02-07-2012, 04:02 PM
I think I'm at the point where I would refuse to buy an Apple product purely because I don't like their business practices or want to support some kind of lawyer-enforced monopoly.
Most businesses have a model wherein they try and keep the customer engaged by simply being better than everyone else. Apple's model is to keep the customer engaged by invoking lawyers to stomp on competitors and creating proprietary hardware traps that will be hard for the customer to get out of -- not by being superior, as with Netflix's interface, but simply by locking you in. "Man this Samsung TV really is better. Oh but my iReceiver and iDVD and iStream won't work with it. Guess I'll just wait for the next iTV." They aren't quite to that extent, but I think their every move says that's where they'd like to be.
I submit iTunes as proof that Apple is more interested in lawyering away competition than they are in creating a good product. I bought an iPod back in the day. I got iTunes. I wanted to like it. It sucked. It still sucks. Once in a while something makes me load it up again ("only on iTunes!") and it just reminds me how bad it sucks. They aren't trying to attract people by improving it so much as they are trying to think of ways to force people to use it.
Imagine what a shitty state television would be in today if whoever invented the first TV had some apparently endless patent on it that prevented anyone from releasing anything similar to a TV. We'd still be sitting here watching black and white 13" TV screens because without competition, there was no big drive to improve. And I think that's exactly where Apple would be, if they could just get the legal systems of the world to cooperate.
Fie on Apple.
Most businesses have a model wherein they try and keep the customer engaged by simply being better than everyone else. Apple's model is to keep the customer engaged by invoking lawyers to stomp on competitors and creating proprietary hardware traps that will be hard for the customer to get out of -- not by being superior, as with Netflix's interface, but simply by locking you in. "Man this Samsung TV really is better. Oh but my iReceiver and iDVD and iStream won't work with it. Guess I'll just wait for the next iTV." They aren't quite to that extent, but I think their every move says that's where they'd like to be.
I submit iTunes as proof that Apple is more interested in lawyering away competition than they are in creating a good product. I bought an iPod back in the day. I got iTunes. I wanted to like it. It sucked. It still sucks. Once in a while something makes me load it up again ("only on iTunes!") and it just reminds me how bad it sucks. They aren't trying to attract people by improving it so much as they are trying to think of ways to force people to use it.
Imagine what a shitty state television would be in today if whoever invented the first TV had some apparently endless patent on it that prevented anyone from releasing anything similar to a TV. We'd still be sitting here watching black and white 13" TV screens because without competition, there was no big drive to improve. And I think that's exactly where Apple would be, if they could just get the legal systems of the world to cooperate.
Fie on Apple.