4 ms·

Apple's Growing Arrogance

11 points by nickb 19y ago

ideas101 19y ago
iBrick is certainly going to backfire - the arrogance due to brand power is going to have a negative halo effect and it may be too late for apple to un-do. I don't understand why apple went for a single vendor (at&t) distribution, i would have never done that, instead i would have used my strong brand power to distribute unlocked iphone thru multiple channels like walmart, costco, bestbuy etc. , this way customer would have got the power to choose their service provider - giving customer the power is always the biggest business benefit/wisdom in long and short term - if apple can hold the position against Hollywood for selling a song for 99c then they can do the same by selling unlocked iphone ... customer who don't want to use iphone as a phone device can still buy it to use it for playing music, video, surfing internet etc. I think this would have been a win-win situation ....
- alaskamiller 19y ago
  Everyone loves to play Apple iCEO; yet, few ever do a good job at it. 1) Apple went with AT&T because running a phone business is pretty tough. Apple focuses on making hardware and software. 2) That said, concessions have to be made. AT&T wants to sell usage and service. They paid an exclusive to do that. 3) The Phone business isn't like the music business which also coincidently isn't like the TV/movies/video business. 4) iPod touch.
  - ardit33 19y ago
    Apple just played nice with the carriers, and screwing the customer even more. You paying FULL price (%200 markup from apple), for a device with a CONTRACT. At least most other phones come cheap/or free with a two year contract. This just made more money to apple. They didn't change anything on the mobile space. The only thing was a pretty UI, that's pretty lame. I can't wait for Google Phone. It is said that it will be powerful, but cheap, and sold open (independent from the carriers), just like most phones in europe. That would be a game changing phone.
    - dcurtis 19y ago
      You mean Steve Jobs didn't pound it into your head by saying it 50 times at Macworld? The iPhone isn't a phone. It's a "revolutionary phone," an "amazing ipod," and an "internet communication device." Also, it's not just a pretty UI. It is a pretty UI, but it represents a complete change in mobile device interaction. They took touch technology and they did it right for the first time. That's definitely a shift in the paradigm, and it will certainly change the mobile space forever. Also, by introducing the first usable/decent web browser for mobile devices, they've hopefully inspired other traditionally crappy companies like Nokia and SonyEricsson and Palm to do the same. Man, I hope so.
      - ardit33 19y ago
        Actually the LG Prada was out in Europe before, and it is touch screen device, similiar screen size, and with a pretty UI. Not as nice as the iPhone, but 80% close. What iPhone made, is people demanding pretty UIs from all their phones, which is a step on the right direction. Still, there are plenty of things that you cannot do with the iPhone. But as far as businnsess paradigm shift, iPhone has been a disapointment. Look at the latest update, it bricks your unlocked device, cannot do song to ringtone convertion, (you can with many european phones), etc. etc. Either ATT has Apple by the balls, or Apple just doesn't care at all for the user, and tries to screw them as much as they can.
        dcurtis 19y ago
        Have you ever used a Prada? It's not nearly as cohesive an experience as the iPhone, and it's not easy to use. The screen is far too touch sensitive. My point is, the iPhone is the first practical touch device, and it's the phone that will mark a paradigm shift-- the Prada would never cause a change like that in the industry. LG is simply not a respectable company, especially in the US where they sell the crappiest phones on the market.
uuilly 19y ago
I think apple quality control has gone downhill in the last few years. I've been an apple customer on and off for a long time. And I've been totally on the day they went back to OSX. 1) The wireless on my MBP has been an on and off disaster. When I first got it, wireless transfers from machine to machine were way slower than my old PBK. When I click the wireless signal button to choose a network it takes a full second+ for the networks to show up. Used to be instant. Their latest wireless driver (their 4th version!) dropped me from my network every 15 minutes requiring an archive install to get back to the last version. Wireless on my PBK was NEVER a problem at all. 2) I got the airport express for my parents a few years ago. It almost never worked. The music would incessantly drop out and no amount of network settings tweaking would fix it. Magically in Tiger the problem disappeared. 3) When the latest airport extreme came out I HAD to have the airdisk feature. I've had an old G4 tower as my file server and itunes repository for a while and it was annoying to move around. But my recent experience taught me to wait. I routinely monitored the forums and it turned out that the airdisk wasn't even close to ready for prime time. Hundreds of messages were posted about dropouts or their disk not even working at all. It took two firmware updates for the forum complaining to subside. I now have it and it works but... 4) If I leave my house w/o dismounting the network drive, the machine hangs for a full minute before it says the drive was disconnected. 30% of the time I wait two minutes and have to hard reset. On my PBK it was a consistent 15 second wait w/o ever having to hard reset. Perhaps there is something rotten with the wireless engineers at apple. But really a bit of testing should have smoked these problems out. It used to be unusual for something to come out of apple so rough around the edges. As for the iPhone, I really love mine. I haven't had time to play with the hacks and I'm glad I didn't. But I went to the iphone hacks sites yesterday and saw how prolific the extra apps had become. This phone only came out a few months ago and they have lots of useful apps with mature package management systems. It was sad to see such a promising developer community squashed at the dawn of its life.
- inklesspen 19y ago
  The developer community hasn't been squashed at all. The 'hacking' that causes the iPhone to brick is tampering with the SIM card interface. That's in firmware, and it's sort of to be expected that if you change things there, and then apply an Apple patch without changing things back, things might break. But third-party apps still work, by all reports I've read, as long as you haven't tried to unlock the phone to work on other providers.

