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Are we honestly surprised? Apple has a history of being quite hostile to consumers despite their image as a trendy company. Nothing they do is done unless there

by techrat 12y ago

Are we honestly surprised? Apple has a history of being quite hostile to consumers despite their image as a trendy company. Nothing they do is done unless there's an actual threat to their bottom line, whether it's finally offering larger screens for the iPhones, finally making iTunes (partially) DRM free or closing up code/eliminating venues for cross compatibility. Apple is about anti competitive as they get.

geden 12y ago
DRM in iTunes was solely at record companies request. Not an Apple choice. This has been repeatedly covered before. http://news.cnet.com/Apples-Jobs-calls-for-DRM-free-music/2100-1027_3-6156763.html http://news.cnet.com/Apples-Jobs-calls-for-DRM-free-music/21... I would argue that Apples strength is it's ability to make daring technology choices which drives the whole market forward. (Adoption of USB, dropping floppies, CDROMs, introducing iPhone, iPad) and in the long run that is very pro-consumer.
- techrat 12y ago
  Labels who requested that their songs be DRM free in the iTunes store during this era were denied that option. Jobs called for DRM free music because he saw that he was going to run into serious anticompetitive charges if he didn't allow for people to use iTunes purchases outside of iTunes and iPods.
  - zimpenfish 12y ago
    Do you have any fact-based evidence for the second claim?
Terretta 12y ago
> history of being quite hostile to consumers That's going to need some really impressive fact-based justification. I think a good case could be made Apple's the only PC maker focused on making mass market consumers happy (vs enterprise or technology buyers). They've also seemed more focused on the product experience than on market share. - - - Some TL;DR specific thoughts on each of your examples: - "finally offering larger screens for the iPhones" -- the giant screen move feels anti-Samsung, not pro-consumer. There is an ideal one handed screen size, and the 6/6+ are not it. The 5 series was already pushing it. The problem for Apple is in the big box or mobile store, bigger looks better. In every day use, once the phone is part of you, one handed becomes natural when right sized. (If you've only used bigger, you don't know any better.) In the store handling with two hands, you don't realize it won't go well. Buying experience and using experiences are at odds here, though I grant the bigger screens are nice when you are not mobile. - "finally making iTunes (partially) DRM free" -- it's well documented that movie, TV, and record industry execs were the problem here, not tech providers, and Apple's fight to liberate music was quite public. - cross compatibility -- this is a bugaboo (something that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance). with rapidly evolving technologies, it's extraordinarily difficult to have an end to end ecosystem 'just work' for normals not interested in diagnosing why it fails. Apple controls that end to end to make sure it works. Even then, things happen, like the Airport Extremes and iOS 8 WiFi, but because they control both, they can release updates to both to fix it. They don't have to support the lowest common denominator, they can push for performance and stability both. The bargain a user makes with Apple is "buy into the ecosystem, get peace of mind and eliminate the need for a tech guru."
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Well, I remember another Apple, back in the 80-90's. Not the open source friendly one, that developers that only know Apple since Mac OS X days seem to think about.
  - davidw 12y ago
    Exactly - Apple has always been about control. Back when Microsoft was building up their software monopoly, Apple was aiming for control of both hardware and software. Maybe they require it for their users' benefit or something, or say they do, but Apple is very much about control in a way that I, as a hackerish kind of guy, am not ok with for the core of my computer usage. My parents have Macs on the other hand, and are very happy with them - it seems to be a good system for the kind of people who don't hack on stuff and like the tight integration.
    - halostatue 12y ago
      It’s also a good system for people who don’t have time to hack on things that aren’t related to their core interests. Like me. I stopped building my own PCs in 2001 (when I switched to laptops almost exclusively) and stopped fighting with both Windows and Linux desktop configuration horrors in 2006 (when I switched to Mac OS X as my host system). I have things that I think are far more interesting to work on than worrying about hardware compatibility. If I ever reach a point on Apple hardware + software where I can’t hack on the things that I want to hack on, then I will leave it. But as of right now, it gets out of my way and lets me do those things that I want to do. (Some of the various Linux distros have gotten better about this, but they aren’t there yet, even for me—and definitely not for my wife.)
      - dingaling 12y ago
        > I have things that I think are far more interesting to work on than worrying about hardware compatibility. I've never used an Apple system, but I have the impression that only a subset of third-party hardware is compatible. Is that accurate? I've perhaps deduced incorrectly from the number of one-star Amazon reviews that decry 'lack of Apple drivers'. To me that would be frustrating since there are only two parties that can resolve such an issue ( Apple and the vendor ) rather than in OSS world where there's a chance of reverse-engineering a driver.

