Someday You'll Hate Apple (And Google Too) 734
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Blind devotion to *anything* is questionable.
Not quite the same (Score:1, Insightful)
Is this really surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Yeah, but they're just companies (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
And perhaps Microsoft will be loved again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One day? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why we love them. (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Not quite the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:See it everywhere (Score:3, Insightful)
I posted a response to someone else's MS hating/Apple loving post that basically stated this article's points and was modded -1 Troll. I went back to my mom's basement and cried.
I already hate apple (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this sad? Surely being suspicious of powerful entities is one of the better human qualities.
The day google will be hated (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm starting to fear Google already (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this really surprising? (Score:2, Insightful)
What? You think they don't do this already? Have you seen what in-house programs Apple includes with the Mac? Have you seen one of those "I'm a Mac" commercials lately? They're nothing but false advertising and FUD.
Innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:wrong assumption (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely they "invented" vendor lock-in with Windows.
However, Linux was too geeky way back when, so a non-starter. OS/2 would have been nice, but IBM messed up the install routine (why did it flash up saying my CD-ROM drive was not recognised - how did it read the file from the CD to write that on screen message then???), and BeOS 5 was really good but by then Windows was too dominant. Apple was seen as a niche as it sold on specific hardware and at premium prices, so not many touched it.
I think many people don't begrudge success, but it's HOW Microsoft managed to get it is what gets at people.
Re:Why we love them. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:One day? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
All about competition (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I hate Apple since 1983 but still appreciate Googl (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty simple, really (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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.
Re:First Trout! (Score:3, Insightful)
I like Gates. I wouldn't necessarily think him to be the most ethical of business men but in business you win or you die. He plays to win.
Re:First Trout! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not quite the same (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Why we love them. (Score:3, Insightful)
competiting offerings to choose from, the Microsoft one was quite often the
one considered least sophisticated. This even applies to visual studio.
Maybe hate is the problem then? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Skully (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Is this really surprising? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not quite the same (Score:3, Insightful)
What matters today is that MacOSX and iTunes are 'defining characteristics' of Apple and as long as they do the job right, I as a consumer don't really care where they came from, same goes for any other company.
Re:Power Leads to Corruption (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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:Speaking of Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS (Score:3, Insightful)
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:One day? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Yeah, but they're just companies (Score:5, Insightful)
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:wrong assumption (Score:2, Insightful)
Then, Windows 95 came out. I installed it and every one of those programs just worked! I was a true believer in OS/2 and I wanted it to succeed and improve, but after that experience, it was Windows all the way for me.
The funny thing is, I am typing this while wearing my OS/2 Warp launch T-shirt, which has outlasted the software by many years. So did the really nice quality cardboard boxes the huge stack of 3 1/2" floppies the product came on. lol
Re:Power Leads to Corruption (Score:1, Insightful)
I hate to dump on your rant, but Leviticus 19:34 universalizes the neighbour-loving directive: "But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God"
I think that's pretty clear. Apply the ethic of reciprocity to all, even those from another tribe.
So maybe power does corrupt? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:One day? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Speaking of Google (Score:2, Insightful)
Article is absolut crap (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:One day? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:No, we hated Apple from time to time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Power Leads to Corruption (Score:4, Insightful)
And comparing Iraq to Viet Nam just shows your vast ignorance. There's no draft in Iraq. We never toppled the North Vietnamese government. We never captured and killed Ho Chi Minh, his children, and every important official in his government. The number of soldiers who have died in Iraq are more than an order of magnitude less than the number of soldiers who died in Viet Nam (4000 in Iraq, 58000 in Viet Nam).
And people wonder why leftists are persona non grata in American society.
Never forgive! The day MS ate BUNGIE!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
But to his credit, Bill saw that coming... and squashed it.
Re:No, we hated Apple from time to time (Score:1, Insightful)
Crappy, closed-technology machines 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.
The cult of the single-button mouse. (turns red). Yeah. But...those who prefer 2 or 3 button mouse could buy one from 3rd parties. Right mouse click does work on a Mac. Multi button mouse just didn't come with Macs.
Reseller programs from hell. I'll bet :-)
laser printers that became ultimately useless Huh? Most of Apple's model were pretty good - I had most of them at work and can only think of one lemon model (one of the last of their laser printers)
Two wire AppleTalk networks with all of the speed of ISDN ha ha. And what did PC have during that time period? The Macs came with networking standard and it was pretty simple to setup and get working. A bit later you could get ethernet.
