4 ms·

Apple is “Evil” and Facebook is “a Photo-sharing Site”

16 points by jordanmessina 16y ago

younata 16y ago
Every company "believe['s] they know what is best for you and me." The entire point of a company is to create stuff that's best for the customer.
- emanuer 16y ago
  You are so right about this. The thing is, I actually also do believe Apple is evil, as is almost every business on our planet. Apple wants to protect it's assets by keeping a very tight control over the ecosystem around it's products. Pharmacy companies pay politicians to get their drugs approved. The tobacco industry has a great interest that it's products get smuggled. Insurance companies... don't get me started on them. I am guessing what Mr Wilson meant was: "Apple believes to know what is best for me and gets it right more often than not. And after everyone bought their somehow superior product they only allow me to enter the market they created, if I play after their rules. And I don't like that. I want the freedom to sell any kind of software to people without someone babysitting me." Well I don't know if he really meant that by saying "Apple is evil", but I do know that if one calls Apple evil, there has to be a new adjective invented for insurance companies, weapon producers and the pharma industry.
  - fredwilson 16y ago
    i was purposefully trying to be controversial and we were playing a word association game on stage. so take this whole thing with a big grain of salt. i think they are being a gatekeeper and i don't like gatekeepers very much. they aren't good for entrepreneurs and hackers
    - jsz0 16y ago
      I think the wild-west model is usually not very good for users to the same way the gatekeeper model is usually not good for hackers. Maybe we need more janitors instead.
      - sorbus 16y ago
        Wouldn't every conventional operating system be using the wild-west model? Windows, OSX, even Linux[1][2]: if you need a program, you go out onto the internet and look for it. [1] At least, it can be used that way. It fits the Janitor model much better when using repositories to install programs, or at least what I imagine the Janitor model to be (weakly curated system with misbehaving applications removed). [2] I'm also ignoring all of the less common/lower profile operating systems, because the only one I can name is BSD and I've never used it.
    - AmericanOP 16y ago
      I saw the interview, Fred was having fun on stage being witty when the snark started to creep in. Perfect recipe for a soundbyte unfortunately. This is what happens when conversation stales around the usual suspects (apple, google, twitter, etc.) Too bad too, I could tell Sam from Loopt was unimpressed with the event as he wanted to talk about users but after the one-liners things stayed very superficial. Don't think less of Fred though, VC's don't become celebs for their one-liners.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Every company is in the business to make as much money for themselves as possible. When the market works this creates an incentive that is very closely aligned with doing the best for the customer as well. But the market isn't perfect, especially the approximations of markets we have today. I think Apple does legitimately care about satisfying their customers with their products, but they are just as capable of falling into the trap of treating their customers like passive revenue generators as any other company.
jbail 16y ago
The original post on VentureBeat includes a comment from Fred Wilson himself. He was speaking at an event and was being a bit controversial on purpose.
- whakojacko 16y ago
  I would hope so, I have a lot of respect for Fred Wilson and those are pretty obviously troll comments. He would have probably loved to be an early-round investor in facebook right about now (Of course, who wouldnt).
etherael 16y ago
Evil is too broad. Apple is machiavellian. As much as I dislike them who could fault them for that after their history?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
cletus 16y ago
When Fred Wilson speaks, you have to pay attention. He's nearly always got something interesting to say and agree or disagree, his opinion carries a lot of weight. That being said, you also have to remember that Fred isn't just speaking as an insightful guy with a lot of experience, he's also speaking as a managing partner of USV. As an angel investor or VC it seems you most often are an advocate or evangelist for your portfolio companies. He also disses Gowalla but Foursquare is USV-backed and Gowalla isn't. The counterargument is that Foursquare is a portfolio company and Gowalla isn't precisely for the reasons he cites but you have to consider the evangelism POV too. As for Facebook, saying every Website (and indeed the Web as a whole) is a social graph sounds a little like equivocation to me. It is clearly the juggernaut in the room. Think of Facebook as the country in which you live and all these other Websites are local clubhouses. That's the kind of disparity we're talking about. For many people FB is a photo-sharing site. For others it's a chat site and a site to pick up people. For yet others it's a casual gaming site. Often it's many of these things for people. FB is many things to many people. Fred has also said that FB has basically won and it's here for a generation, which doesn't seem to gel has likening it to Flickr. Take that how you will.
- AmericanOP 16y ago
  About Gowalla he said 'it's tough playing second fiddle.' They are, and it is. I just want to point out he was factually correct despite being hyperbolic. He also said every (major) website has a social graph, not is a social graph. His point was more that he didn't think yahoo et al would be interested in linking with fb for that reason.
  - cletus 16y ago
    I agree that Gowalla is playing second fiddle and the smart money is on Foursquare, not just because they were/are first but because they seem to be killing it, but many second-comers have succeeded (eg Facebook, Google, Microsoft). Anyway, to borrow a term I heard from Mark Suster, I view all these location startups are FNACs (feature not a company).
    - 16y ago
cletus 16y ago
I don't think you can call Apple "evil". Arguably you can call it "cynical" however. Apple's philosophy is to make decisions for you, the consumer. Steve said exactly that in his D8 interview. Frankly, most people like that. Apple makes decisions about stuff most people don't care about. To explain the "cynical" part, I'll make a tenuous parallel to Thomas Jefferson who said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Ultimately, people are responsible for keeping themselves informed, not creating monopolies, not giving too much power to certain people, governments or companies and so on so the Apple strategy is fanning ignorance because, let's face it, most people want to enjoy "freedom" without having to actually do anything about it.
peregrine 16y ago
I'm not sure I agree with his points on Google, while GMail was innovative(still is) I'd say Android is tearing up the mobile market and showing no sign of slowing down. Apple opened the door and holds a big piece of the pie but so does Android.
waqf 16y ago
Also, the Pope is "Catholic".