by techrat 12y ago

geden 12y ago

DRM in iTunes was solely at record companies request. Not an Apple choice. This has been repeatedly covered before. http://news.cnet.com/Apples-Jobs-calls-for-DRM-free-music/2100-1027_3-6156763.html http://news.cnet.com/Apples-Jobs-calls-for-DRM-free-music/21... I would argue that Apples strength is it's ability to make daring technology choices which drives the whole market forward. (Adoption of USB, dropping floppies, CDROMs, introducing iPhone, iPad) and in the long run that is very pro-consumer.

techrat 12y ago
Labels who requested that their songs be DRM free in the iTunes store during this era were denied that option. Jobs called for DRM free music because he saw that he was going to run into serious anticompetitive charges if he didn't allow for people to use iTunes purchases outside of iTunes and iPods.
- zimpenfish 12y ago
  Do you have any fact-based evidence for the second claim?

Terretta 12y ago

> history of being quite hostile to consumers That's going to need some really impressive fact-based justification. I think a good case could be made Apple's the only PC maker focused on making mass market consumers happy (vs enterprise or technology buyers). They've also seemed more focused on the product experience than on market share. - - - Some TL;DR specific thoughts on each of your examples: - "finally offering larger screens for the iPhones" -- the giant screen move feels anti-Samsung, not pro-consumer. There is an ideal one handed screen size, and the 6/6+ are not it. The 5 series was already pushing it. The problem for Apple is in the big box or mobile store, bigger looks better. In every day use, once the phone is part of you, one handed becomes natural when right sized. (If you've only used bigger, you don't know any better.) In the store handling with two hands, you don't realize it won't go well. Buying experience and using experiences are at odds here, though I grant the bigger screens are nice when you are not mobile. - "finally making iTunes (partially) DRM free" -- it's well documented that movie, TV, and record industry execs were the problem here, not tech providers, and Apple's fight to liberate music was quite public. - cross compatibility -- this is a bugaboo (something that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance). with rapidly evolving technologies, it's extraordinarily difficult to have an end to end ecosystem 'just work' for normals not interested in diagnosing why it fails. Apple controls that end to end to make sure it works. Even then, things happen, like the Airport Extremes and iOS 8 WiFi, but because they control both, they can release updates to both to fix it. They don't have to support the lowest common denominator, they can push for performance and stability both. The bargain a user makes with Apple is "buy into the ecosystem, get peace of mind and eliminate the need for a tech guru."

pjmlp 12y ago
Well, I remember another Apple, back in the 80-90's. Not the open source friendly one, that developers that only know Apple since Mac OS X days seem to think about.
- davidw 12y ago
  Exactly - Apple has always been about control. Back when Microsoft was building up their software monopoly, Apple was aiming for control of both hardware and software. Maybe they require it for their users' benefit or something, or say they do, but Apple is very much about control in a way that I, as a hackerish kind of guy, am not ok with for the core of my computer usage. My parents have Macs on the other hand, and are very happy with them - it seems to be a good system for the kind of people who don't hack on stuff and like the tight integration.
  - halostatue 12y ago
    It’s also a good system for people who don’t have time to hack on things that aren’t related to their core interests. Like me. I stopped building my own PCs in 2001 (when I switched to laptops almost exclusively) and stopped fighting with both Windows and Linux desktop configuration horrors in 2006 (when I switched to Mac OS X as my host system). I have things that I think are far more interesting to work on than worrying about hardware compatibility. If I ever reach a point on Apple hardware + software where I can’t hack on the things that I want to hack on, then I will leave it. But as of right now, it gets out of my way and lets me do those things that I want to do. (Some of the various Linux distros have gotten better about this, but they aren’t there yet, even for me—and definitely not for my wife.)
    - dingaling 12y ago
      > I have things that I think are far more interesting to work on than worrying about hardware compatibility. I've never used an Apple system, but I have the impression that only a subset of third-party hardware is compatible. Is that accurate? I've perhaps deduced incorrectly from the number of one-star Amazon reviews that decry 'lack of Apple drivers'. To me that would be frustrating since there are only two parties that can resolve such an issue ( Apple and the vendor ) rather than in OSS world where there's a chance of reverse-engineering a driver.