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Apple's been a walled garden since the early 80's. They let vendors make Mac-compatibles and then screwed them, IIRC. They've always preferred to have their own

Apple's been a walled garden since the early 80's. They let vendors make Mac-compatibles and then screwed them, IIRC. They've always preferred to have their own everything until absolutely forced to open up, e.g. USB ports. They had their own networking architecture in the 90's (AppleTalk). Does that mean it's OK? Definitely not. But I think a general mandate of interoperability would be preferable to any point solutions. It's not clear how a court could rule that way, so it might require legislation.

zozbot234 3y ago
The MS antitrust settlement included a "general mandate of interop" wrt. the issues that were raised there, such as web browsers as part of the OS and the use of private API's.
CharlesW 3y ago
> They've always preferred to have their own everything until absolutely forced to open up, e.g. USB ports. You must not have been alive at the time. Apple's early adoption of USB is why USB became the dominant peripheral interface. People were quite upset to have lost their legacy ports in 1998. And of course, Apple's contributions to and early support for USB-C were also industry-leading. Apple has played a key role in creating and/or mainstreaming many standards: FireWire, Thunderbolt, Wi-Fi, ISOBMFF/MPEG-4, AAC, Mini-SIM/Nano-SIM, and I'm sure more I'm forgetting.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  [flagged]
- wharvle 3y ago
  > And of course, Apple's contributions to and early support for USB-C were also industry-leading. And still on the... bleeding edge. Most of the USB peripherals one can go buy right off the shelves at, say, Target are still USB-A.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Could it be that no one in the industry trusts them on standards?
    - wharvle 3y ago
      It's not their standard. It's in wide use on video game consoles and Android phones. The rest of the "PC" industry just hasn't moved so hard away from USB-A as they have, such that it remains the de facto PC standard for peripherals. It's largely displaced micro-usb, but not USB-A (comically, the one place it's dominated in the rest of the electronic-crap industry is where Apple lags, not the area in which they lead on its adoption)
    - layer8 3y ago
      No, it’s that USB-A is cheaper and “good enough”, and still more ubiquitous on the installed base of PCs and laptops.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  (In a now-deleted post, the parent commenter requested citations, and also remembered Apple dragging their feet on TCP/IP support. Here's my reply since I'd already written it.) A typical response was John Breeden's in The Washington Post: “The iMac has only USB adapters, no SCSI port…non-USB devices can’t be connected. Offices that have SCSI- or parallel-port printers will find the iMac an unsuitable replacement for older Macs. It’s odd, because Apple was a SCSI pioneer.” It's true that AppleTalk was proprietary, but it was introduced in 1985. It was plug-and-play, amazing for its time, and showed what standards-based networking should aspire to. Apple's MacTCP was the first OS-level, application-independent TCP/IP stack for personal computers, in 1988 — many years before TCP/IP was mainstream. Apple also shipped TCP/IP support by default in 1994, a year before Microsoft.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    talk about selective rewriting of history: Wikipedia tells us The rise of TCP/IP during the 1990s led to a reimplementation of most of these types of support on that protocol, and AppleTalk became unsupported as of the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009. > It was plug-and-play, amazing for its time, and showed what standards-based networking should aspire to. I believe the IETF was quite active during that time, particularly in the 90's when I got somewhat involved, and even in the 80's. What role did Apple play in that? It seems to me they could have advanced their "aspirations" more effectively that way.
  - Jtsummers 3y ago
    > In a now-deleted post It's not deleted, it got flag killed. Turn on showdead in your profile and you'll be able to see the comment.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      I turned on showdead, and still don't see what he's talking about.
      - Jtsummers 3y ago
