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Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too) 734

Posted by Zonk from the if-that-day-hasn't-arrived-already dept.
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.'"
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Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too) More

Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too)

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  • One day? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pope ( 17780 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:25AM (#22856100)
    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? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:44AM (#22856372) Journal
      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? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:53AM (#22856478)
      Blind devotion to *anything* is questionable.

      Amen!

    • Re:One day? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by je ne sais quoi ( 987177 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:21AM (#22856850)

      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? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sancho ( 17056 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:32AM (#22856986) Homepage
        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.)

      • well, this is a free-software/etc. site (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Trepidity ( 597 ) <delirium-slashdot@@@hackish...org> on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @01:05PM (#22859564)
        Apple has been an enemy of openness in general for decades now, so it's not that surprising they'd be opposed here. Back when Wozniak had say in how things were run it wasn't quite the same, but since the mid-80s at the latest they've been an all-proprietary shop, with aggressive efforts to prevent third-party anything from even interoperating with their products. Back when the IBM PC was de facto open, the Mac was the proprietary, locked-in platform, and not that much has changed since then.

        • Which Apple supports to a great extent!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @05:13PM (#22862956)
          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:Which Apple supports to a great extent!!! (Score:3, Informative)

            by mjwx ( 966435 ) on Wednesday March 26, 2008 @12:46AM (#22866240)

            Darwin (open source, base for )
            Apple Killed it,

            GCC (used for Apple development tools, significant updates added by Apple for Objective C support)
            Apache (OS X ships with Apache built in)
            PHP, Perl, Ruby
            All Open licensed before Apple got their hands on it. Apple doesnt have a choice but to support them (if open in name only) if they want to continue using them.

            All sorts of BSD tools
            Name one?

            The other three you mentioned, I've never used, two of them I've never heard of. I've only heard about Rendezvous because it had a cross platform vulnerability.

            Apple has taken far more from FOSS than it puts back and it only puts back because if they didn't we would stop them from taking.

    • Re:One day? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @12:15PM (#22858676)
      Apple is not a loveable company. They're closed and proprietary. At times you had to pay money to develop for them. At times they've been very slow to respond to new technologies they did not invent (prior to OS X, their OS was a dinosaur only the dedicated could love). If we drop Microsoft and flock to Apple, we have stopped worshipping one devil just for another. Google's current direction is really a better answer. Will we hate Google one day? Certainly, when they become obsolete and more trouble than they're worth. But for right now they're fixing broken telecom problems, they're providing OS/Hardware agnostic applications and providing very useful services for free...and are profitable to boot. All of which are so vastly more important to the industry and our economy that we're willing to overlook them spying on our email and hard drives to shove ads down our throat. Gradually, the industry will get a clue and compete with Google and they'll have to start pinching pennys and shove just a few more ads down our throat than we really want just to show enough profit to keep investors happy...but for now, they're an answer to our problems while Apple is just an alternative problem.

  • Is this really surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shados ( 741919 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:25AM (#22856112)
    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? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by samkass ( 174571 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:38AM (#22856280) Homepage Journal
      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.

      • Re:Is this really surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @01:37PM (#22860028)
        Apple has not always been "best of breed." Mac OS 1-9 were cooperative multitasking systems, which was out of date when Mac OS 1 was released. AmigaOS and BeOS were far superior, technologically speaking, to what Apple was offering at the same time. OS/2 remains one of the most robust systems ever developed, and guess what? It predates Mac OS X by a decade. From a security standpoint, Mac OS X falls short of BSD, which it is based on, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in terms of unpatched vulnerabilities, at least according to Secunia.

        Google's web apps are still unreliable, insecure, and utterly useless for people who need to use their computers in places where there is limited or no Internet access. Google's IM software frequently disconnects, and worse, fails to send messages without even disconnecting. Last I checked, GMail's web interface had no support for cryptographically signed emails, with either S/MIME or OpenPGP (firegpg is not feature complete).

        So where is this best-of-breed software you are talking about? I think what you meant to say was, "It is better than Microsoft," in which case I will say, "So is Fedora 8."

  • 800 MHz G3 iBook (Score:2)

    by oahazmatt ( 868057 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:26AM (#22856118) Journal
    I owned the white, 12-inch 800 MHz G3 iBook. I hate them now.

    Honestly, Apple! Soddering the GPU with a ball grid array upside-down? Yeah, thanks for that!

