Apple is trying hard to rival Oracle for the "most dickish technology company" slot. To recap, they've so far:
1. Partially reversed the commoditization of PC hardware, driving up prices for consumers
2. Engaged in large-scale App Store censorship
3. Gouged 30% from eBook content owners
4. Exploited Foxconn workers (possibly)
5. Are sitting on an enormous pile of cash and donate nothing to charity
And now patent trolling. I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally feel it is unethical to buy Apple products. I think the ethical tone of the company was set when Jobs screwed Woz out of the bonus for Breakout for Atari.
You forgot one of the worst harms Apple has done to the tech industry:
Make it acceptable that users have no control over the operating system running on their hardware, and much more importantly: what applications they are allowed to run on that hardware.
Can anyone imagine Microsoft banning all non-MS-approved programs from running on Windows in the 90s? Or starting to sell computers that can only run Windows, and where you can only install MS-approved software (and software for which MS takes a 30% cut, if you are lucky to get approved).
And can anyone imagine Microsoft suing, say, Netscape or Sun for patent infringement?
Apple's behavior wold have been beyond outrageously unthinkable from the most vilified tech company of the last 20 years.
But because it is Apple, it gets a pass. Is the victory of form over substance, of marketing and hype over principles and values.
It will take decades to undo the damage Apple has done, if we ever recover.
As George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". It seems Apple is becoming the biggest bully in the market and the last time, that didn't end very well for Microsoft.
Yeah, they still make a huge amount of money, but that's because they achieved a level of market penetration so high that it was almost a monopoly. Companies spent lots of money on MS technologies. People everywhere got used to Windows because it was easy enough and it was perceived as 'the only way'. Most people didn't know that there were alternatives to Microsoft's products, and most of those who did, saw the alternatives as something hard to learn, or too technical.
And eventually, the bullying ended up eroding Microsoft's public image so hard that it is still trying to recover from that.
Apple on the other hand, nor is able to achieve the same level of market penetration anytime soon, nor it is seen as something without competition. OK, maybe some people see them as something without competition, but that's because they are so into their iProducts, that they have stopped being objective. But for most people, it wouldn't be that hard to change from iProducts to any other product out there, whether it's Android or Windows or whatever.
--- My 2 cents:
Apple is a strange company, because it can be understood much better as a rock band than as a hardware manufacturer.
As a rock band, they had some world-wide hits. Critics loved them, and people followed them (even sleeping in the streets to buy some tickets!). They have their groupies and a relatively big fan-base that considers Apple as The Best Band Ever. But money and fame gets into your head. And someday, those fans will slowly start to disagree with some of the "new turns" their beloved band is taking. At first, most of the fans will think "ok, it's just a short phase, they will be back on tracks". Then, for whatever reason, one of the main members leaves the band, and it's replaced by someone else (a low blow, I know, sorry), that has been close to the band for a while, but of course, he has it's own style, somehow different from the guy leaving. "It's a band, not just a guy, the band will go on just as always" some of the fans say, but a few more start to look with suspicion. With the passage of time, the band releases a new cheesy album. Their music is starting to be really commercial. This time, the media notices and the critics are not as happy as they used to be with this band. At this point, their fans take a few different paths:
1- Some will admit that the band is not what it used to be, and may start to look for other horizons, becoming more open to new music and maybe, realize that there are other good things under the sun.
2- Others will just get a little more nervous. But maybe not because they are just loyal, but because they're still not ready to let that phase of their lives behind, they keep spending money on buying the band's products (albums, merchandising, tickets, etc), in hopes that the next album will be better, just as it used to be.
3- A few others will take a very similar path as the previous group, but they do consider themselves loyal. They are not very happy with the current situation. The band does not causes the same level of joy on them as it used to cause. But they were there with the band since the beginning and they will be there for the band now.
4- Finally, the groupies, the hardcore fans, will go berserk and will defend the band, the new direction, the new members, the new cheesy album, and at the same time, attack the critics, other bands, and the former fans who leave their rows. They spent so much energy and money following the band, that they are now too vested in it. They enter in total DENIAL. They don't want to feel like stupids, like if they made a mistake supporting the band so much through the years. After all, humans are tribal by nature, and deep inside, they want to keep belonging to that tribe.
Not surprisingly, this can match very well to the Kübler-Ross model (5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance).
The ones in (4) are mostly in denial. Some of them, are in anger, projecting their fury to others.
