The Apple Paradox, Closed Culture & Free-Thinking Fans 945
waderoush writes "The secrecy surrounding the expected Apple tablet computer is only the latest example of the company's famously closed and controlling culture. Yet millions of designers, musicians, and other creative professionals love their Apple products, and the Apple brand is almost synonymous with free-thinking creativity. How can a company whose philosophy of information sharing is so at odds with that of most of its customers be so successful? This Xconomy essay explores three possible explanations. 1) Closed innovation, overseen by a guiding genius like Steve Jobs, may be the only way to build such coherent, compelling products. 2) Apple's hardware turns out to be more 'open' than the company intended — Jobs originally wanted to keep third-party apps off the iPhone, for example. 3) Related to #1: customers are pragmatic about quality, and the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone."
I'm off-duty (Score:2, Funny)
This time one of you other guys is going to have to make the "Apple=Gay" jokes.
Free-thinking? (Score:5, Funny)
This is probably the first time in history a cult has been described as "free-thinking"......
Help! (Score:0, Funny)
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:5, Funny)
I don't want to start a conspiracy theory or anything, but I have a cousin who only turned bender AFTER he bought an iphone and mac book.
Coincidence or causation? Has anyone checked the iphone source code for back-doors?
Re:I guess Apple did all that themselves... (Score:4, Funny)
You have to wonder which KoolAid fountain they were drinking from when they wrote that line....
The core components of Mac OSX & the iPhone OS are taken from open source.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:3, Funny)
...waitaminute - what about the gay folks who work for Microsoft [microsoft.com]? I'm sure they're not Mac users.
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:5, Funny)
Elitist really? You are simply jealous and I'll bet that you can't even comprehend the refinement and engineering that goes into Apple's devices, but then again, it is so hard for those so far away from the apex of technology to understand such things.
Re:FOSS (Score:4, Funny)
If *only* there were a freely available OS to us on phones that wasn't from Apple - hmmm
Most of Apple's iPhone and desktop OS is FOSS anyway: the Mach kernel, BSD libraries, the gcc compiler and runtime, and tons more.
True, but the GUI layer isn't, and that's what is most important from a typical user's perspective. Apple will defend that "intellectual property" to the death.
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:4, Funny)
Mac users are bought
Where do I get one? Is there a code word I have to use at the Apple store? When I get it home, will it, like, you know, do "stuff" to me?
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:5, Funny)
Mac users are bought
They sell Mac users in Spain?
Re:Fourth option... (Score:1, Funny)
Brian: 'You're all different! You're all individuals!'
Crowd [Unison]: "YES! WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT!" :("
Lone Voice: "I'm not
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent observation! Like the Puerto Ricans, Apple users are a vibrant and creative culture just trying to make it in the bad New York streets with all those Windows thugs snapping their fingers in some weird choreographed dance fight.
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:2, Funny)
About $500 more then a PC user
Re:Free-thinking? (Score:5, Funny)
"Think Different" was an order, not a suggestion.
Re:The CORRECT PREMISE: (Score:5, Funny)
I see your capslock key is acting up though. You might want to have Apple take a look at that for you.
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:1, Funny)
I own a mac that has been used in public all of once, in an airport.
I would assume you were in the airport Starbucks, then?
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Free-thinking? (Score:5, Funny)
So at the office where I work, we used to have these meetings with my whole department (mostly a bunch of programmers and such). I noticed that pretty much everyone in the meeting except me had a mac laptop (I have a dell running Fedora). Anyway, one day I grabbed a sticky note and drew an apple logo on it with a marker, and underneath it wrote "Think different.", then put the sticky note over the Dell logo on my laptop. Anyway, about half way through the meeting, someone finally noticed, and asked me why I had the apple logo stickied to my laptop, and I replied:
"Because I wanted to think different, like everyone else."
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:5, Funny)
You know the GP referred to "some Mac users?" He was talking about you, douchebag.
Re:Free-thinking? (Score:3, Funny)
Now that everyone is thinking different, I am the only one thinking the same.