Posted on 08/22/2015 10:43:19 PM PDT by Swordmaker
There is so much to admire about Apple. They make superb, beautiful products. Their amazing comeback story is unparalleled in corporate history. Steve Jobs has become something akin to a modern-day patron saint of the tech industry. Tim Cook is, rightly, enormously respected.
So why do I think they represent so much of what’s wrong with the tech world?
It’s because they have, I think, an almost Shakespearean tragic flaw: their obsession with centralized corporate control of the devices they sell. Apple sells fantastic hardware, and excellent software … and tries to maintain an iron-fisted grip on both, throughout their lifespan. Even its defenders tend to admit: “Apple is always arrogant, controlling, and inflexible, and sometimes stingy.”
You are only permitted to download and install software that has been officially approved by Apple onto your iOS device. This isn’t true of OS X, yet, but that’s clearly only because user control is grandfathered in … and arguably being slowly boiled like the proverbial frog.
Let me hasten to admit that this seems like no bad thing for the end user. It acts as a bulwark against malware. And Apple has been admirably pro-privacy, especially of late, despite the skepticism of industry analysts.
Now, this is partly because Apple is not particularly good at advertising or cloud services in general, compared to, say, Google — but also because their implicit bargain is “your personal information is safe with us, because we make our money from selling things to you rather than you to other companies” vs. Google’s “your personal information is safe with us because our advertising division is extremely careful about anonymizing and securing it when we use it to make money.”
(Despite being an occasional equal-opportunity Google-basher, I actually believe that latter claim to be true. I also believe Google’s cloud services are probably more secure than Apple’s. But I can see how people would still feel more uneasy about their implicit bargain with Google.)
All the same, though, this is short-term gain that risks long-term pain. Apple, for all their glory and their genius, is the apotheosis of a philosophy of technology which is fundamentally different from mine: technology as a centrally controlled hegemony unsullied by tinkerers who want to go outside of their sandbox, a walled garden of an ecosystem that is only permitted to evolve when Cupertino initiates the evolution. Only Apple is allowed to think outside the box in which its users live.
Jon Evans is welcome to start and run his own company making products as good as Apple's, but "open".
What's wrong with these people, that they always want something successful to change away from what's making them successful?
They have every opportunity in the world to show BY EXAMPLE how it "should be done" according to their own rules.
BUT THEY DON'T (with rare exceptions), because they're lame-ass haters.
Haters gotta hate. It's what they are. Doesn't matter what they hate -- Apple, Microsoft, Google, IBM, etc.
What they hate is other people's SUCCESS.
Good Lord, a CS degree?!?
Try 25+ years working R&D in industry. A CS degree gives you a job where maybe you can write some script, or sell software. It hardly makes you an expert on software/hardware. It’s laughable - in fact, I think many here are snickering at you. It’s like a 1st year Med student trying to impress a retiring Surgeon.
With the Mac, you can run full fledged UNIX (hint: It’s built on the Darwin kernel); or you can run Ubuntu, Windows XP, 7, 8 and 10 (which I do on my 2012 Mac Mini currently) or a host of almost any other software - WHILE running OS X in the background. There is nothing you can not do on a PC that can’t be done equally well on a Mac; however there are limitless things you can do on a Mac that cannot be done on a Windows PC. Like, oh, well OS X for starters.
Listen and learn - you don’t learn when you are trying to bluster and impress - you only look foolish.
I’ve worked R&D at Intel, and then designed supercomputers for a company called Cray. I have worked for the major computer manufacturers for 20 years, and odds are your motherboard bears many of my designs. If you look at what is going on in a Mac, it is impressive.
I already have, Deagle. You don't have a clue, as I said. You demonstrate a woeful lack of Economic knowledge and are trying to lecture someone who does have that knowledge. . . and doing a poor job of doing it.
No, PJ, you demonstrate the Law of Supply and Demand in action with that statement. The FREE MARKET was not at all at work in the Housing Market.
The government regulators artificially increased the DEMAND side of the equation without simultaneously and instantly increasing the SUPPLY side of the equation by requiring the banks and lenders to accept borrowers who were NOT qualified, thus allowing them to buy houses on credit they otherwise would not be qualified to buy, putting a huge strain on the housing market, forcing prices upward as DEMAND went up while SUPPLY essentially remained the same or slowly increased. SUPPLY of housing is a lagging reaction, as it takes time to build a house or to assemble all the economic inputs necessary to build a housing development. People also found themselves able to demand a bigger house because of those regulations than they could before. ALL artificial.