The folks in (3) are someplace between anger and bargaining.
People in (2) are clearly in the phase of depression, as they are still not ready to move on, but they realize that the band is not what it used to be.
And finally, people in (1) are in acceptance. They've moved on.
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In their current state, Apple is becoming this band. They are forgetting about their user base, and going full commercial. While this means lots of money in the short term, they still lack a real classic. They lack a Thriller (MJ), A Day in the Life, a Bohemian Rhapsody. Windows is a classic. Office is a classic, Google Search, Google Maps is a classic. Every now and then, almost everyone goes back to those products even if they've switch to something else.
You can make a huge amount of money with a Summer Hit, And Apple has been doing it for a while, just like Gaga. But if you don't have a classic, what stops you to becoming "last year's summer hit"?
Hardware is becoming less and less relevant. And Apple's lack of a classics in the software front is what makes them have a low barrier to exit. And I think that's the very reason of why they are closing their ecosystem more and more with each release. Their walled garden is quickly becoming a prison yard.
And finishing this very very long post (as I doubt someone will read all of this, lol) their attitude is not helping them to maintain the current status quo, with them as the current Summer Hit.
Wow, I'd love to see some of your citations for (1). If anything, their aggressive supply chain management has helped drive down prices for things like capacitative touch screens, NAND flash, hi-dpi LCDs, etc.
Last week, I ordered some parts for a new workstation - a high-end Ivy Bridge i5, 256gig SSD, 16GB RAM, etc for ~600. How much did I overpay because Apple "reversed the commoditization" of PC hardware?
They've shown how profitable the high end sector is with lower sales.
Kind of like how nobody really makes netbooks, only ultrabooks. That also has a bit more to do with Intel/Microsoft threatening/bribing manufacturers, but even without that the manufacturers don't like dealing with that low-end sector.
Couldn't it be because people hate those disgusting plastic WinTel boxes that come with a dozen junk "multimedia" apps pre-installed? And ultrabooksare at least pretty, thin and "shiny" and appeal more to customers?
4. Yes, I qualified this with a "possibly". Their public statements have seemed to indicate that they are willing to change. But progress has been "mixed": http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57516945-37/watchdog-group... Then, there is the question of why they only seemed to realize there was a problem after a NPR expose.
Agreed. I run a small game company and I was looking forward to buying a high-end computer. I was considering the iMac due to its form factor. Then, one of my friends suggested an HP Z1 workstation. Both are priced similarly and share the same form-factor, yet I realized I would be over-paying Apple if I went for the iMac because:
1) The fucking iMac still has no USB 3.0, though we're two years ahead of 2010
2) The HP Z1 comes with a professional NVidia Quadro card, whereas the iMac comes with a mobile Graphics (Radeon 6790M)
4) The HP comes with a Xeon, whereas, Apple gives me an i5 for the same price. (Wtf!)
5) The HP is user-upgradeable (including the graphics card), whereas you can't upgrade anything more than the RAM on the iMac.
And much much more. If anything, Apple has proved to be ultra-expensive and has always tried to make things expensive. When someone buys a professional computer, they buy it for the performance more than the design. The iMacs are simply overrated piece of under-rated hardware.
The sad part is that very few hackers are willing to put their money (and their hardware) where their mouths are. It truly is not inconceivable that, if we all would spend a little bit of our time and money contributing to Linux/Ubuntu, that we could have a solid OS that we could all use on a daily basis. But instead, we spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on Apple hardware, and Ubuntu has to resort to adding advertising to their OS. It really is quite a sad state of affairs.
I would happily pay for Ubuntu. However, Ubuntu would have to charge quite a bit of money in order to make even remotely as much per user as Apple is making by being a high-margin hardware company (where the OS is almost nothing more to them than an incentive to buy more hardware).
Even so, I'd happily pay for that as well; but, I can't, as Ubuntu won't take my money [1]: they don't sell anything I can actually buy; AFAIK, the only thing they accept money for is sending people to my business to give talks about how to better use Ubuntu.
Now, that said, a lot of the value that Ubuntu brings to the table is actually thanks to the people working on Debian: Ubuntu just takes their packages. I would also quite happily pay for things from Debian; I'd probably be even happier doing so than paying for things from Ubuntu.
However, they also do not charge for things, so I cannot pay them for things. I can donate money to them[2], but now we are talking about something much more complex (involving physical mail and checks or money orders) at a much higher mental cost of deciding "well, now how much?".
