

Apple is “Evil” and Facebook is “a Photo-sharing Site” - jordanmessina
http://gigaom.com/2010/07/21/fred-wilson-apple-is-evil-and-facebook-is-a-photo-sharing-site/

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younata
Every company "believe['s] they know what is best for you and me." The entire
point of a company is to create stuff that's best for the customer.

~~~
emanuer
You are so right about this.

The thing is, I actually also do believe Apple is evil, as is almost every
business on our planet. Apple wants to protect it's assets by keeping a very
tight control over the ecosystem around it's products. Pharmacy companies pay
politicians to get their drugs approved. The tobacco industry has a great
interest that it's products get smuggled. Insurance companies... don't get me
started on them.

I am guessing what Mr Wilson meant was: "Apple believes to know what is best
for me and gets it right more often than not. And after everyone bought their
somehow superior product they only allow me to enter the market they created,
if I play after their rules. And I don't like that. I want the freedom to sell
any kind of software to people without someone babysitting me."

Well I don't know if he really meant that by saying "Apple is evil", but I do
know that if one calls Apple evil, there has to be a new adjective invented
for insurance companies, weapon producers and the pharma industry.

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fredwilson
i was purposefully trying to be controversial and we were playing a word
association game on stage. so take this whole thing with a big grain of salt.

i think they are being a gatekeeper and i don't like gatekeepers very much.
they aren't good for entrepreneurs and hackers

~~~
jsz0
I think the wild-west model is usually not very good for _users_ to the same
way the gatekeeper model is usually not good for hackers. Maybe we need more
janitors instead.

~~~
sorbus
Wouldn't every conventional operating system be using the wild-west model?
Windows, OSX, even Linux[1][2]: if you need a program, you go out onto the
internet and look for it.

[1] At least, it can be used that way. It fits the Janitor model much better
when using repositories to install programs, or at least what I imagine the
Janitor model to be (weakly curated system with misbehaving applications
removed).

[2] I'm also ignoring all of the less common/lower profile operating systems,
because the only one I can name is BSD and I've never used it.

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jbail
The original post on VentureBeat includes a comment from Fred Wilson himself.
He was speaking at an event and was being a bit controversial on purpose.

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whakojacko
I would hope so, I have a lot of respect for Fred Wilson and those are pretty
obviously troll comments. He would have probably loved to be an early-round
investor in facebook right about now (Of course, who wouldnt).

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peregrine
I'm not sure I agree with his points on Google, while GMail was
innovative(still is) I'd say Android is tearing up the mobile market and
showing no sign of slowing down. Apple opened the door and holds a big piece
of the pie but so does Android.

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waqf
Also, the Pope is "Catholic".

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cletus
When Fred Wilson speaks, you have to pay attention. He's nearly always got
something interesting to say and agree or disagree, his opinion carries a lot
of weight.

That being said, you also have to remember that Fred isn't just speaking as an
insightful guy with a lot of experience, he's also speaking as a managing
partner of USV. As an angel investor or VC it seems you most often are an
advocate or evangelist for your portfolio companies.

He also disses Gowalla but Foursquare is USV-backed and Gowalla isn't. The
counterargument is that Foursquare is a portfolio company and Gowalla isn't
precisely for the reasons he cites but you have to consider the evangelism POV
too.

As for Facebook, saying every Website (and indeed the Web as a whole) is a
social graph sounds a little like equivocation to me. It is clearly the
juggernaut in the room. Think of Facebook as the country in which you live and
all these other Websites are local clubhouses. That's the kind of disparity
we're talking about.

For many people FB is a photo-sharing site. For others it's a chat site and a
site to pick up people. For yet others it's a casual gaming site. Often it's
many of these things for people. FB is many things to many people.

Fred has also said that FB has basically won and it's here for a generation,
which doesn't seem to gel has likening it to Flickr. Take that how you will.

~~~
AmericanOP
About Gowalla he said 'it's tough playing second fiddle.' They are, and it is.
I just want to point out he was factually correct despite being hyperbolic. He
also said every (major) website has a social graph, not is a social graph. His
point was more that he didn't think yahoo et al would be interested in linking
with fb for that reason.

~~~
cletus
I agree that Gowalla is playing second fiddle and the smart money is on
Foursquare, not just because they were/are first but because they seem to be
killing it, but many second-comers have succeeded (eg Facebook, Google,
Microsoft).

Anyway, to borrow a term I heard from Mark Suster, I view all these location
startups are FNACs (feature not a company).

~~~
AmericanOP
At the Geo Loco event there was a panel specifically discussing whether
location startups are businesses or features. So far they are coupon
companies. Nothing wrong with that.

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etherael
Evil is too broad.

Apple is machiavellian. As much as I dislike them who could fault them for
that after their history?

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cletus
I don't think you can call Apple "evil". Arguably you can call it "cynical"
however.

Apple's philosophy is to make decisions for you, the consumer. Steve said
exactly that in his D8 interview. Frankly, most people like that. Apple makes
decisions about stuff most people don't care about.

To explain the "cynical" part, I'll make a tenuous parallel to Thomas
Jefferson who said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Ultimately, people are responsible for keeping themselves informed, not
creating monopolies, not giving too much power to certain people, governments
or companies and so on so the Apple strategy is fanning ignorance because,
let's face it, most people want to enjoy "freedom" without having to actually
do anything about it.