        Your comment is the flagged dead one. You can see it with or without showdead on. You can tell it is dead by trying to reply to it yourself. CharlesW was the one I was responding to who had thought your comment was deleted when it wasn’t. I was clarifying for them (and others) that the comment had not been deleted. I honestly have no idea why this confuses you.
- epakai 3y ago
  Yet we still had bullshit like this: https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-gu... Note that 3 of those came about long after M.2 was done, and Mini-PCIe/mSATA existed before all of them. Apple's commitment to standard hardware is at best skin deep. People were quite upset to have lost their ports in 2016 too. 5 years later Apple added some back.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    > People were quite upset to have lost their ports in 2016 too. 5 years later Apple added some back. it's always funny when usb-c (vs lightning, usb-a, etc) discussions come up, because there's very much people in favor of doing away with everything except USB-C (by government decree/fiat if necessary) but many of these individuals also seem to hate the usb-c only macbooks, despite those being the richest implementation of the concept to date. not just usb-c everything, but thunderbolt everything, with full capability on all ports, full-speed charging on all ports, etc. "no, not like that!"
- layer8 3y ago
  > Apple's early adoption of USB is why USB became the dominant peripheral interface. That’s hard to believe. Apple was rather insignificant compared to the Wintel quasi-monopoly at the time, and Windows 98’s USB support actually slightly precedes Apple’s. Apple also wasn’t part of the initial USB alliance. USB became popular due to digital cameras, USB printers and scanners, flash drives and the like, and with USB 2.0 there was no legacy interface providing the same data rates.
  - sbuk 3y ago
    And yet, look at the clear blue plastic peripherals that saturated the PC market post iMac. > USB became popular due to digital cameras, USB printers and scanners, flash drives and the like In the late 90's/early 00's, who were using technology like that? Designers. What were they using? iMacs...
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      You're really grasping at straws here. They've been an NIH company since the beginning, and now you & few others are desperately touting the one, or one of the few areas where they embraced standards. Assuming they did. As for "In the late 90's/early 00's, who were using technology like that? Designers. " I believe that is just wrong. Mac users might have had an outsized impact, but the mass market always refrained from jumping on things until they were available for Windows.
      - sbuk 3y ago
        > They've been an NIH company since the beginning So who did Woz copy for the Apple I ][ and ///? > and now you & few others are desperately touting the one, or one of the few areas where they embraced standards. Assuming they did. They were one of the first adopters, if not the first. They have been involved in the design of nearly every USB standard since; Micro USB being a notable exception. > I believe that is just wrong. Mac users might have had an outsized impact, but the mass market always refrained from jumping on things until they were available for Windows. Go get a copy of a computer magazine from around 6 months after the iMac G3 was released... The thing is that on one hand, you're claiming that they're not innovative and on the other, suffering from NIH syndrome, so by implication, innovating. Which is it?
sbuk 3y ago
> They let vendors make Mac-compatibles and then screwed them, IIRC. It nearly caused Apple to go bankrupt.
mikestew 3y ago
They've always preferred to have their own everything until absolutely forced to open up, e.g. USB ports. I don't think you could have picked a worse example to attempt to make your point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC#1990s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC#1990s I'll save you a click: the Apple iMac is credited with popularizing USB.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  > I don't think you could have picked a worse example to attempt to make your point: oh? what's a better point? there's such a wealth of choices. > the Apple iMac is credited with popularizing USB by whom? And what was the iMac's market share back then?
  - mikestew 3y ago
    Apple wasn't "forced" to use USB, they were one of the first. I don't know what you're on about with the rest. Market share? Who cares? You picked a bad example, move on or pick a better one.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      How about you pick a different example of Apple not being NIH?

