I've got a double feeling about this whole situation:
On one hand, I like the mobile devices Apple offers. I love my iPhone (by far the best phone I've ever had) and my iPod Classic. They're cool, beautifull, and efficient devices that do what I want them to do and they do it well.
On the other hand, I've worked with an iMac and a Powerbook before and I hated it. Why? Because it's waaaay too constrictive! This goes for hardware as well as software: I want to be able to decide what I put on my machine, because I paid my hard-earned cash for it and feels like a slap in the face when I don't even have total freedom to do as I please with it!
Bottom line (and I'm sure everyone has heard this before): Apple is great if you want a device that works exactly like it should and does what it's supposed to do, while looking good.
However, if you want a machine / device that allows freedom and performs in a matter that you want it to, Apple definately isn't your thing.
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One Bad Apple
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With its retail stores, Apple controls another ecosystem—the market for iPod and iPhone accessories, like speakers and cases. Apple determines when accessory makers can announce new products, and charges them a variety of fees, including one for putting a MADE FOR IPOD sticker on the items. One iPod accessory maker—who insists on anonymity, as he fears reprisal from Apple—gripes that Apple takes up to 75 percent of the sales price, leaving him with zero profit on some of his products when he sells them in Apple stores. This guy plays along because having his products on display in Apple stores builds awareness of his brand, and he can make a profit selling his speaker systems through Best Buy, Target and Circuit City.
Apple's tactics might seem like smart business: why not squeeze every penny out of every deal? The problem is that if Apple squeezes too hard, some partners may go out of business, harming the ecosystem. Bully behavior also invites backlash, as it did for Microsoft when that company rose to power in the 1990s. In the U.K., a regulatory board has banned an Apple advertisement that claimed its iPhone gives you "all the parts of the Internet," when the phone won't display information created using Flash or Java, two popular Web software programs. In Alabama, a woman has filed a class-action lawsuit because her new 3G iPhone won't always attach to a 3G network, which provides faster wireless Web downloads. In July customers howled when Apple rolled out MobileMe, a new online service for synchronizing personal data to the iPhone and iTouch that wound up having some pretty serious glitches. Apple offered three months of free service to subscribers as a form of appeasement.
In the old days, stuff like this didn't matter. Apple was such a fringe player that nobody really cared how the company behaved. I wonder sometimes if Apple misses those days.
© 2008
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