crappy, closed-technology machines. The cult of the single-button mouse. Reseller programs from hell. Lovely laser printers that became ultimately useless. Two wire AppleTalk networks with all of the speed of ISDN on a good day. Cute little useless Newtons. Servers that could never rise above simple workgroup needs. Special connections and exceptions needed to network with anything else but perhaps NFS or wicked Novell patches. Wonderful and proprietary (given few others used them) PPC CPUs. I'm sure others can count the way. Others can see the bloom on the rose, and I still have marks from the thorns. Oddly, I still use a PowerBook G4, alongside a heavy-duty (and less expensive) HP core-duo notebook. Only for games, of course....

Re:No, we hated Apple from time to time

[nogginthenog (582552)]

You forgot:
- QuickTime for Windows
- Brushed Steel
On second thoughts, make that any Apple product for Windows

Re:No, we hated Apple from time to time

[MrHanky (141717)]

A bit subjective, but most of Apple's Macs were pretty solid. They last far past their technology (and their tech is goo enough to outlast many PCs.

Sorry, but that's just not true. Maybe it was, back in the days, but not now. A 10 year old Mac is useless today, not because it's too slow to run a browser, word processor and email client, but because you can't run modern software on it. You can't update OS X, and new OS X apps almost always need one of the latest versions of OS X, even when there's no technical reason for it. Example [hogbaysoftware.com]. Why? Because Apple wants it that way. Many of the computers that were locked out from upgrading to Panther were far faster with it than with Jaguar, but Apple want people to buy new computers. 10.5 demands a whopping 867 MHz CPU despite the fact that it's obviously not needed for the OS itself.

Meanwhile, any old PC that can make use of more than 256 MB RAM can be very useful with Windows XP for several years to come (XP can actually be made very lean, if you know how to remove stuff). No, it won't run the latest and greatest games, but neither will a brand new MacBook.

Re:No, we hated Apple from time to time

[Hal_Porter (817932)]

But I've had Apple as a girlfriend for several decades. You're only getting laid right now. Once that lust and sex-haze evaporates, perhaps you'll see what's underneath.

Good God man, I think that's the most depressing thing I've ever read on the Internet. It's actually sad on multiple levels.

Re:One day?

[MobileTatsu-NJG (946591)]

"Hate Apple? I don't remember anyone hating apple, although they did say their prices were too high in the 1980s."

In the early 90's I hated Apple. The reason why? I had an onboxious Apple-zealot friend. I didn't know much about the machines, but I remember in our programming class I heard him say "too bad, I could do that easily with my Mac"... oh about 1.3 million times over the course of two years. Frankly, I was a know-it-all asshole back then. So yeah, that put me off. The rest of the peeps in the class had PCs, so we all agreed he was just being a zealot and cemented our positions as PC dudes. It didn't matter much, anyway. The Mac was out of reach of any of our price ranges, plus the game selection was a joke (and we cared about that more than anything), so it's not like our doubts about the platform were ever challenged.

Fast foward to the late 90's. Intel was proud of their Pentium 2 chips and Apple was proud of their... erm.. pardon my lack of terminology here, but I think they were using PowerPC chips from IBM. Apple was running ads saying that Photoshop was up to twice as fast on their chips as it was on Intel/P2 chips. I remember reading that that had been de-bunked from a practicality point of view. Something like "yeah, if you did level 80 gaussian blurs throughout most of the day, you'd get your money's worth out of using a Mac instead." The benefits of that processor were enhancements in certain ways it did the math, but were not an overall improvement on the design. Cute. I didn't really hate Apple for this, though. No, what caused this was some guy coming into a chatroom proclaiming "Don't believe what you read in biased sources like PC World, go get the TRUTH at Macfanatic.com!" I cannot believe the irony of that statement was completely lost on that guy! Not long after that, I started seeing posts like that rumbling around the world-wide-web. (This was back in the good 'ol days, when it was called the world wide web.) I remember thinking "yeesh, are these Apple fans under Dogbert's control or something?"