  • Love Bill Gates? (Score:2, Funny)

    by smitty97 ( 995791 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:26AM (#22856120)
    Nah, I didn't like him in the 80's either. DOS was crap. Flight Simulator was a pain to copy.

  • Yeah, but they're just companies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Reality Master 201 ( 578873 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:26AM (#22856122) Journal
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JustinOpinion ( 1246824 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:27AM (#22856920)
      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").

      • Re:Yeah, but they're just companies (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ardent99 ( 1087547 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @12:06PM (#22858520)
        Corporations, as all organizations, do have personalities. Corporations are comprised of people, and are run by people. Without people, a corporation is a set of books on a shelf. The people who run a corporation give it it's personality because they decide how it acts, and it will act according to those people's preferences.

        They act inconsistently because they are a group, and no group of people is completely consistent. And individual people also act inconsistently! But that doesn't mean they don't have personality; that is part of what defines their personality.

  • And perhaps Microsoft will be loved again (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the_humeister ( 922869 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:27AM (#22856130)
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:48AM (#22856418) Journal
      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.

  • Why we love them. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kabz ( 770151 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:27AM (#22856136) Homepage Journal
    People love companies that give them what they want. Simple as that.

    Back in the 90's, MS gave us great development tools, opportunity, a series of great Office suites and other excellent software.

    Sadly however, software seemed to stagnate somewhat, and Microsoft have become increasingly dependent on their core set of products / cash cows, of Office and Windows.

    In contrast, Apple in the 90's had a cruddy product line, stagnating software, and people were migrating away from Mac OS in droves, so the shiny new Windows 95.

    However, now, the boot is on the other foot,as Apple is giving people what they want in both software and hardware terms. iPods, great Macs (thanks to Intel, and great industrial design), and great software.

    • Re:Why we love them. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by scubamage ( 727538 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:41AM (#22856316)
      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.

    • Skully (Score:3, Insightful)

      by number6x ( 626555 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:03AM (#22856614)

      Many Apple fans hated Apple under Skully's leadership.

      He killed their most profitable platform the (Apple II) and almost destroyed their second most profitable platform (the Mac) with crap like the Performa boxes.

      Those Performas made Packard Bell PC's look good!

      Hate Apple? Been there, done that.

  • wrong assumption (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:27AM (#22856148) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:00AM (#22856578)
      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 (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Culture20 ( 968837 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:19AM (#22856826)

        AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS By William Henry Gates III ... but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.

        Wow. I've never read that. This explains why he thinks linux (the currently prominent hobbyist OS) is rife with copyrighted code. "It *must* be, hobbyists are thieves!"

      • Re:AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by stuporglue ( 1167677 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:50AM (#22857240) Homepage

        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.

  • Manufacturing Consent (Score:2, Funny)

    by stoicio ( 710327 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:28AM (#22856158) Journal
    It's always interesting when a piece like this comes out.

    "Sure you hate Microsoft now. You didn't used to.
    Why don't you crazy kids patch things up and get back together?"

    Like they think I'm going to rush out and buy Vista
    for nostalgic love reasons.

  • When was Bill Gates loved? (Score:2)

    by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:29AM (#22856170)
    I've been around long enough to remember him saying 'We believe OS/2 will be the platform for the '90s" Yet I don't ever remember people liking him or MS the way they like Apple and Google.

  • I already hate apple (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:30AM (#22856180)
    The only reason they're not in the same boat as Microsoft is because they're "cool". Their software is bloated and forces you to install items you don't want (Quicktime and iTunes) and now their hardware is really no different than a PC. I'll admit their iPod is a great piece of work however.

  • I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Armakuni ( 1091299 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:33AM (#22856220) Homepage
    "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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sobachatina ( 635055 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:33AM (#22856226)
    "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.

    • Re:We'll See (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @12:03PM (#22858484) Homepage

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

      I agree. Personally, I don't think it's good for any single operating system to be as dominant as Windows has been, but that's not the reason I dislike Microsoft. If they were this dominant simply by being the best, I wouldn't consider it their fault. It's a question of what they've done with that dominance-- stifled innovation, harassed their own customers with "activation" crap, locked their customers into Microsoft solutions with formats and protocols, trying to exert undue influence on standards bodies and governments, etc.

      Now, whether Google and Apple would resort to equally evil behavior given that sort of market dominance is a question. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I'm an Apple fan, but maybe in 10 years they will have a 90% market share and pulling crap just as bad as what Microsoft pulls today. In that case, no, I won't like them anymore.

