
The Case Against Apple Is Just As Much A Case For Apple - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/09/the-case-against-apple-is-just-as-much-a-case-for-apple/
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Daishiman
It seems a lot of Apple junkies want to try to justify the failures of "their"
platform (as if no one had anything better to do than be an apologist for what
is, in the end, another computer manufacturer) by saying that the rest of the
stuff that's not being complained about works nicely.

That seems to me like an extremely weak point. Computers may be mostly about
appliance functionality but the real value of one lies in its customizable
parts, and some things are not, in the opinion of a lot of people, negotiable.

Take iTunes. There was absolutely nothing that prevented Apple from
implementing USB syncing, which practically every other music player has
gotten right and there's no way in which anyone would claim it's Apple's fault
if it doesn't work with a player. I don't see how that dilutes Apple's ability
to control its own environment. Oh wait, that means I wouldn't need a crappy
iPod and I could instead manage with any one of thousands of USB mass media-
based players.

Which goes back to the iPod. Wow, was that an inferior product. Apple did not
make a single iPod that was actually a superior player on technical terms
until 2004. Before that a huge number of players from iRiver, Cowon, and many
other smaller players swept the iPod in terms of capability. Hell, my old
iRiver iHP-120 is the only portable DAP I know of that had a digital audio
output, and until the appearance of the iPod Shuffle no other Apple player
came anywhere close in terms of sound quality.

It's not even about the fact that there are better choices of music players;
it's about the fact that a vendor is precluding me from using a component of
my own because their proprietary implementation competes with it, even if I
might not think that badly of Macs, and it costs them absolutely nothing on
their part (save trying to strongarm me into buying their DAP).

By the same token one of the things many people want a phone with the power of
an iPhone is to have a replacement to lugging a portable computer. That
demands an open platform, and as we have seen, Apple has no intention of
letting that happen.

What really surprises me here is the fanboys who can clearly hold the
doublethink that is believing Apple control is better when they have shown
they have no problem with inhibiting users from getting better software than
what they have (Opera, Google Voice, Gutemberg Project, etc.).

I guess Apple is a fine company if you're the sort of complacent, couch-potato
consumer who does what he is told even if it's not for his benefit. Just keep
shelling out cash and you can keep buying into the illusion that you're part
of the computer users who "think different".

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ajg1977
Some of these rebuttals are incredibly flimsy, where they actually even manage
to form something resembling a rebut.

For example - How on earth is being prevented from using a flash-capable web
browser (or any non-Safari browser) a case for using the iPhone?

~~~
fatdog789
With apple products, it's more about what you can't do with the products that
makes them special.

Not being able to use flash is a feature....somehow.

~~~
pohl
The reason becomes more clear if you use a Mac. Adobe has only bothered to
deliver bare-minimum performance on MacOS X, even on the newer Intel hardware.
The thought that they could somehow pull off an ARM runtime that performs with
modest battery draw seems extremely unlikely.

~~~
dejb
Flash for pocketpc seems to work OK. Shouldn't the user be able to decide if
they can spare the battery power. Most people would have a charger handy at
work so I don't see what the problem is if you do need to recharge anyway.

~~~
pohl
Flash for desktop windows is ok, too. Maybe Adobe's problem is that they won't
allocate the necessary talent to get OSX right. One thing is for certain: if
they can't make it fast on desktop OSX they'll not likely deliver on mobile
OSX. If I were Apple I'd make Adobe fix their desktop version before I'd let
them near my phone.

About giving users enough rope to hang themselves: for every one user like you
that could make a conscious tradeoff there are thousands who would never
connect the dots between Adobe and battery life.

That's not a business risk I would take if I were Apple. I can take a few
ubernerds whining about flash off in some remote corner of the web. I couldn't
take Jay Leno making battery jokes in his monologue.

~~~
dejb
> About giving users enough rope to hang themselves: for every one user like
> you that could make a conscious tradeoff there are thousands who would never
> connect the dots between Adobe and battery life.

People are too stupid to be trusted to make decisions for themselves. That's
the Apple philosophy for ya.

~~~
pohl
Restraint is one of the most difficult virtues to practice, and it seems to
frustrate and confuse those who don't understand its value. Adding a feature
to a product is almost reflexive to most vendors; everybody is mindlessly
chasing lists of checkboxes, while ignoring the inherent tradeoffs or
pretending they aren't there. It amazes me how the simple act of saying 'no'
can send people into such a tizzy.

~~~
dejb
Centrally imposed restraint is different from self control. We aren't talking
them deciding not to add a feature. We are talking about them actively
preventing others from being able to do so. That's not restraint. That's
totalitarianism.

~~~
pohl
There is no imposition upon you. You are free to buy any competing phone that
strikes a feature-tradeoff balance that is more to your liking.

~~~
dejb
True platforms that scale are more than just their physical manifestations of
phone or computers. They are like ecosystems, marketplaces, economies, even
societies. In the end the strength of a platform is the combined efforts of
all it's 'citizens'. The systems that govern how those participants relate to
each other is much like a government. As such I'm arguing that the iPhone has
a poor system of government and will intimately be about as successful as the
other large scale totalitarian systems.

Now if you were to argue that the iPhone shouldn't be viewed as a platform
then you might have a valid point.

~~~
pohl
I always wondered what sort of tortured mental gymnastics were required to
rationalize a sense of entitlement for flash runtimes. And all this time I
thought I was picking up a faint whiff of Marx, and the muffled whimpers of
baby-proletariat hungry for mother government to expose her teat.

Thank you, but I'll just vote with my consumer dollar for platform B if I
don't like platform A.

~~~
dejb
Nice sentence structure. Bad Logic. Successful products usually DO fulfil a
sense of entitlement for their consumers.

Some structures scale and others don't. Time wasted with a poorly structured
system holds things back, just like Marxism did. Think of all those poor
soviets with great ideas (for apps?) only for them to be rejected by central
control.

I just want good stuff and in the long term, a locked-down system isn't going
to deliver.

~~~
pohl
I don't think that word means what you think it means. Successful products
usually fulfill expectations of legal rights or just claims? Really?

It may fulfill some needs or desires, but only rarely a sense of entitlement.
If that's what you want a product to do, I suggest that you buy an Android-
based phone, and perhaps contribute to the project. After all, if you think
that's the recipe for product success, we'll soon see it eclipse the iPhone,
right?

~~~
dejb
Do a search for "sense of entitlement" (quoted). You are the one who used the
phrase first so you should at least try to understand what it means.