Cute little useless Newtons Can you say a bit advanced for its time? And for its time the technology was not there to make it great. Only so much you can do in so little RAM, etc.
Servers that could never rise above simple workgroup needs. I suppose that was not its market?
I'm tired. The PPC? It was waaaay ahead of whatever Intel offered and had potential to stay that way. But Motorola and IBM totally dropped the ball on that one. Sorry if Intel stock made you $$, but it was true. Many of the Apple koolaid drinkers kept claiming that the PPC was more advanced than Intel's offerings long after Intel left PPC in the dust - they were hopeful and it was possible for a while for PPC to catch up and surpass. But it did not. Thanks goodness for Apple's sake that Steve Jobs made that controversial move to Intel.
Re:No, we hated Apple from time to time (Score:2, Insightful)
I've always thought that if one is good, two is better.
Re:Not quite the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), and was shown around. Having paid (in stock), he was allowed to "pick one of three", and went for the GUI. Apple developers then did significant extra items on top of Xerox's work (partly because they mis-remembered what they saw; some things like overlapping windows hadn't been worked out by Xerox, although the devs thought they had seen them)
http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/Apple_Computers.htm [about.com]
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.txt [folklore.org]
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Busy_Being_Born.txt [folklore.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance [slashdot.org]>The AIM Alliance was an alliance formed in September 1991 between Apple Computer, IBM and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture.. In other words, there was never any Atari "exclusivity"
Re:First Trout! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:No, we hated Apple from time to time (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Ahead of their time (Score:4, Insightful)
First to market with a revolutionary new product guarantees you an entry in wikipedia, nothing more.
Re:First Trout! (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you do when you are faced with a moral dilemma? I.E. break a promise or break a heart. The contractual duty of the board and the executives makes this somewhat easier. It always should be to protect the shareholders.
Re:First Trout! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:First Trout! (Score:4, Insightful)
But since Amiga isn't coming back any time soon, I'm glad there's a presence in the commercial computing world that tries to be innovative outside of office productivity (blech).
Re:Yeah, but they're just companies (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Which moral dilemma? (Score:4, Insightful)
I you allow greedy, immoral shareholders to dictate dubious business practices, you, as a CEO or any other higher official in a company, will be held responsible also for the consequences (either in the marketplace or the court of law).
A shareholder that does not understand that the only way to make money honestly is by offering a good service or product is a scumbag, no self respectable CEO should accept to work for them.
Re:Maybe hate is the problem then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One day? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:See it everywhere (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the worst, most incorrect description of Bill Gates I have ever read. Bill Gates is perhaps the world's leading humanitarian today. He gives incredible amounts of money away for helping people in Africa, etc.
Re:New definition of genius... (Score:3, Insightful)
well, this is a free-software/etc. site (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is this really surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
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."
Burn karma burn (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New definition of genius... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Speaking of Google (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:New definition of genius... (Score:2, Insightful)
Even though I love Linux, I still have to carry around a Windows partition simply because most proprietary software only runs on Windows. Why does most proprietary software run only on Windows? Because that's what the dominant market share is using. (circular, yes)
If my parents, or pretty well anyone I know of, heads to a common franchise computer store to buy a PC, they will be presented with pretty well only one option - a windows machine. Windows is bundled with the PC, they don't know of any other options, and it's probably a hassle to get the store to take it off and refund the money.
As for familiarity, I'm sure it can be agreed the drive for consumers (individual and business) to purchase things they are familiar with is quite strong. That's what branding is all about. How did Windows become a brand name? Their corrupt business practices lead them there...
I'm not saying that consumers are not responsible for continuing to support a business known for corrupt practices, but their choice is influenced by a number of factors you are completely overlooking. Things will hopefully change, but I guarantee it won't happen over night...
- John
Reliability, duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention that Apple sells hardware, the OS is what makes it run. They have no reason to offer the OS they make to run hardware they aren't selling.
And the third reason is that if the OS is seen as unreliable on non-supported hardware, it will lead people to think that the OS, and the company that made it, is at fault, rather than the inferior hardware it was forced upon. And is bad fr the company, and its shareholders.
Re:No, we hated Apple from time to time (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a cult, you can use a multi-button mouse on Macs, their OS supports it.
Re:No, we hated Apple from time to time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, we hated Apple from time to time (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's a good thing. It's reliable, predictable... which are things I want from an interface.
Which Apple supports to a great extent!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Insightful)