Anyway, yes, I hated Apple. No, I really didn't have a good reason for it... really I hated Apple fanatics, but I didn't draw the distinction back then. For the record, no, I don't hate Apple now. I'm actually about to drop 3k on a Macbook Pro. (I still can't get over Apple's decision to go Intel. Woo!) I cannot scientifically prove this, but I can totally see how there were lots of Apple 'haters' back then. The noise ratio from the fanatics was just too high for that not to happen.

Re:One day?

[e2d2 (115622)]

No, it's true. I hate Apple. And to be fair most of the troll posts came from me. I single-handedly posted over 4.7 million anti-Apple messages over the past years to newsgroups, forums, email chain letters, viagra spams, and various others. It's all part of my, Operation: Black Turtle Neck? Strangle!

Re:One day?

[Sancho (17056)]

The people buying the stuff probably aren't the same people complaining about the prices.

Look, once you've figured out the price-point that maximizes your profits, you sell at it. Businesses aren't charities. They could be making profits of 1000% and it would be reasonable to sell at that price if it was the maximum on the curve.

Figuring out that point, though--that's the tricky part.

Re:One day?

[asilentthing (786630)]

An iPhone sells for twice the cost to make it, that's highway robbery (and really points out who the sucker in the room is).

Almost EVERYTHING you buy from electronics to food to clothing is marked up at least 200%. That's the nature of retail. It's not exclusive to Apple products and never has been.

Re:Speaking of Google

[ehrichweiss (706417)]

Have you ever stopped to consider that IE might be a part of your problem as well?

Re:Speaking of Google

[Moryath (553296)]

Repeatedly.

Unfortunately, there are (and don't say there aren't) certain apps we use that Firefox and Opera just don't like to behave with.

Plus, if you take Google Crapbar and any other "helper" toolbars out of the equation, IE7 runs just fine. It's the crapbars causing the crash, every time - and half the time Google Crapbar turns out to have gotten into the system in some little "tag-along" arrangement, usually through an "automatic update" of Java or Acrobat Reader where you have to go into the "advanced" install mode to DENY the Google Crapbar permission to install.

Re:Speaking of Google

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

Completely offtopic, but when on Windows, I use the IETab Firefox extension. I'd rather use Firefox for absolutely everything that I can, and just have a few open tabs with the IE engine, rather than a completely separate browser. Configured right, and users won't really notice.

Also, complain loudly to whoever's responsible for those apps. It seems likely they won't care, but it seems equally likely that they're just waiting for enough people to complain, so they can make the case to their bosses.

Re:Speaking of Google

[PReDiToR (687141)]

I thought everyone on Slashdot went for the "custom" or "advanced" installation routine as a matter of course?

We learned a long time ago that 9 times out of 10 you can avoid the sub-radar injection of spyware that way and this was a contributory factor in our machines working whilst others fell over all the time.

Is this really surprising?

[Shados (741919)]

I mean, Google is easier to see, since it already has a majority marketshare in its main market, but is anyone dreaming enough to think that once (if) Apple gets a large marketshare, it will just be the next Microsoft?

I mean, looking at all their marketing tactics and dirty moves... its fine now, because its mostly aimed at Microsoft, and its with a small market...but if Apple was to NOT change tactics once it reaches 30%+ marketshare? OUCH! Bundling, false advertising, FUD, price jacking, bullying their partners around, etc? That would be fairly bad.

Now to hope that the only reason they do that now is because they have no choice (have to sink to the competition's level), but I somehow have my doubts.

Re:Is this really surprising?

[samkass (174571)]

One key difference is that Apple and Google's products have always been best-of-breed, while Microsoft has always been the lowest-common-denominator. When you say "quality", Microsoft isn't the company that jumps to mind. (Perhaps "cheap", but now Linux is eating them from below on that, so I'm not exactly sure what Microsoft's "core" is anymore.)

Thus the entire premise of the article is a bit of a straw-man: Apple's corporate goals don't appear to include even TRYING to gain a majority of the market share. Their phone only competes in the "smart" market which is 1% of the total market; their computers have no low-end offerings whatsoever; the iPods, despite having some of the best margins in the industry, are consistently undercut on price-per-feature.