The "housing market" had very little to do with a FREE MARKET. The government credit regulators had their oily fingers involved in distorting demand.
The computer market is not so constrained except for the purchases made by the Federal government which often as not prohibited the purchase of Apple products.
Apple products even hold their value on the used market. . . which demonstrates the fallacy of your premise. The Total Cost of Ownership of Apple products has always shown itself to be lower than the Total Cost of Ownership of Windows PCs, when all costs are accounted for. . . including cost recovery at end of use.
Why are you trying to sell me on Macs? My shop is all Mac/Linux. We don’t even allow Windows machines on the network.
Actually, I was demonstrating that people buy things for a lot more than they should be because they are stupid. My example of the housing market had nothing to do with how the cost rose, but to the fact that people were still buying an object (in that case a house) for a lot more than it is worth. Even after the bubble burst, the housing market in some areas remained unaffected because stupid people were still willing to pay for something at an outlandish cost.
Just because something holds it value doesn’t mean that its relative cost is outlandish.
Price is what a willing buyer and a willing seller agree on. . . at both ends of the time line. It's what value is made of. . . and you mistake "cost" for "price" and what something costs a user has little to do with price in the long run. The degree of Economic ignorance astounds me on these threads. . . and the lack of understanding of what actually costs people money or the lack of understanding that time equals money and that time savings equals value escapes them.
By-the-way, not too long ago, say about three weeks, I did a comparison of the new Apple Macbook with a Dell laptop that was being offered on their website that was functionally the equivalent. . . same Intel processor, same RAM capacity, same SSD size, same screen size, same weight within reasonable range, etc. The Macbook was ~$50 less expensive. . . but the Mac came with a suite of software including a fully functional office suite, while the Dell came with a load of crap trialware that would have to be either bought or removed. . . which to equal what came free with the Mac, would require expenditures of approximately $400 to match. Now, with Windows 10, you have to subscribe to software such as the DVD player to get even that functionality. Where is the "overpricing"?
When you guys who claim "Apple overprices their products" start comparing Apple products to equivalent quality competitors' products, you might have an argument, but you never do. I have done these comparisons for years here on Freerepublic, and the Apple product, when as closely as possible matched component for component with equivalencies with the mainstream manufacturer PC world is always comparable. . . and then when you add in Apple's software suite, the Mac is considerably better. Add back cost recovery at end of life, and there IS no comparison. The Apple product wins, every time, because the PCs simply do not hold their value. You throw them away when you are done with them, while Apple products can be sold to defray the cost of a new one and often sell for 40%-50% of the cost of the new one, even five or six years down the road.
That did not demonstrate what you thought you were demonstrating. How was even a SMART person in that market going to buy anything for less? Please tell us? They were being outbid by the people with GUARANTEED mortgages in hand, mortgages that normally they could not qualify for, that they could not ever in their lives pay back, that allowed them to outbid the SMART people, like me, who knew the actual utility value of those properties. The ONLY way a smart person could actually buy was to bid as much or more as the stupid people with those false value mortgages in hand. If they did not play the game, they couldn't buy. Sorry, the game was rigged. If you needed to own a new house during that rigged period, you had to play by THOSE RIGGED RULES. It had nothing to do with SMART or STUPID and paying more than they should because of the relative SMARTS. They paid what a willing seller would agree to sell it to them for. . . because if they didn't meet that price, someone else would, even if they really could not qualify for the loan under normal, sane, lending rules.
Hell, I refinanced during that time and the lenders wanted to lend me $800,000 on my house based on the absurd, inflated California housing market on a flex-loan with a five year adjustment balloon . . . while a house across the street, almost identical to mine, was renting for $1300 a month. They said that the flex-loan payment would be only $1500 a month until the balloon came due and then it would be child's play to just refinance.
I laughed in their faces. I knew, being an Economist, that using the Utility Value of that rental price, and others in the area, the MAXIMUM value of my house should have been $195,000 (monthly rental X 150) and more likely less. . . but they insisted on lending me $225,000 instead which I used to remodel and add a master bedroom suite.
When the housing market crashed, that $800,000 value dropped in less than four months to $125K and we still wound up upside down, but certainly not $800,000 upside down (the flex-loan would have added the difference between the flex payment of $1500 and the actual loan payment due every month of over $5500— adding $4000 every month to the balance for five years while still accruing interest!).
As a result, I did not—like so many other homeowners in the US—ruin my credit rating by walking away from an untenable loan and lose my house, because I was smart.
