One Bad Apple

Wow! After I read this article I have decided I will no longer be reading Newsweek. This person really needs to get a grip on reality, get their facts straight, and well... You know what? I'm not even going to rip apart this article for the numerous lies and misleading information. Ryan Block from Engadget / AOL already did a great job at ripping this apart at www.RyanBlock.com. Good luck Newsweek, you've lost another subscriber!

Wow! After I read this article I have decided I will no longer be reading Newsweek. This person really needs to get a grip on reality, get their facts straight, and well... You know what? I'm not even going to rip apart this article for the numerous lies and misleading information. Ryan Block from Engadget / AOL already did a great job at ripping this apart at www.RyanBlock.com. Good luck Newsweek, you've lost another subscriber!

Gaining market share through innovation is not monopoly. So they put out a better product than other companies, then said companies couldn't match. That is pure and simple innovation. That is really far from what Microsoft did in the 90s, which had nothing to do with innovation. If Microsoft were in the 90s what Apple is now, we would have a much better Windows OS and other interesting Microsoft products. However, Microsoft never created something truly breathtaking, just... plain, or worse.

I say let Apple become the new Microsoft (even if they are not behaving like MS), and let's see what MS will do then. They will not just stand by and let market share be swept away from their grasp. Whether they want it or not, they will have to come up with something that will make them relevant again. Hopefully they will do something along the lines of innovation, and not any of the 90s style operations.

Maybe I'm being naive, but this could leave some open space for a third player on the field. The more the merrier, I always say.

Apple has always been trying to control its own ecosystems for 2 decades - there's nothing new about that, and it doesn't make them like Microsoft is now or used to be. Apple is more successful today than it has been in the past, but most people in the US can still live their lives and operate their businesses without buying a single Apple product. You can't say that about Microsoft ten years ago or now. This may just mean Microsoft has been more successful in forcing itself into Americans' daily lives than Apple has, but that one difference is extremely important. Monopoly behavior only hurts the public when the company that is committing that behavior is a real monopoly.

"Microsoft controls both the operating system and the applications that run on top of it.."

Simply not true...that's quite the opposite of its strategy to allow developers to be free to create and innovate. The OS maybe, and hello, it is its product, but the applications aspect, not true.

Wow... what a bunch of whiny mac fanatics here! "Oh no! Please don't say anything bad about oh holy mac and Pope Steve! Blasphemy! How dare you write a technology opinion piece with an opinion!" Spare me... like you people wouldn't hypocritically stand up and cheer at a Microsoft hit piece.

People need to get over operating system zealotry. OSX, Window, and Linux are all good and bad. I use them all and none of them are perfect. I think overall Apple is a great company that produces very good products. But this article makes interesting points about what will happen if they continue to get bigger and bigger? Can they keep it together if (like with Microsoft) most of the people using their products are not Mac fanatics and won't cut Apple slack like they have been cut by the majority of their dedicated user base up to this point? I'm not a Mac fanatic but I own and love my Macbook Pro. When I complained about Applecare customer service last week to my Mac friends, they drank the koolaid and found ways to rationalize how Apple screwing me was okay. Huh?

There are very interesting discussions to be had about how things are evolving in technology with the rise of Google and Apple and many good pieces coming out on the discussion (like the "Evil/Genius" cover article in Wired). Just don't try having these discussions with a "Mac person"...

Wow... what a bunch of whiny mac fanatics here! "Oh no! Please don't say anything bad about oh holy mac and Pope Steve! Blasphemy! How dare you write a technology opinion piece with an opinion!" Spare me... like you people wouldn't hypocritically stand up and cheer at a Microsoft hit piece.

People need to get over operating system zealotry. OSX, Window, and Linux are all good and bad. I use them all and none of them are perfect. I think overall Apple is a great company that produces very good products. But this article makes interesting points about what will happen if they continue to get bigger and bigger? Can they keep is together if (like with Microsoft) most of the people using their products are Mac fanatics won't cut Apple slack like they have been cut by the majority of their dedicated user base up to this point? I'm not a Mac fanatic but I own and love my Macbook Pro. When I complained about Applecare customer service last week to my Mac friends, they drank the koolaid found ways to rationalize why I was being screwed. Huh?