Yeah, but they're just companies

[Reality Master 201 (578873)]

They're not religions, political parties, families, etc. They're businesses.

They don't need an adoring cult around them. They need to provide what the market demands. If people want to impute a personality or culture to a company, that's fine as far as that goes. But it's still pretty much bullshit.

Re:Yeah, but they're just companies

[JustinOpinion (1246824)]

Just to speculate a bit here... It seems to me that people naturally, inherently try to ascribe 'personality' and 'morality' to entities like corporations. I guess it's an extension of the natural human desire to assess people's character, and use this assessment to determine trust relationships. In a normal human-to-human interaction, you can determine a person's character (whether they will treat you well or not) and use this to decide whether to trust them. It works because other people tend to be relatively consistent and constant over time.

The problem is that people then unconsciously port this methodology into the domain of assessing a corporation. In this case it doesn't work: you can have a positive experience with one part of the company, but that actually says little about how other parts of the company will treat you (e.g. a nice salesman versus a rude phone support person a week later). This confusion is very much intentional on the part of the company: the marketing departments are very good at creating the image of friendlieness, or trustworthyness, or hipness, or whatever... but this bears no correlation to the actual engineering or sales departments.

It's been said before that if corporations are persons then they are surely insane persons. Indeed. The problem is that corporations 'behave' in inconsistent ways. It's like they have mental disorders (bipolar? multiple personalities?), and hence violate the normal rules we would like to use for consistency and trust.

All of that to say that we should be very careful about assigning personality to corporations. A statistical analysis of a company is meaningful (e.g. "I use this company because 80% of customers who call the support line get a satisfactory solution within 5 minutes"), but we should not fall into the (natural) trap of treating the company as a single personality (e.g. "I use this company because it's always been nice to me").

And perhaps Microsoft will be loved again

[the_humeister (922869)]

Just look at IBM. People seem to love them now. Of course, then there're the likes of, say, Standard Oil/ExxonMobil/Chevron who have always been hated...

Pretty simple, really

[Moraelin (679338)]

It's pretty simple, really. As I keep reminding people:

- when companies are at the top of their niche, and have their nice walled garden and penned sheep to shear at will, they want to keep their garden walled and their sheep penned. Then they want proprietary protocols, incompatible tweaks to the "standard", and they want those sheep scared shitless of even thinking about the world outside their pen. They want you to think "oh shit, if we switch from IBM mainframes to cheap Unix workstations, we'll have to retrain everyone, rewrite our software, rip out and change the whole infrastructure, etc. Naah, let's buy another workstation, it's cheaper." In fact, they don't even want you doing that kind of maths, they want you scared of what might pop up later that you haven't foreseen, and unsure if you even know the right sum it will cost you, and whether you'll get ass raped without lubricant by your clients _and_ accounting department if you changed anything.

The term FUD, now almost synonimous with MS tactics, was coined about IBM tactics. That's not even the tip of the iceberg of FUD there, but the very phrase "nobody got fired for buying IBM" carried the thinly veiled threat that you _might_ lose your job if you go with something else.

- when they're at the bottom and scraping a living off the niches outside the pens, then they want access to those rich guys gardens and sheeps. Then they start screaming that such fences and walls are an abhomination and evil. Then they want open protocols, and ISO standards, and generally everything that will make it easy for them to get to those penned sheep.

And a company's attitude can change at the drop of a hat, if their position on the food chain changes enough. IBM was the big bad monopolist, as long as it was the king of the hill. IBM became the champion of open source and open standards when it got enough of their lunch money stolen by the likes of MS.

And occasionally you even get to see the schizophrenic fits of a company that just slowly slides somewhere around the middle point. So they're starting to covet the neighbour's penned sheep, but aren't quite ready to free their own penned sheep too. Sun was for a couple of years at that point, but now it seems to have mostly resigned to being in the latter camp.

