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.'"
Power Leads to Corruption (Score:1, Interesting)
No one can be president or leader of a nation and be corruption free. An easy target is Bush. His religion encourages him to turn the other cheek but that is not what happened after 9/11. His 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. The examples in this case are endless.
The same goes for "large company A." Once A gets large enough, it's not too difficult to start to find evil creeping in. Googles advertisement abilities already upset/disgust me. My difficulty in affording Apple products make me think they are discriminating against the poor. The list goes on.
I don't know if this is so much about the consumer as it is about power--the more you have, the more corrupt you are.
wrong assumption (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
We'll See (Score:5, Interesting)
*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:Not quite the same (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Is this really surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Speaking of Google (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean, come on. WE DON'T NEED YOUR INVASIVE CRAPBAR, IF WE WANT TO SEARCH THE BROWSER HAS A FUCKING SEARCH FIELD BUILT RIGHT IN.
Re:One day? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:See it everywhere (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
No, we hated Apple from time to time (Score:5, Interesting)
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS (Score:5, Interesting)
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:One day? (Score:3, Interesting)
I will forever be untrusting of Google.
Re:One day? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Speaking of Google (Score:1, Interesting)
Now is that because Google's software is crashing IE or IE has stability issues? I don't know the details but I would bet that it's IE not Google. Personally, Google software hasn't been a problem for me on Firefox or Safari on either my Mac or my PC. But that's just my experience.
Re:Not quite the same (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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:One day? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
A few root causes for this... (Score:1, Interesting)
In a private company, the pressure to do this is somewhat delayed, as the owners may be quite content to make money in a sustainable way and keep cashing their dividend checks. I worked for a privately held company, and made great money as a stockholder. When the owners started to position the company for sale, things got CRAZY.
When the owners decide to sell, it's time to juice the earnings because they will get paid a multiple of the most recent years' profit. In that final year, every extra dollar they can squeeze gets multiplied by 5 to 30 (depending on the business). The old owners are not concerned with sustainability and the new owners have lots of debt from the acquisition. If they paid full price for the business, their profit comes from someplace that the previous owners had not yet exploited. At that point, there has been at least one year of unsustainable customer unfriendliness, with several more on the way just to try and earn enough to outrun the debt and provide some return on investment.
Early warning signs: When you see an invasion of MBAs, walk calmly towards the exit. When you see an invasion of consultant MBAs, run.
Re:One day? (Score:2, Interesting)
Totally true! Another example: Sega. They had it ALL over Nintendo. What happened there?!?
Sega Genesis vs Nintendo... Sega is YEARS ahead
Sega Game Gear vs Game Boy... again, Sega is YEARS ahead
Sega Nomad... an invention of brilliance years ahead of its time (I've labeled its lack of success due to being too brilliant for the time period. They needed to take more baby steps in the market - not huge leaps.)
But actually I can see Apple and Google becoming the next hated powerhouse companies. Just look at how Google is jumping more into politics and lobbying these days... and how we see more lawsuits from Apple each year. It'll be a LONG while before they ever reach the status label of Microsoft Evil (which is a new category... Microsoft is the pioneer), but soon I think Google and Apple will slip into the same category as Sony.
Re:One day? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:One day? (Score:2, Interesting)
Had Adobe dropped support for Mac desktop publishing products, Apple would have been in big trouble.
And yes, I remember college instructors telling me how fast/better Apple products were for video editing with IBM processors, compared to the 'slow' Intel chips in PC's. They quickly changed their tune when Apple's marketing told them to; Now 5-time's faster!
Re:We'll See (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:New definition of genius... (Score:4, Interesting)
You say capitalism provides people with an opportunity to rise above everyone else. I ask, does the capitalist system only allow people to rise above others through merit, or are other, less honorable factors at least as important in determining who rises and who falls?
Wow, half a DECADE?! (Score:3, Interesting)
(Of course, if you meant to say "half a century" in both places, then I completely agree with the point about Lisp [xkcd.com] and functional languages in general. Also, while I'm not that much of an old-timer myself, I know there are those who would take issue with the claim of Fortran and Cobol being "forgotten".)
Re:No, we hated Apple from time to time (Score:3, Interesting)
(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.
The funny thing is, Apple could have marketed middle-mouse cut-and-paste, and users would have loved it, and would have praised it as another example of Apple innovation. After all, what function do you do more commonly than cut-and-paste text?
Irrelevant! (Score:1, Interesting)
Apple and Google will prevail and Microsoft (deservedly) will die. It is a matter of years.
Until we get to that stage, all else is irrelevant.
Anyone who doesn't understand and cheer the two "dragons" who are killing "the beast" are just clueless, know very little about the history of the computer industry, or can't appreciate good programming.
Linux isn't powerful enough to kill off Microsoft by itself. We need to get rid of the install base, and then the computer industry can FINALLY evolve at the naturally fast pace it SHOULD HAVE ALL THESE DECADES!!! (If not for the damned monkey wrenches from Redmond).
difference is, (virtually) nobody liked Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)