11 points by nickb 19y ago

iBrick is certainly going to backfire - the arrogance due to brand power is going to have a negative halo effect and it may be too late for apple to un-do. I don't understand why apple went for a single vendor (at&t) distribution, i would have never done that, instead i would have used my strong brand power to distribute unlocked iphone thru multiple channels like walmart, costco, bestbuy etc. , this way customer would have got the power to choose their service provider - giving customer the power is always the biggest business benefit/wisdom in long and short term - if apple can hold the position against Hollywood for selling a song for 99c then they can do the same by selling unlocked iphone ... customer who don't want to use iphone as a phone device can still buy it to use it for playing music, video, surfing internet etc. I think this would have been a win-win situation ....

alaskamiller 19y ago
Everyone loves to play Apple iCEO; yet, few ever do a good job at it. 1) Apple went with AT&T because running a phone business is pretty tough. Apple focuses on making hardware and software. 2) That said, concessions have to be made. AT&T wants to sell usage and service. They paid an exclusive to do that. 3) The Phone business isn't like the music business which also coincidently isn't like the TV/movies/video business. 4) iPod touch.
- ardit33 19y ago
  Apple just played nice with the carriers, and screwing the customer even more. You paying FULL price (%200 markup from apple), for a device with a CONTRACT. At least most other phones come cheap/or free with a two year contract. This just made more money to apple. They didn't change anything on the mobile space. The only thing was a pretty UI, that's pretty lame. I can't wait for Google Phone. It is said that it will be powerful, but cheap, and sold open (independent from the carriers), just like most phones in europe. That would be a game changing phone.
  - dcurtis 19y ago
    You mean Steve Jobs didn't pound it into your head by saying it 50 times at Macworld? The iPhone isn't a phone. It's a "revolutionary phone," an "amazing ipod," and an "internet communication device." Also, it's not just a pretty UI. It is a pretty UI, but it represents a complete change in mobile device interaction. They took touch technology and they did it right for the first time. That's definitely a shift in the paradigm, and it will certainly change the mobile space forever. Also, by introducing the first usable/decent web browser for mobile devices, they've hopefully inspired other traditionally crappy companies like Nokia and SonyEricsson and Palm to do the same. Man, I hope so.
    - ardit33 19y ago
      Actually the LG Prada was out in Europe before, and it is touch screen device, similiar screen size, and with a pretty UI. Not as nice as the iPhone, but 80% close. What iPhone made, is people demanding pretty UIs from all their phones, which is a step on the right direction. Still, there are plenty of things that you cannot do with the iPhone. But as far as businnsess paradigm shift, iPhone has been a disapointment. Look at the latest update, it bricks your unlocked device, cannot do song to ringtone convertion, (you can with many european phones), etc. etc. Either ATT has Apple by the balls, or Apple just doesn't care at all for the user, and tries to screw them as much as they can.
      - dcurtis 19y ago
        Have you ever used a Prada? It's not nearly as cohesive an experience as the iPhone, and it's not easy to use. The screen is far too touch sensitive. My point is, the iPhone is the first practical touch device, and it's the phone that will mark a paradigm shift-- the Prada would never cause a change like that in the industry. LG is simply not a respectable company, especially in the US where they sell the crappiest phones on the market.

uuilly 19y ago

I think apple quality control has gone downhill in the last few years. I've been an apple customer on and off for a long time. And I've been totally on the day they went back to OSX. 1) The wireless on my MBP has been an on and off disaster. When I first got it, wireless transfers from machine to machine were way slower than my old PBK. When I click the wireless signal button to choose a network it takes a full second+ for the networks to show up. Used to be instant. Their latest wireless driver (their 4th version!) dropped me from my network every 15 minutes requiring an archive install to get back to the last version. Wireless on my PBK was NEVER a problem at all. 2) I got the airport express for my parents a few years ago. It almost never worked. The music would incessantly drop out and no amount of network settings tweaking would fix it. Magically in Tiger the problem disappeared. 3) When the latest airport extreme came out I HAD to have the airdisk feature. I've had an old G4 tower as my file server and itunes repository for a while and it was annoying to move around. But my recent experience taught me to wait. I routinely monitored the forums and it turned out that the airdisk wasn't even close to ready for prime time. Hundreds of messages were posted about dropouts or their disk not even working at all. It took two firmware updates for the forum complaining to subside. I now have it and it works but... 4) If I leave my house w/o dismounting the network drive, the machine hangs for a full minute before it says the drive was disconnected. 30% of the time I wait two minutes and have to hard reset. On my PBK it was a consistent 15 second wait w/o ever having to hard reset. Perhaps there is something rotten with the wireless engineers at apple. But really a bit of testing should have smoked these problems out. It used to be unusual for something to come out of apple so rough around the edges. As for the iPhone, I really love mine. I haven't had time to play with the hacks and I'm glad I didn't. But I went to the iphone hacks sites yesterday and saw how prolific the extra apps had become. This phone only came out a few months ago and they have lots of useful apps with mature package management systems. It was sad to see such a promising developer community squashed at the dawn of its life.

inklesspen 19y ago
The developer community hasn't been squashed at all. The 'hacking' that causes the iPhone to brick is tampering with the SIM card interface. That's in firmware, and it's sort of to be expected that if you change things there, and then apply an Apple patch without changing things back, things might break. But third-party apps still work, by all reports I've read, as long as you haven't tried to unlock the phone to work on other providers.