A good overview on how Apple locks in the consumer...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33738833/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets//
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33738833/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets//
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How Apple locks in the consumer and seeks control
- Thread starter xlii
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yeah, they're really good at marketing.
I think they proven theirselves in computer-business.
altho, iPod is another story. I personally think they should stick at computers.
iPods are much more instable and are full of problems.
I had 2 iPod video's (30GB), 1 iPod Shuffle (1GB) and now I'm rolling with a Nano G4 (8GB).
All of these have (had) problems
and to reply on this thread. Yes, Apple has me! I'm still buying new iPod's because theire fancy!
I think they proven theirselves in computer-business.
altho, iPod is another story. I personally think they should stick at computers.
iPods are much more instable and are full of problems.
I had 2 iPod video's (30GB), 1 iPod Shuffle (1GB) and now I'm rolling with a Nano G4 (8GB).
All of these have (had) problems
and to reply on this thread. Yes, Apple has me! I'm still buying new iPod's because theire fancy!
There are a number of flaws in this writer's argument, but the biggest is the source: MSNBC. A TV channel/web site critiques Apple and we're supposed to accept that it has some sort of objectivity? If it were a MacRumors post, it would be shot down as trolling. Just because it's on a corporate stage doesn't make it less so.
mt
mt
Did you even read the article?
It's not an MSNBC piece, it's a PC World piece.
Third paragraph says
The article is pretty spot on.
Please read it and demonstrate with evidence where it is being non-objective.
Dismissing it for lacing objectivity simply because of a URL, without demonstrating WHY it lacks objectivity is, well....not particularly objective, is it?
Of course not as this is the Internet. Just the first and last sentences are enough.
Tell me you're not that naive. You really think MSNBC can use PC World as a human shield? If AppleCBS ripped the Zune, you don't think people would be all over this board screaming impropriety?
mt
You asked for it …
These are ranked, more or less, starting with the worst.
Paragraph 21:
To me, this is the biggest flaw. The Mac has been a tightly controlled, closed system ever since its introduction in 1984. John Sculley made an abortive attempt to allow Mac cloning, but it failed miserably and nearly sank the company. But for someone who tries to write with the sweep of history of the company, to make this comment is ridiculous.
Scratch that, it’s not ridiculous. He just wanted to work in a cheap shot at Steve Jobs’ expense. If Steve Ballmer didn’t look like he lived in a van down by the river, we wouldn’t hear half the wisecracks about Jobs and his “second coming.”
Complete section on iPhone: AT&T has nothing to do with App Store disapprovals? The source on Google app rejections is Google itself?
And there are 100,000 apps to choose from Apple’s Kim Jong-Il-style App Store. My Samsung phone -- not a smartphone by any means -- has at most 100, and it appears that 90 percent of those are games. While there are flaws in comparing that Verizon Samsung to an AT&T iPhone, the premise of this story is to compare Apple with all other technology companies. (see Paragraph 3). The options for an iPhone owner are indeed limited, at about 100,000 different apps. I can attest that a Samsung phone owner’s options are limited to about 100.
Paragraph 8:
Onerous? Is he kidding? You click a button, you burn a disk. Otherwise called a backup. To call it onerous is just the writer’s search for a pejorative adjective.
But then in Paragraph 14, he says:
So if I move it to another device, it’s not onerous, but if I burn my music to a medium that is played on thousands of devices, it is. Extremely flawed logic.
The last seven paragraphs:
I don’t understand what this means. He castigates Apple -- and I think he’s justified -- for installing software unrelated to an update. But it’s pretty innocuous stuff. I got an unwanted copy of Norton when I updated Adobe a few months back that royally screwed up my Dell laptop. It did nothing to pull me into an “ecosystem.”
Explain to me how a patent is going to prevent anyone from altering an iPod.
Quelle heureur! Apple wants to make it harder to steal its products. Will the republic survive?