zozbot234 3y ago

The MS antitrust settlement included a "general mandate of interop" wrt. the issues that were raised there, such as web browsers as part of the OS and the use of private API's.

CharlesW 3y ago

> They've always preferred to have their own everything until absolutely forced to open up, e.g. USB ports. You must not have been alive at the time. Apple's early adoption of USB is why USB became the dominant peripheral interface. People were quite upset to have lost their legacy ports in 1998. And of course, Apple's contributions to and early support for USB-C were also industry-leading. Apple has played a key role in creating and/or mainstreaming many standards: FireWire, Thunderbolt, Wi-Fi, ISOBMFF/MPEG-4, AAC, Mini-SIM/Nano-SIM, and I'm sure more I'm forgetting.

AlbertCory 3y ago
[flagged]
wharvle 3y ago
> And of course, Apple's contributions to and early support for USB-C were also industry-leading. And still on the... bleeding edge. Most of the USB peripherals one can go buy right off the shelves at, say, Target are still USB-A.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Could it be that no one in the industry trusts them on standards?
  - wharvle 3y ago
    It's not their standard. It's in wide use on video game consoles and Android phones. The rest of the "PC" industry just hasn't moved so hard away from USB-A as they have, such that it remains the de facto PC standard for peripherals. It's largely displaced micro-usb, but not USB-A (comically, the one place it's dominated in the rest of the electronic-crap industry is where Apple lags, not the area in which they lead on its adoption)
  - layer8 3y ago
    No, it’s that USB-A is cheaper and “good enough”, and still more ubiquitous on the installed base of PCs and laptops.
CharlesW 3y ago
(In a now-deleted post, the parent commenter requested citations, and also remembered Apple dragging their feet on TCP/IP support. Here's my reply since I'd already written it.) A typical response was John Breeden's in The Washington Post: “The iMac has only USB adapters, no SCSI port…non-USB devices can’t be connected. Offices that have SCSI- or parallel-port printers will find the iMac an unsuitable replacement for older Macs. It’s odd, because Apple was a SCSI pioneer.” It's true that AppleTalk was proprietary, but it was introduced in 1985. It was plug-and-play, amazing for its time, and showed what standards-based networking should aspire to. Apple's MacTCP was the first OS-level, application-independent TCP/IP stack for personal computers, in 1988 — many years before TCP/IP was mainstream. Apple also shipped TCP/IP support by default in 1994, a year before Microsoft.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  talk about selective rewriting of history: Wikipedia tells us The rise of TCP/IP during the 1990s led to a reimplementation of most of these types of support on that protocol, and AppleTalk became unsupported as of the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009. > It was plug-and-play, amazing for its time, and showed what standards-based networking should aspire to. I believe the IETF was quite active during that time, particularly in the 90's when I got somewhat involved, and even in the 80's. What role did Apple play in that? It seems to me they could have advanced their "aspirations" more effectively that way.
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  > In a now-deleted post It's not deleted, it got flag killed. Turn on showdead in your profile and you'll be able to see the comment.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    I turned on showdead, and still don't see what he's talking about.
    - Jtsummers 3y ago
      Your comment is the flagged dead one. You can see it with or without showdead on. You can tell it is dead by trying to reply to it yourself. CharlesW was the one I was responding to who had thought your comment was deleted when it wasn’t. I was clarifying for them (and others) that the comment had not been deleted. I honestly have no idea why this confuses you.
epakai 3y ago
Yet we still had bullshit like this: https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-gu... Note that 3 of those came about long after M.2 was done, and Mini-PCIe/mSATA existed before all of them. Apple's commitment to standard hardware is at best skin deep. People were quite upset to have lost their ports in 2016 too. 5 years later Apple added some back.
- paulmd 3y ago
  > People were quite upset to have lost their ports in 2016 too. 5 years later Apple added some back. it's always funny when usb-c (vs lightning, usb-a, etc) discussions come up, because there's very much people in favor of doing away with everything except USB-C (by government decree/fiat if necessary) but many of these individuals also seem to hate the usb-c only macbooks, despite those being the richest implementation of the concept to date. not just usb-c everything, but thunderbolt everything, with full capability on all ports, full-speed charging on all ports, etc. "no, not like that!"
layer8 3y ago
> Apple's early adoption of USB is why USB became the dominant peripheral interface. That’s hard to believe. Apple was rather insignificant compared to the Wintel quasi-monopoly at the time, and Windows 98’s USB support actually slightly precedes Apple’s. Apple also wasn’t part of the initial USB alliance. USB became popular due to digital cameras, USB printers and scanners, flash drives and the like, and with USB 2.0 there was no legacy interface providing the same data rates.
- sbuk 3y ago
  And yet, look at the clear blue plastic peripherals that saturated the PC market post iMac. > USB became popular due to digital cameras, USB printers and scanners, flash drives and the like In the late 90's/early 00's, who were using technology like that? Designers. What were they using? iMacs...
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    You're really grasping at straws here. They've been an NIH company since the beginning, and now you & few others are desperately touting the one, or one of the few areas where they embraced standards. Assuming they did. As for "In the late 90's/early 00's, who were using technology like that? Designers. " I believe that is just wrong. Mac users might have had an outsized impact, but the mass market always refrained from jumping on things until they were available for Windows.
    - sbuk 3y ago
      > They've been an NIH company since the beginning So who did Woz copy for the Apple I ][ and ///? > and now you & few others are desperately touting the one, or one of the few areas where they embraced standards. Assuming they did. They were one of the first adopters, if not the first. They have been involved in the design of nearly every USB standard since; Micro USB being a notable exception. > I believe that is just wrong. Mac users might have had an outsized impact, but the mass market always refrained from jumping on things until they were available for Windows. Go get a copy of a computer magazine from around 6 months after the iMac G3 was released... The thing is that on one hand, you're claiming that they're not innovative and on the other, suffering from NIH syndrome, so by implication, innovating. Which is it?

sbuk 3y ago

> They let vendors make Mac-compatibles and then screwed them, IIRC. It nearly caused Apple to go bankrupt.

mikestew 3y ago

They've always preferred to have their own everything until absolutely forced to open up, e.g. USB ports. I don't think you could have picked a worse example to attempt to make your point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC#1990s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC#1990s I'll save you a click: the Apple iMac is credited with popularizing USB.

AlbertCory 3y ago
> I don't think you could have picked a worse example to attempt to make your point: oh? what's a better point? there's such a wealth of choices. > the Apple iMac is credited with popularizing USB by whom? And what was the iMac's market share back then?
- mikestew 3y ago
  Apple wasn't "forced" to use USB, they were one of the first. I don't know what you're on about with the rest. Market share? Who cares? You picked a bad example, move on or pick a better one.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    How about you pick a different example of Apple not being NIH?