My now ex-wife, at the time was all for taking FLEX loan money and spending it, or do what a lot of people were doing: selling our house and buying one of the HUGE 3600 square foot two-storey new houses the housing industry was building and selling to the NINJA (No Income, No Job, Approved) loan crowd because they could afford to buy them with the fake loan with no qualification to pay them back. We could have handled the full non-flexloan payment, but my argument was the same on the values of the properties. . . the utility value in real estate was simply not there.
We had a place to live, we could improve it to equal those new houses for far less, and our money belonged in investments that were not exaggerated values built on nothing but expectations that could not come true.
Sideloading is an option in the current Xcode beta.
Your point? Side loading software from OS X to iOS has always been available. . . or to do it between various OS X computers. So, I repeat, your point?
Still waiting for you to describe those two clicks which will grant you root on my iPhone. Did you forget where to click?
I don’t mean to call you an idiot, but I have more years in the industry than you. Furthermore, I am an evangelist for UNIX, Linux, and Mac OSX—I have no idea where in the world you got an idea otherwise. I think you might have been responding to another poster.
You have made the same brain dead, BS comparison 1000 times and I have exposed it a 1000x. In the real world 85% of laptop buyers will be happy with a high quality $500 Intel powered laptop like my buddy got a few days ago/////// i5 processor and 8gb memory by Toshiba
Very few need the overspeced overkill of the $2000 Apple and Dell laptops you are comparing. So your comparisons are crap. Utter crap!
Your "utter crap!" laptop will last about two years, if that, and you will have to buy another one. In the six years that Apple Laptops are known to last, you will likely succeed in needing to BUY THREE of your $500 Toshiba junk plastic laptops with low rez screens and low capacity batteries to equal the lifetime usage of the Apple Macbook. The Apple will still have resale value of several hundred dollars at the end of it's time with you, so you sell it to finance your upgrade, while your discount Windows laptop is junk you throw away. . .
DennisW, you've never, ever exposed anything by bringing up a discount laptop comparison except to show you know the price of all the junk, and the value of NOTHING.
Apple does not compete for the bottom of the barrel discount market, which you've been told before, every time you claim that your piece of junk can "do what people need done."
Nor are my "comparisons utter crap" because they compare notebooks and laptops or desktops and workstation grade computers from Apple with the offerings in the SAME competitive levels, targeted toward the same market with the same quality components and configurations. I will NOT compare a quality Apple product with a junk Windows machine as do you. They are NOT "lets find the cheapest computer running Windows and see what price I can find it being sold on close-out discount" and claim it is the equivalent of a high-end, high-performance, high-quality product with a suite of software. BAH! i am willing to bet that your friend's Toshiba doesn't have a 256GB SSD, nor did it weigh under 2 lbs, as did both of the compared laptops I was looking at in my comparison. . . The one I found just now weighed more than TWICE that. . . Oh, and the $549 pricing was on CLOSE-OUT, and it was out of stock! I will say, that as a Windows laptop it was a nice machine.
On the Toshiba website you CAN configure a Portege R30-A1320 laptop that is the almost equivalent of the Dell and Apple I was comparing. . . but the 1366x768 screen resolution (720P) of the Toshiba Portage is not even close to the Apple's 2304 x 1440 Retina display, the battery life of 6-7 hours is no where close to the 14 hours you get with the Apple, its weight is far heavier at 3.37lbs than the Apple's 2 lbs, . . . but Toshiba at $1599 without software, IS $100 more expensive than the Apple with a full suite of software. . . WOW! What a bargain. LOL!
I had prepared this several days ago. . . and I thought I had posted it. . . but it's not here. I wonder what happened to it. There are several methods. Two will even bring up the Terminal with one click:
For UNIX full functionality, have a ROOT user access name and password available and use it to change user in Terminal.
Hey AppleBot!!! Hey Robot!! Still making comparisons that have nothing to do with reality. That 85% of laptop buyers don't need your overspeced, overpriced Apple laptops. Are you always on automatic??
Toshiba quality on their $500 laptops is very good. The world has progressed while you get left eating dust with your ill informed putdowns of other manufacturers. That only when you spend quadruple for an Apple lap top will you get a quality build. That is a lie and just more Apple fanbot arrogance. SILLY and PATHETIC!
Lol....my friend needs none of that and certainly is not going to blow another $2000 on an Apple laptop that does. My friend lives in the real world of websurfing and light office applications. His new $500 Toshiba will do the trick. With 8gb ram and i5 processor he is all set. .
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