“Presumably” -- or does it mean the company spends a lot of money on tech support and it wants to give its tech people more information on why a computer is failing? Big Brotherish? Maybe, but you can have that argument if you provide the documented proof that you disabled the black box in your high-end SUV.
Unsupported. And if Microsoft sought similar patents, we’re to assume they have only angelic intentions?
Legend has it that Apple often loses in head-to-head comparisons of technology. But this piece is devoid of dollar signs. It's absence speaks volumes.
Paragraph 3:
OK, last one, and of the whole piece, maybe the weakest complaint. But “No other”? The mini- and mainframe markets are nearly insignificant, but they still exist, and they exist because they really have their customers over a barrel. Apple at least supports industry standard file formats in ways other “closed” companies don’t. This is unsupportable hyperbole at best, setting up the rest of the column's unsupportable hyperbole.
mt
The article is very fair and balanced. When you think of it, what company doesn't want to lock in their customers? Apple has been very successful at it.
Come on! At least a bit of realism!
Sure! I remember how people loved when their iTunes purchases were only compatible with Apple music players. They love to spend thousands just to get a decent desktop that runs OS X. Oh, and so many just love to spend hours trying to jailbreak their iPhones and getting apps from somewhere else. Don't say that all these people only break Apple's unnecessarily strict rules, because they are pirates. How many of these people actually purchase legitimate copies of OS X or use premium Jailbreak services? Lots.
Come on, LTD, you also expressed the view that Apple's rejection of Google's app was to protect the consumer experience! Because Apple knows better than the consumer, what good consumer experience is.
I just 'jailbroke' my iPhone, because iTunes and Finder just make my brain explode. One is an incompetent file management software, the other is the most annoying, underpowered corporate junk. To me, using these softwares show either dedication or lack of tech interest and knowledge from millions of users. I have to say that this Jailbraking thing is pretty boring. But if that's what it takes to get network-supported tethering BACK, I have no problem with it.
Now that I'm at it, I don't think that Mac users are generally better informed about tech. I think it has more to do with the fact that they are wealthier and cannot be bothered about limitations of OS X. That must have been the case back in 2004 too. Only, that back then, Apple had more control over the quality of its hardware and Apple computers really cost more to manufacture. Now, at least about the internals that is not the case. We all use PC's whatever logo and OS they sell them to us with.
Sure! I remember how people loved when their iTunes purchases were only compatible with Apple music players. They love to spend thousands just to get a decent desktop that runs OS X. Oh, and so many just love to spend hours trying to jailbreak their iPhones and getting apps from somewhere else. Don't say that all these people only break Apple's unnecessarily strict rules, because they are pirates. How many of these people actually purchase legitimate copies of OS X or use premium Jailbreak services? Lots.
Come on, LTD, you also expressed the view that Apple's rejection of Google's app was to protect the consumer experience! Because Apple knows better than the consumer, what good consumer experience is.
I just 'jailbroke' my iPhone, because iTunes and Finder just make my brain explode. One is an incompetent file management software, the other is the most annoying, underpowered corporate junk. To me, using these softwares show either dedication or lack of tech interest and knowledge from millions of users. I have to say that this Jailbraking thing is pretty boring. But if that's what it takes to get network-supported tethering BACK, I have no problem with it.
Now that I'm at it, I don't think that Mac users are generally better informed about tech. I think it has more to do with the fact that they are wealthier and cannot be bothered about limitations of OS X. That must have been the case back in 2004 too. Only, that back then, Apple had more control over the quality of its hardware and Apple computers really cost more to manufacture. Now, at least about the internals that is not the case. We all use PC's whatever logo and OS they sell them to us with.
Lock me in if my alternative is Windows!
Seeking control is what advertising does. Apple certainly has been throttling the competition for a long long time.
Microsoft's history of crappy commercials.
Seeking control is what advertising does. Apple certainly has been throttling the competition for a long long time.
Microsoft's history of crappy commercials.