16 points by jordanmessina 16y ago

Every company "believe['s] they know what is best for you and me." The entire point of a company is to create stuff that's best for the customer.

emanuer 16y ago
You are so right about this. The thing is, I actually also do believe Apple is evil, as is almost every business on our planet. Apple wants to protect it's assets by keeping a very tight control over the ecosystem around it's products. Pharmacy companies pay politicians to get their drugs approved. The tobacco industry has a great interest that it's products get smuggled. Insurance companies... don't get me started on them. I am guessing what Mr Wilson meant was: "Apple believes to know what is best for me and gets it right more often than not. And after everyone bought their somehow superior product they only allow me to enter the market they created, if I play after their rules. And I don't like that. I want the freedom to sell any kind of software to people without someone babysitting me." Well I don't know if he really meant that by saying "Apple is evil", but I do know that if one calls Apple evil, there has to be a new adjective invented for insurance companies, weapon producers and the pharma industry.
- fredwilson 16y ago
  i was purposefully trying to be controversial and we were playing a word association game on stage. so take this whole thing with a big grain of salt. i think they are being a gatekeeper and i don't like gatekeepers very much. they aren't good for entrepreneurs and hackers
  - jsz0 16y ago
    I think the wild-west model is usually not very good for users to the same way the gatekeeper model is usually not good for hackers. Maybe we need more janitors instead.
    - sorbus 16y ago
      Wouldn't every conventional operating system be using the wild-west model? Windows, OSX, even Linux[1][2]: if you need a program, you go out onto the internet and look for it. [1] At least, it can be used that way. It fits the Janitor model much better when using repositories to install programs, or at least what I imagine the Janitor model to be (weakly curated system with misbehaving applications removed). [2] I'm also ignoring all of the less common/lower profile operating systems, because the only one I can name is BSD and I've never used it.
  - AmericanOP 16y ago
    I saw the interview, Fred was having fun on stage being witty when the snark started to creep in. Perfect recipe for a soundbyte unfortunately. This is what happens when conversation stales around the usual suspects (apple, google, twitter, etc.) Too bad too, I could tell Sam from Loopt was unimpressed with the event as he wanted to talk about users but after the one-liners things stayed very superficial. Don't think less of Fred though, VC's don't become celebs for their one-liners.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Every company is in the business to make as much money for themselves as possible. When the market works this creates an incentive that is very closely aligned with doing the best for the customer as well. But the market isn't perfect, especially the approximations of markets we have today. I think Apple does legitimately care about satisfying their customers with their products, but they are just as capable of falling into the trap of treating their customers like passive revenue generators as any other company.

jbail 16y ago

The original post on VentureBeat includes a comment from Fred Wilson himself. He was speaking at an event and was being a bit controversial on purpose.

whakojacko 16y ago
I would hope so, I have a lot of respect for Fred Wilson and those are pretty obviously troll comments. He would have probably loved to be an early-round investor in facebook right about now (Of course, who wouldnt).

etherael 16y ago

Evil is too broad. Apple is machiavellian. As much as I dislike them who could fault them for that after their history?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

cletus 16y ago

When Fred Wilson speaks, you have to pay attention. He's nearly always got something interesting to say and agree or disagree, his opinion carries a lot of weight. That being said, you also have to remember that Fred isn't just speaking as an insightful guy with a lot of experience, he's also speaking as a managing partner of USV. As an angel investor or VC it seems you most often are an advocate or evangelist for your portfolio companies. He also disses Gowalla but Foursquare is USV-backed and Gowalla isn't. The counterargument is that Foursquare is a portfolio company and Gowalla isn't precisely for the reasons he cites but you have to consider the evangelism POV too. As for Facebook, saying every Website (and indeed the Web as a whole) is a social graph sounds a little like equivocation to me. It is clearly the juggernaut in the room. Think of Facebook as the country in which you live and all these other Websites are local clubhouses. That's the kind of disparity we're talking about. For many people FB is a photo-sharing site. For others it's a chat site and a site to pick up people. For yet others it's a casual gaming site. Often it's many of these things for people. FB is many things to many people. Fred has also said that FB has basically won and it's here for a generation, which doesn't seem to gel has likening it to Flickr. Take that how you will.

AmericanOP 16y ago
About Gowalla he said 'it's tough playing second fiddle.' They are, and it is. I just want to point out he was factually correct despite being hyperbolic. He also said every (major) website has a social graph, not is a social graph. His point was more that he didn't think yahoo et al would be interested in linking with fb for that reason.
- cletus 16y ago
  I agree that Gowalla is playing second fiddle and the smart money is on Foursquare, not just because they were/are first but because they seem to be killing it, but many second-comers have succeeded (eg Facebook, Google, Microsoft). Anyway, to borrow a term I heard from Mark Suster, I view all these location startups are FNACs (feature not a company).
  - 16y ago

cletus 16y ago

I don't think you can call Apple "evil". Arguably you can call it "cynical" however. Apple's philosophy is to make decisions for you, the consumer. Steve said exactly that in his D8 interview. Frankly, most people like that. Apple makes decisions about stuff most people don't care about. To explain the "cynical" part, I'll make a tenuous parallel to Thomas Jefferson who said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Ultimately, people are responsible for keeping themselves informed, not creating monopolies, not giving too much power to certain people, governments or companies and so on so the Apple strategy is fanning ignorance because, let's face it, most people want to enjoy "freedom" without having to actually do anything about it.

peregrine 16y ago

I'm not sure I agree with his points on Google, while GMail was innovative(still is) I'd say Android is tearing up the mobile market and showing no sign of slowing down. Apple opened the door and holds a big piece of the pie but so does Android.

waqf 16y ago

Also, the Pope is "Catholic".