So what I'm saying is that, yes, things can change with MS too. If one day it finds itself at the bottom of the food chain, then MS _will_ become the champion of open standards. And then a bunch of nerds will love them.

wrong assumption

[Tom (822)]

Err, no?

Quite a lot of people never liked Bill Gates. Not his person, not his business ethics and not the software he created. There's enough stuff on the Internet about his early disagreements with Free Software advocates, for example.

And far from the article, like it or not, Microsoft and especially Gates are still hailed as the best and greatest in a lot of trade magazines and computer magazines for the non-techies. Despite the crashes and bugs and problems, a lot of "regular" people believe that they invented "the cumputa".

AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS

[0100010001010011 (652467)]

By William Henry Gates III

To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.

Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?

Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.

What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.

I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

Bill Gates

General Partner, Micro-Soft

Re:AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS

[stuporglue (1167677)]

I dislike Windows and most other Microsoft software, but I actually agree with most of this letter. Taking other people's programs when you don't have permission isn't right, and if someone wants to make their code closed source, that's their choice too.

The two things Bill was wrong about were a) that no one would distribute software for free and b) that he would be able to deluge the hobby market with good software.

I don't get it.

[Armakuni (1091299)]

"Trust me, the future of Apple and Google may look bright from an economic standpoint, but these companies will be hated one day too. Sad, but true."

Why is this sad? Surely being suspicious of powerful entities is one of the better human qualities.

We'll See

[sobachatina (635055)]

"but these companies will be hated one day too."

*sigh*
I have this conversation regularly at work. Whenever I express my distrust of Microsoft inevitably someone will start babbling about how I will hate some other random company in ten years. I can't help but think that these are all just Microsoft apologists.

It isn't the age or size of a company that makes me hate them personally- it's their behavior.

So far Google has never done anything as a company that I think is evil (yes even the China filtering) and all their products have been delightful to use. Given their past history I see no reason to assume that they will suddenly and magically become irresponsible. I also don't see my loyalty to them to be a function of any PR department. As soon as they modify the IMAP spec to make it so only their own email client can connect, or sell my personal information, then I will hate them.

The difference is that I can't imagine Google doing that. I would practically expect it of some companies like MS or Sony who have a long history of such behavior.

Incidentally- I have no opinion about Apple as a corporation.

I'm starting to fear Google already

[91degrees (207121)]

Their "don't be evil" policy is admirable, but "evil" is subjective. Google really don't seem to be quite in step with most geeks I know when it comes to data protection and privacy.

No.

[stinky wizzleteats (552063)]

You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates.

That is because there were no such days. From the very beginning, having stolen CP/M and computer time at a university to get their business running, Microsoft has always been regarded as a band of criminals largely devoid of real know-how. The fact that Google and Apple are not targets of widespread hatred in the tech community is evidence that there is more to the anti-Microsoft sentiment than simply rooting for the underdog.

Microsoft hasn't mattered in 10 years. Google is on top of the tech game now and everyone knows it. Apple is expensive and pretentious, but remains, for the most part, respected. The best Microsoft can hope for with regard to public sentiment is to transition from outright, boiling hatred to pity. If anti-Microsoft sentiment were the fickle leftist hatred of success that it is cast to be, then why would we also hate SCO, which is anything but successful?

The hatred of Microsoft is well earned, and its reasons go back to the very beginning of the company. If the SCO experience is any indication, it will long outlast the company's success.

All about competition

[BeanThere (28381)]

Utter nonsense. Apart from the obvious massive differences in approach to quality between MS and Apple, it's actually primarily about competition; companies generally stay in line when there are true competitive pressures. If the industry manages to become competitive (we're not there yet but it's certainly improved over five years ago) then there'll be fewer reasons to 'hate' any particular company, market forces will help make sure they behave. The current trend towards improved support for Web standards is just one example. If we end up with say 15% Linux, 30% Apple, 30% MS, 10% Androi, 15% 'other', that would be a good balance - things like interoparability will be literally forced by the market, and they'll also be forced to actually improve and debloat their respective products.