Limitation of OS X like being used by hackers and security consultants such as Kevin Mitnick
http://obamapacman.com/2009/09/kevi...minal-turned-security-consultant-is-mac-user/
being used for super computers
http://obamapacman.com/2009/08/high-performance-low-cost-super-computer-virginia-tech-mac-cluster/
Steve Jobs' NeXT workstation (foundation of OS X) is used to invent World Wide Web
http://obamapacman.com/2009/08/world-wide-web-inventor-tim-berners-lee-uses-apple-mac/
Yeah, the Mac OS is so limited. Perhaps someone with limited knowledge didn't know that OS X is certified UNIX.
Extremely flawed logic? Taking DRM'd tracks, burning them to a CD, ripping that CD, renaming & retagging all the tracks *is* onerous. Being able to buy a non-DRM track and sync, or drag & drop, that track onto any MP3 player is *not* onerous. I'd also say using CDs to backup your iTunes library is onerous as well unless you have a very small library.
Lethal
True, But Apple cannot really be cited for DRM issues that it had no choice. DRM restrictions on iTunes were on the behest of the content owners. My recollection is that Apple's earliest negotiations of the iTunes store Apple wanted no DRM but the studios refused to bite. Besides, if we want an example of worse DRM - we can look no further than PlaysForSure which never did "play for sure". All the music stores used DRM that had restrictions - not just Apple. Amazon was the first one that started doing it I recall and it took months for Apple to catch up and Jobs had to raise prices to do it (another bone of contention).
Yes, DRM had some onerous restrictions, but Apple had little choice in the matter back then - it wasn't for many years that the studios opened up to the idea that killed that baby. Hopefully the movie studios can be less restrictive about this.
Yet if you were an indie, you were forced to use DRM whether you wanted it or not. If you make an iPhone app, even a free one, you get DRM whether you want it or not.
I remember that, the argument back then was for consistency - Apple probably didn't want to get complaints from users who may have bought a couple of DRM free songs and then complain when the mainstream ones they bought weren't that way too.
But Apple could've licensed FairPlay. They didn't want to 'cause it would have cut into iPod sales but they could have.
But my point was more to illustrate how ridiculous mysterytramp's opinion is that burning, ripping, renaming and retagging songs is as easy copying the files from the computer to an MP3 player.
Lethal
I honestly wondered if that was something that Apple without the permission of the studios. After all it would be expanding distribution beyond their own devices - part of the reason Plays for sure failed was that there was no way to predicts which player could support what requirements the individual studios wanted. Fairplay had just one set of rules period. Of course all this was well after Apple started selling their own player - that makes no sense for Apple to compete aginst itself in the PMP market. MS doesn't even do that with the Zune.
Apple's system worked because it was so limited. No worrying about supporting companies with diverting interests and everything. Simplifying iTunes support helps too.
Apple could do alot of things. They just don't do those things and it arguably makes things easier.
It can be certified Roman Catholic, that's not the point!
Perhaps someone with limited sense didn't realize that OS X's file management is pretty annoying. Finder is a very poor file management software and iTunes 'locks' users to iTunes and iPods, apart from being a piece of corporate junk.
Perhaps someone with limited sense didn't realize that OS X's file management is pretty annoying. Finder is a very poor file management software and iTunes 'locks' users to iTunes and iPods, apart from being a piece of corporate junk.
The original statement was that it's "onerous" to move iTunes content to another manufacturer's mp3 player. I'll stand by my statement that "onerous" is flawed. Inconvenient, maybe; but "onerous" is an attempt to use a thesaurus to spackle over factual lapses.
Most people burn CDs to back up their iTunes purchases -- if they make backups at all. Therefore, most people already are doing the first steps to put their music on an alternative mp3 player anyway. (And in the process they're creating a disk that can be played on non-Apple-branded hardware, ironically.)
For the folks who are apparently spending thousands each year on iTunes, somehow I don't think these people are in the market for alternative mp3 players anyway.
mt