Please explain how I mis-used the term, considering the definition is: In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs.
I didn't say this incident is the result of incompetence, I am saying their developers have illustrated a lack of competence in the past. Breaking with third party fonts installed. Breaking iPhone updates that require the use of another computer to fix a broken patch. The list goes on and on.
If the product in question is a netbook form factor. Apple does not produce this type of product however they do no impede a customer's ability to buy one from another vendor. You can walk into BestBuy and get one in about 15 minutes. Apple doesn't have a bunch of thugs wearing two layers of brightly colored polo shirts there to stop you by taking your credit card and forcing you to buy a MacBook instead. Additionally Apple offers software for Windows to interoperate with their services: iTunes for iPods/iPhones and iTunes Store and also a MobileMe control panel. They also offer QuickTime & Safari for Windows.
If you want to use Apple's operating system then you have to buy an Apple computer. If that prevents you from buying the type of machine you want I would seriously reconsider using Apple's operating system in the first place. Other companies such as Microsoft have a business model of selling software so they don't care what hardware you buy. Apple makes it quite easy to install Windows on a Mac so they don't lock you into using OSX on their hardware. Apple is a hardware company. Your example of vendor lock-in would be more along the lines of going to an Dell Store (I know they don't exist, play along) and demanding they sell you an Apple computer instead.
The problem with this line of arguing is that Apple's entire marketing strategy is about how an Apple is better than a Windows machine. Thus, their product, contrary to what you are saying, is not hardware, it's software. Their ads say nothing about hardware manufacturers, they say everything about Windows. It's not Mac Book's are faster than Dells. It's Apple's are more secure than Windows. It's about Windows 7 vs Apple, not HP vs Apple.
Therefore, inhibiting a consumer's ability to run that product, which is OSX as much as it is a physical device, is vendor lock-in. It is vendor lockin, because they are saying, "To run our product, OSX, you must buy Mac Hardware."
I think that's a slippery slope to go down as far as what is predatory vendor lock-in and what is not. It is most definitely vendor lock-in if you had to use an iPod ($200) with a Mac because the software only works on Apple hardware ($600, can break and may need to be replaced within a year). Whereas with OSX, you purchase it with the intent to use it on your Mac that already came preloaded with an older version of OSX.
Does the software work on PC? Sort of, but it's unsupported. Should they be forced to support it? Probably not, because it may heavily impact their business model, bottom line, and stability. What if they don't want the no-name-brand manufacturer to make customers think their product (OSX) sucks?
The fact is that Microsoft locks in customers by mere quantity. OSX has prestige and quality, but it requires the customer to acknowledge they don't have a genuine choice in hardware vendors unless they want to manipulate it into working (although I do think Apple's license is dumb with regard to saying it can't be (pre)installed on a PC).
I think you are simply biased against microsoft and pro apple. What Apple is doing, if they are intentionally not working on ATOM is essentially what Microsoft would be doing if it didn't allow its software to run on apple hardware.
Vendor lockin, whether intentional, or simply because the vendor doesn't care to make their products work with others, or whatever, doesn't change the vendor lockin.
It's not that they don't care -- it's not their business model. I believe a company should have the right to control their own products as long as they are not breaking any laws.
Okay, that's fine, but it's still vendor lock-in. I don't know why it's so hard to understand. If you buy a product and use it and then you can't get out or switch or use the product with some other hardware or whatever, it's vendor lock-in. You are locked into that vendor. If you buy a Mac and put a bunch of files on it that only work on a Mac and your Mac crashes, you can't restore the backups to a windows machine or an ATOM processor machine.
Thus, you're locked in. Thus, vendor lock-in. It's pretty cut and dry really.
Apple has an HFS+ implementation for Windows included in their BootCamp package. There are various utilities for Windows that can also access HFS+ volumes in userspace including MacDrive, TransMac and HFS Explorer. Additionally Linux supports HFS+ and Apple's own HFS+ implementation is open source. (you could actually boot Darwin on any PC and access the data that way) Anyway..
All closed source software is inherently vendor locked. If that's the point you're trying to make I agree. It seems we were talking about how a company chooses to sell their closed source software which is a different issue. For example, if I had all my data on an NTFS formatted drive I would need a Windows computer to read that data (ignoring for now there are other ways of doing this via third party tools -- but none of them are developed or supported by Microsoft) My choice is HP, Dell, Acer, etc but I'm still vendor locked to Microsoft. Same deal. Microsoft abstracts their vendor lock away from hardware in the PC world -- in other areas such as the Zune, Xbox 360 they also include hardware. Open source is the only way to be free from vendor lock for people who are concerned about it. For the most part there are simple work arounds in the closed source world so it's not usually a major problem. (which is why most people don't care I think)
> Please explain how I mis-used the term, considering the definition is: In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs.
In what way does Apple lock you in? If you manage to switch to Apple, which is the more difficult task since you clearly have to buy their hardware and can't re-use what you already have, then switching away is as simple as installing Linux or Windows on the Apple hardware.
> I didn't say this incident is the result of incompetence, I am saying their developers have illustrated a lack of competence in the past. Breaking with third party fonts installed. Breaking iPhone updates that require the use of another computer to fix a broken patch. The list goes on and on.