      But that's not the same thing, I don't think, that the article implies. It's not an issue of customer fickleness, their judgement flipping around against powerful companies for absolutely no reason. The general discontent with Microsoft right now is due to the fact that they make poor-quality products and abuse their own customers. When people (or companies) change their behavior, you're allowed to change your attitude towards their behavior.

  • I'm starting to fear Google already (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:37AM (#22856268) Journal
    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. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stinky wizzleteats ( 552063 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:42AM (#22856328) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BeanThere ( 28381 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:47AM (#22856410)

    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? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:00AM (#22856574)
    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.

    • Re:Maybe hate is the problem then? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mgblst ( 80109 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @12:10PM (#22858592) Homepage
      Well, maybe you don't have that much to do with computers. If there is a company out there that has caused you months of gried, constantly added to your workload, caused large amounts of stress, while you have seen competent companies and systems fall to the wayside due to their dominance, then maybe you would have strong feelings about them as well.

  • Nope. (Score:4, Informative)

    by lancejjj ( 924211 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:29AM (#22856942) Homepage

    You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates.
    I don't remember the days when everyone loved Gates, and I lived through them all.

    In fact, we all remember when Bill Gates announced to Homebrew that he was planning to sell his BASIC interpreter for cash. Trust me, there were quite a few displeased people - not because they wanted "good stuff for free", but because it corrupted a community that was sharing its work for the great benefit.

    I thought it was fair - even smart - but I also concluded that his approach turned off the exact community that he was trying to sell to. "Customers be damned" comes to mind.

    And that was back in 1976. Don't get me wrong - Apple also had a crappy dozen years, when its machines were named Macs with a number. Apple was despised, even by its strongest supporters.

    But Apple later learned that you have to have great products that your customers love. Google knows this too. GM? Not so much. Microsoft? No, not any more. Maybe someday they'll come back.

    GM has been in the dumps for decades - so can Microsoft. Apple and Google will continue as long as their management knows that you have to strive for excellent products.

  • So maybe power does corrupt? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sorak ( 246725 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:31AM (#22856968)

    The unstated premise here is that people are being unfair for disliking the monopolistic corporation. After all, if Google and Apple become uber-rich monopolistic corporations, we'll hate them too. I can't speak for anybody else, but I like competition, and any organization that becomes successful enough to deprive the market of a healthy competition will attract my animosity.

    I do not dislike Microsoft because they're "evil". I dislike the situation they are in.

  • Did you enjoy all the comments? (Score:3)

    by hobo sapiens ( 893427 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:36AM (#22857036) Journal
    Did you enjoy all the comments?...I sure did. In the end, we all learned that people already hate Google and Apple. Someday is now! Now where's my flying car?!

  • Article is absolut crap (Score:3, Insightful)

    by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:41AM (#22857108)
    The article reads like a msft sponsored PR piece. The point is that people don't hate msft for any good reason, it's all just the public being fickle.

    Like hell.

    Have you followed the OOXML scam? The SCO-scam? The Acacia scam? How about msft lying to the US-DoJ in video taped testomony? What about the letters from dead people campaign? How about microsoft stealing Stacker technology? Then there are: fake TCO studies, fake benchmark studies, fake think tanks, Bestbuy rackteering, msft customers sued because of msft patent violation. How about msft saying computers where "Vista Ready" when they weren't. How about the Peter Quinn scam? And, right now, msft is lying to congress about a "tech worker shortage" in order to have congress double the number of H1-Bs, and even further hurt US tech workers.

    Have Apple or Google done that sort of thing?

    People don't hate msft because msft is big, people hate msft because msft really is evil.

  • Never forgive! The day MS ate BUNGIE!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by starglider29a ( 719559 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @10:55AM (#22857324)
    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.

  • 2000 called. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Oktober Sunset ( 838224 ) <sdpage103@ y a h o o . c o.uk> on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @01:03PM (#22859538)
    They want their headline back.

  • Burn karma burn (Score:3, Insightful)

    by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @02:53PM (#22861066)
    Hi there all this is the happy troll pointing out Slashdot already hates Apple. Don't believe me? Scan back over a few months of headlines and posts and you'll see the truth. It's like watching CNN moan about how the press is down on Hillary while they are running endless stories about Obama's dog groomer may be antisemetic. Slashdot defends Microsoft and attacks Apple. In other news the sun comes up even on cloudy days. Guess it's time to change my screen name to troll just so it matches the mod. Killing the messenger is another tradition at Slashdot.

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