We don't hate MS "because they're big", that's what marketers want you to think. We hate them because of their unethical abuse of their dominant market position to push inferior products which we've had to suffer with for years.

The day they change their attitude and start producing quality standards-based products, is the day we start liking them, no matter their size - it's really as simple as that.

Maybe hate is the problem then?

[Kohath (38547)]

How about if you guys just give up on the groupthink instead?

The socially-reinforced need to pick out people or organizations to hate seems like something you might want to grow out of at some point.

If Apple or Google actually send assassins to kill your wife and children, go ahead and hate them. If some opinionated Internet comment-posters and the folks you chit-chat with at the office decide to hate Apple and Google, why not just encourage them to worry about reality, live their own lives, and stop the schoolgirl clique nonsense?

Don't you have anything better to do? Can't you find something before the "hate-Google" and "hate-Apple" memes get started? You have time. Now is your chance.

Never forgive! The day MS ate BUNGIE!!!!

[starglider29a (719559)]

I remember the day I saw the first Halo trailer... with Steve Jobs introducing it... WOW! If that had gone to Mac first, as planned, we'd all be playing the iBox and the XBox would have been collecting dust next to the used Jaguars. Oh, and Vista never would have happened.

But to his credit, Bill saw that coming... and squashed it.

Re:Not quite the same

[Shados (741919)]

Apple and Google's current offerings being made from the ground up? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Re:Not quite the same

[linumax (910946)]

Apple and Google wrote their own software from the ground up. Bill Gates bought DOS from another programmer

The only thing they use that isn't theirs is *occasionally* zope/plone and whatever web server du jour.

Umm... Google Maps?! Youtube? Picasa? Google Earth?

and in Apple's case, Darwin that you conceded, Filemaker? iTunes (not the store) ?

others are pointing out more.
Are you RDF positive?

Re:Not quite the same

[Gilmoure (18428)]

Apple did not steal any code for Lisa/Mac OS. Apple purchased the right (with a large amount of stock) to look over Xerox Parc's work, hire some of their developers and then reverse engineer the GUI they saw there. One thing they got wrong is that when they saw Xerox's GUI, they thought they saw windows tiled over each other. Apple then had it's engineers go and figure out how this was done when Xerox actually didn't have that happening. Apple also came up with the idea of icons representing verbs or actions as opposed to just representing objects or data files. So yeah, they did build on what went before but they paid for the privilege. And the way Apple stock went up back in the 80's, Xerox did pretty well.

As for MS innovation, MS required Apple to give them their source code for Mac OS so that they could code up the first version of Excel. It wasn't until Windows 1 came out and Apple engineers poked around in it that they found Apple code used in Windows. That was finally settled with the $150M stock transfer back in the late 90's.

Re:Not quite the same

[Detritus (11846)]

Woz wrote Apple BASIC, also known as Integer BASIC. Applesoft BASIC was a later product.

Re:Not quite the same

[MightyYar (622222)]

I think most of my like for plucky upstart MS was because of how such a little company could manipulate a much larger company (IBM). The story of Bill Gates selling them an OS that he did not yet have is classic. He was reckless and successful and dishonest at the same time, and it was kind of bad-ass and cool. They kept on screwing Big Blue right up through their inheritance of the OS2 code for Windows NT, and it was a little bit beautiful in a sick sort of way.

The thing is, though, they didn't really do anything terribly innovative. DOS is just a close kissing cousin of CP/M, and if Bill had failed IBM would have paid someone else for their copy of CP/M, or just bought the real thing. Microsoft was really just a broker. Even their much-heralded office suite was nothing special until all of the competition was beaten away and no one could afford to make a competitive product. In the end, it was easy to dislike them.

Contrast this with my like for Google and Apple, where I actually like the products that they make. As long as they keep making great products, I'll probably keep liking those companies - it has very little to do with their corporate policies (unless the policies become "screw the customer").

Re:Not quite the same

[electrictroy (912290)]

I find it difficult to believe Gates stole Microsoft BASIC from his local user group.

