upvoted because you're right, but still apple is evil and i don't like them, i don't know if their awesomeness comes from their evilness or despite it.
Apple makes products, and runs their company like a company trying to maximize their profits. You either buy their products, or you don't. Until they start clubbing seals with iPhones or something, I don't see them as "evil", just a company with shareholders in mind.
The word evil is starting to get thrown around a little to much these days. Maybe we should save it for when it truly applies.
To be fair though, Microsoft is pretty much the company people think of when you mention an evil corporation (in the tech world), and I think they are criticized for largely the same thing. Cohesive, all inclusive environments that provide everything they think you want.
I think evil is bandied about as a proxy for "this corporation operates in a way detrimental to a world I would like to see", or something like that. In which case, I think the label is well deserved for both.
I actually call them evil entirely because they seem not to understand what makes products good and consistent and usable, and yet they spend billions trying to improve their products. Their solutions are thoroughly unintuitive, I've found.
It's not evil so much as it is closed-mindedness. And yes, that's what makes Apple so awesome.
You can't be uncompromising in your feature set and design if you don't hold control over every small aspect of your software and hardware. Apple has decided that they know what's best for their operating system, and that other people aren't allowed to undermine them. It means that programmers have to conform and that hardware designers can't use Apple at all. The result is that users don't have many options, but that all their options are good ones; Apple employees are much better-suited to fixing computer problems than retail employees for other companies; and designers get to focus less on overall design and more on their features. It's a win-win-win.
Say you get to install Apple on a virtual box on your computer. You lose the multitouch capacity, if you're using a laptop, because multitouch pads are rare outside of Apple notebooks. That means you're operating at a loss already, that Apple's system isn't working exactly how Apple wants it to. You also lose the preset keyboard controls for stopping and starting music, you lose keyboards that light up in the dark, you lose buttons for Expose and Dashboard and ejecting CDs. You lose the Command key. In other words, you're suddenly using an operating system that isn't operating at its full capacity. Apple doesn't want that: Steve Jobs is famously quoted as saying that he could make his computers cheaper, but only at the cost of quality and reputation, and that in his mind quality ought to be the top concern for getting a computer. Is that evil? Because I think it's highly principled.
The loss is openness, and that's where you're getting "evil" from. (I'd assume.) The problem with open is that it's unfocused. You can't demand the same level of quality with open that you can with a closed, rigid system. And in my eyes, that's the evil route. The people who say they wish Microsoft and Apple would crumble and fall away because they charge money for their systems are people who're saying that they'd do away with an incredibly efficient system for the sake of something that's buggy and unstable, which is pretty smug and stupid in my opinion.
Translation: I like it when I am mistreated by Apple because I can believe it is part of some greater purpose.
(I think this is a very meaningless argument. Some people care about one thing, other people care about other things. Products may be judged by different criteria by different people.)
It's a meaningless argument in that the two sides won't agree. But I think it's useful in that some people are interested in the opinions from both sides. And I don't like people calling Apple "evil." It's immature.
Translation: I like it when I am mistreated by Apple because I can believe it is part of some greater purpose.
So, was my argument entirely invalid? Because I thought I did an okay job of explaining why being "evil" wasn't actually evil.
In my opinion, Dell and Microsoft mistreat their customers, because they sacrifice quality for customization. I understand their viewpoint but they turn out the inferior product. If Apple's "mistreatment" means excellent screens, keyboards, designs, specs, and software, then by all means let them go ahead.
If Microsoft's "mistreatment" means they produce solidly reliable integrated systems such as their clusterable database server which integrates permissions with their directory service and supports hosting code written in their server/desktop/mobile/web programming language and framework and has its own reporting server which integrates with their web server which can also host code written in the same programming language and framework, the same language that's used to customise their collaboration portal and office application suite, then let them go ahead.
Microsoft sacrifice quality for customisation? Hah. I dislike it because it's so high quality and uncustomisable. Means you can't do what you want with it, but the boss loves it.
Microsoft sacrifice quality for customisation? Hah. I dislike it because it's so high quality and uncustomisable. Means you can't do what you want with it, but the boss loves it.
Then that's very different from their OS set-up, which allows for a lot of options at the expense of unification and aesthetic pleasure. I haven't used what you talk about, but if they do that then good for them. I still think they do their OS customers a disservice.
It's not evil so much as it is closed-mindedness, he says while characterising fans of open systems as "evil, smug, stupid" and favouring buggy and unstable software.
POP3 is open. SMTP is open. IMAP is open. Microsoft make money from Exchange which deals with all three. C# is an open standard, Microsoft make money from it; it's high quality and reliable. Java is an open standard, Sun make money from licensing it, it's Enterprise class. RedHat is open source, RedHat Inc. make money from supporting it, it's used in Enterprises accross the world.
Open, good quality, focused, reliable, profitable, they're not all the same thing.
You named three open formats that don't require anything but coding to push back and forth. You named two programs that are open, but I've used Java: it's an ugly language. It results in really ugly programs. Universal programs, but ugly ones. I haven't used C# or Red Hat, but I've heard bad things about Red Hat.
Apple does support open standards. Look at WebKit. What they don't support is releasing everything they make openly. Usually, the rule of thumb is as follows: if the product's quality would suffer from being open, they don't make it open. If it works completely open, they release it as such. The problem is that in a lot of cases, opening things means inviting opposing beliefs. And that means that you get a bunch of sub-optimal choices, and that results in a lot of noise and a lot of low-quality options. Apple prides themselves on having a very reliable brand name. They couldn't do that if they were as open as Microsoft, and they couldn't turn out such good programs.
And as I said on this thread: Jobs is famous for having said that he'd rather make a high quality product than lower his standards and make more money. And he's making billions and churning out good things, so I'll trust that he knows what he's doing, and that part of what he's doing is closing things that ought to be closed.