There are very interesting discussions to be had about how things are evolving in technology with the rise of Google and Apple and many good pieces coming out on the discussion (like the "Evil/Genius" cover article in Wired). Just don't try having these discussions with a "Mac person"...

Apple is to computers as the Clintons are to politics. Hense you couldn't pay me to own an apple product just like you couldn't pay me to vote for a Clinton. Yet there are still millions of misguided souls out there that love the crap each of these things sell the public.

Steve Jobs has ALWAYS been a monopolist at heart. His life-long ambition is to own every single aspect of computers: the raw materials, the hardware, the OS, the applications, the distribution channels, etc. He had a dream: sand enters one end of a factory, and Apple products come flying out the other end, with Steve/God Jobs in the middle, controlling it all. And the suckers praise him for his hubris and buy his shiny trinkets.

No matter; deteriorating health means he isn't long for this world.

Steve Jobs has ALWAYS been a monopolist at heart. His life-long ambition is to own every single aspect of computers: the raw materials, the hardware, the OS, the applications, the distribution channels, etc. He had a dream: sand enters one end of a factory, and Apple products come flying out the other end, with Steve/God Jobs in the middle, controlling it all. And the suckers praise him for his hubris and buy his shiny trinkets.

No matter; deteriorating health means he isn't long for this world.

what are you, and idiot?

Still angry that Apple shut you out and gave all the news to Time and Forbes. Sad really. Pathetic but sad.

I need to bring this article to my companies' directors and let them know that they (our company) can't improve our products because that might harm our competitors :) It's a shame the people who bought the September 15th issue had to read this story. Hopefully the rest of the articles are a bit better balanced.

RE: "A year ago a small company called Vudu was winning rave reviews for its dynamite little box that attaches to the TV and downloads movies from the Internet"

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You've got it in reverse. Most of the OTHER companies the parasites.

Apple came out with Apple TV first. Vudu came out later, and then Vudu complained when Apple upgraded Apple TV. Apple AWAYS upgrades is products and services. Why should this, or any of the other products & service on which you've commented, be any different?

Apple is one of the very few companies that has a schedule for upgrades and updates on virtually all of its products and services. That's what is so great about Apple: continued refresh and enhancements.

The time when a product or service could stand still is now left to the Stone Age.

You are just another throwback to the communist way of thought that anything capitalist is bad.

Go back home and light your candles and read a good book!

"A Bigfoot that squeezes smaller competitors"? The writer evidently does not understand Apple's business model that has enabled it to maintain tight control over quality. When Windows 3.0 arrived, I abandoned the Mac because I wanted a wider choice of hardware and software, and lower prices. After 15 years of spending way too much of my free time diagnosing problems with my home PCs and home network, I abandoned Windows last Christmas. I have now had 9 months of trouble-free computing with the Apple Airport Extreme wireless router, and 2 Macs and counting. My plan is to add 2 more Macs to my home before year-end. If Apple needs to act the way it has to ensure quality products and experience, then I'm all for it. The clueless can cling on to MS and their unreliable Wintel machines. I now plan to dump my shares in MS stock as soon as it recovers.

Thank you! I've never understood the Apple mystique anyway.

Boycott Apple! Microsoft is now the underdog.

Hopefully that means that Microsoft has evolved
into a company that encourages small businesses
and will help jump start our economy.

Apple has produced many great products but I don't own a single one. I've always disliked Apple's closed monopolistic attitude. This isn't new and Apple has always operated this way, they just didn't have the market share that MS did so it wasn't as apparent. Apple's hardware was a close proprietary system from the beginning and their software is also tightly controlled. I refuse to buy from Apple until they learn to play with others. Apple fans are so in love and blind they don't realize that Apple is guilty many times over of things they trash MS for. As Apple gains more and more market share their monopolistic ways will become more and more apparent.