HE was the one who wrote the famous CUG letter about not stealing software. For him to lecture his fellow club members about not stealing, and then do it himself, would be hypocritical.

Oh wait.

Re:Not quite the same

[theAtomicFireball (532233)]

I think that they have used Intel's CPUs for a very long time. The Apple ][ series was all Intel, for instance. The Mac was Motorola, then IBM, and now Intel - but it has changed architectures completely twice.

Huh? Apple has used Intel's CPUs for a long time? Where did you get that from?

The original Apple ][s were based on MOS Technology's 6502 processor, although MOS later licensed the technology to other manufacturers, Intel was never one of them, since they were doing quite well with their 8080 and then later the 80286 and successors in the x86 line. The Apple //c was based on the 65c02, a CMOS implementation of the 6502 standard created by Western Design Center, and the Apple //GS was based on the 65816, also by Western Design Center. The 65816 was basically a backwards compatible 6502 chip with the ability to work in either 8 or 16 bit modes rather than just 8 bit. While it's possible that there were some Intel components in some of these machines (I think I remember hearing that one of the floppy drive controllers used an Intel chip), but none of the Apple // line EVER used intel CPUs.

The original Macintosh was based on the 68000 chip from Motorola, and Macs continued to be based on that chips successors, the 68020, 68030, and 68040 for several years. Then they switched to the PowerPC family which were designed by IBM and Motorola together. I believe that most of the chips were branded IBM inside the case, but I believe the chips, at least at first, were being supplied by Motorola.

The switch to Intel didn't happen until 2006, although NextSTEP, the OS that OS X was based on, ran on multiple architectures including Intel, and Apple kept making sure that OS X could be used on Intel chips in secret to give them more bargaining power.

I highly doubt we would have seen the bunny suit ads if Apple had been using Intel chips for anything mission-critical.

Re:Why we love them.

[scubamage (727538)]

A few hundred thousand BSOD's dissagree with your idea about microsoft giving excellent software, especially in the 90's. Though I won't deny that I still fire up visual studio 6 just because it kicks major ass. Some of their software was amazing, but for the most part it was absolute shite compared to the *NIX offerings that were out there stability and security wise. Microsoft just had better marketing, and before linux and BSD really became more well known outside the dedicated CS scene, it had the price tag.

Re:See it everywhere

[cluckshot (658931)]

The big reason that big success companies become hated is that they try to change the way they gained their success and horde everything for themselves. If Google, or others try to do this they too will get the boot from esteem. Most people do not mind a company trying to profit. I don't.

Examples include Walmart. That outfit started out as a country store which got smart in finance but remembered to serve its customers well and and always made sure to involve the local industry in the marketing plan. Then the kids and finance guys took over from Sam Walton and to say the least, instantly the buy local and support your community stuff went the way of the dinosaurs. Bill Gates at the famous evil empire used to brag about making many other people into millionaires. He made a fortune in the USA and hiring Americans to do it. Then he got rich and decided that he should keep all the money to himself. Being as rich as 4 or 5 US States wasn't enough for him. He just had to move on to China, India and the like, forgetting the guys who made him rich. Then he decided to rent his software for developers in the USA for about $2000 a year. At the same time he practically gave it away in India and China. Well it is no wonder the programmers who were living well with him suddenly became the enemies of the empire.

I know a company McKee Baking in Collegedale Tn. This company has made its original owners and heirs quite wealthy. Nobody is anything but proud of them for their pretty successful baking empire. The reason is that they pay well, and have not tried to dump the people who made their fortune possible. If they ever do I assure you their goodwill will go with it. This is pretty simple stuff people. All you have to do if you get big is not to stomp on people and just go on earning your living. It makes friends and deters enemies.

In the case of Microsoft Corporation, they undertook about 10 years ago to begin to completely destroy the careers of American Programmers. They are hated for it now. Their product lines are not growing and are shuddering with competition because they have just about destroyed any rational reason to partner with them. Google on the other hand is for the time being a friendly helpful and cooperative giant. As long as it stays so it will be so. Once burned the good will of such a company is probably not recoverable. Microsoft will be big for some time but it is in decline and it is it's own fault. If I as a programmer could come and pitch a good new idea and get it moved on to production with their cooperation and partnership, they could be winning but they are refusing to do that. Everybody who tries this game with them loses.

Re:First Trout!

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

He was spot-on in what would make him obscene rich, not what's right..

Re:First Trout!

[Pojut (1027544)]

And? What's your point?

It's not like Bill Gates is the only shifty business guy out there. He was just the most successful one, and as such he is the one that people cry about the most.

I don't agree with his practices or ethics, but from a business standpoint, the man is a genius and one of the most successful in the world. There is no denying that he has accomplished the near impossible. Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant: business is business, and in this case, Bill Gates smashed one out of the park.

The fact that he earns more money while trimming his nose hair than most of us will ever see in our entire lives is proof enough of that. Recognizing someone's business success while acknowledging their shortcomings as a person doesn't make you a pussy, you know...it's ok to admire someone while hating them.

Re:New definition of genius...

[tbannist (230135)]

Not exactly. Microsoft became a monopoly through a series of illegal activities. Sure, they didn't hold a gun to anyone head to force them to use Windows, but they did slander and sabotage the competition. They did use their early monopoly power (when they were the only OS for IBM PCs) to sign exclusionary deals with computer vendors to ensure that no other OS could compete. They have practiced discriminatory pricing against any retailer who dared to carry non-MS OSes with the clear intent of driving them out of business for defying Microsoft. They conquered the office suite marketplace by burning it to the ground, and using their OS monopoly rents to outlast their competition. They have a various times deliberately modified their operating system to prevent competitors products from functioning properly in Windows.

In every market that Microsoft has won, they won by being the only choice left.

Re:First Trout!

[Gerzel (240421)]

Win or die?

I call upon the excrement of the male bovine!

Many businessmen and women have lost business opportunities and not lost their business. If your business goes bankrupt you are not strapped into the electric chair.

Business is NOT win or die, it isn't even win or lose. Yes there is some competition in business, quite a bit of it actually, but being second best in business does NOT mean that you are going to go under or lose your shirt.

Ethics matters in terms of gaining and keeping a reputation with customers and employees.

It isn't a race, it isn't a game, there is no one winner and the end is the same for everyone.

Re:Power Leads to Corruption

[rkcallaghan (858110)]

eldavojohn wrote:

[President Bush's] religion encourages him to love his neighbor and to treat him as he would want to be treated. Yet a fence between his country and Mexico says otherwise.

Um, I'm no Bush supporter (and it's sad that I have to run a disclaimer for even being fair to the man), but in the interest of fairness, are you saying you want to be able to just walk in no questions asked and stay as long as you want in any nation?

Sorry but no, I expect and want to be permitted to enter through legally established means, so that I may be an upstanding guest of the place I am visiting.

My difficulty in affording Apple products make me think they are discriminating against the poor.

What? Discriminating against the poor? Has discrimination become this catch-all now? Everyone hates discrimination, therefore, anything I don't like, down to the price someone asks for their wares is discrimination? You think someone at Apple is going "You know, we could produce these things for virtually free and give them away, but forget all that profit and paying our employees shit, what we really have to avoid is all those poor schmoes sullying our good name by using our product with a low disposable income!"

Discrimination is when you use an irrelevant attribute to make decisions. The ability to afford the product at a profitable price(*) is hardly irrelevant, and distracts from real discrimination -- and Apple is one the top 10 companies to work for if you're a minority. I'm not a fanboi, I'm just homosexual and love my wife just the same, and wish her capacity for pregnancy did not prevent her from receiving health care (I don't work for Apple, sadly).

~Rebecca

(*) Someone will invariably make a comment of gasoline or food or some such. Please understand that we're talking about Apple computer, which to my knowledge does not produce or sell anything in the "necessary for sustainable life" category. If iPods become as important as the automobile, groceries, or healthcare, we'll reconsider.

Re:Innovation

[Culture20 (968837)]

The one-button mouse.