I personally don't even think that I'm rare: a lot of people are quite happy to pay for things that provide them value, and Ubuntu is not just helping me personally, it helps my business. I run all of my servers using Ubuntu: I'm paying Amazon to run the machines, I'd happily pay Ubuntu for the software.
I thereby don't think it is quite fair to put the blame for this on the "very few hackers [that/which/whom/omgdunno] are willing to put their money where their mouths are": Ubuntu is much like the business that is undercharging for their services, and thereby cannot satisfy the customer [3].
(Though, I can totally see the argument that the reason that they are able to even do what they do is that they do not charge: that if they charged there would be tons of internal community arguments about what the money was for and who would get it; or, quite simply, the direct monetization could undermine the charitable aspects.)
Like the other reply says, it's not money that I think is the most important WE can make - Shuttleworth has plenty of that, and as far as the Amazon ads go, he probably just wants to establish a long term strategy for profitability, and this is one thing to try out.
We should be contributing to Ubuntu with our skills. THAT is what will make a big difference. Donating some money for them to buy more hardware is not going to make nearly as big of a difference.
What's your area of expertise? Try going on the Ubuntu Launchpad page and finding some bugs to fix. Send in some patches to the core team. Now that's what can make a big difference. Sure, there are tens of thousands of bugs. But if we all spent a few hours a week fixing them, we could plow through them pretty quickly. If we spent time during the beta testing periods running new versions of Ubuntu on our hardware and providing feedback, we could see things improve in terms of hardware compatibility.
W1ntermute is decrying the fact that the Ubuntu team is in a position where they feel it is necessary to rely on selling access to their userbase.
It seems the most valued contribution skilled peoples can make to Ubuntu is in code and time. Even non-technical users can contribute valuable assets to the project. If your company has spare hardware, that is also useful to the SPI.
However, if you lack those resources, donations are openly accepted by both Ubuntu[1] and Debian[2].
Taking fifteen minutes, considering the value added by Ubuntu and choosing an appropriate amount to donate is not "a high mental cost". Nor is writing a check or completing the electronic ClickPledge checkout form.
Further, the argument that if Ubuntu had more money it would undermine their organization's mission and cause endless infighting is baseless. Would you make the same argument about the Wikimedia foundation or EFF?
First off, the argument I was trying to make with regards to donations being "hard" is that it turns off a lot of people. I, personally, have made numerous donations to different organizations for the things they provide me.
I have donated to non-profit organizations like the EFF and contributed money to everything from conferences to individuals who are simply "making a giant dent in an important problem but are sadly too busy to dedicate all of their time to it".
However, I am fairly confident that I am rare. I thereby understand that me giving $10,000 to Ubuntu, in the grand scheme of things, is meaningless in comparison to a reality where every serious user of Ubuntu was paying them $200.
I thereby contend that having a system of open-ended donations that requires physical mail with checks or money orders is a problem. You can tell me I'm not contributing enough, but that is both insulting to me and completely misses the point.
Note: at this point, you could simply have said "you misread that page, the Click & Pledge system lower down actually allows you to donate without physical anything", but you didn't quite; my response would have been: "I seriously did not notice that, and I'm sorry".
That said, I am not certain how much that changes the overall point: that entire page seems accidentally designed to make people consider donating to Debian both difficult and even "scary": as someone who has to do a lot of writing for random people who may not speak English very well to read, a lot of people are going to think that paragraph about identity theft applies to their online transaction, and not to the Debian Foundation posting accounts to wire.
Secondly, I did not make the argument at the end: I accepted that I could appreciate other people making that argument. Instead, I made the longer argument through the previous set of paragraphs that Ubuntu should actively charge for things.
Your last paragraph and its closing question is thereby highly confusing, and makes me question both whether you read my comment, and whether I should bother responding to yours. That said, I will now put on the hat of the people I overall disagree with and attempt to answer your question.
I, personally, am involved in what I, as well as many, consider more of a "movement" than a product: a specific form of hacking known as "jailbreaking" mobile devices, and in particular the iPhone (although I also do Android work).
In this capacity, I have seen many different people who have myriad opinions on what happens when you inject the concerns of managing money into a decentralized system, and I have seen first hand what happens "on the inside".
For one, you immediately get concerns about who is contributing what to the project, and thereby how the money should be allocated. As the contributions are decentralized, it is not clear that any one person or even one group of people should "own allocation".
In the case of Ubuntu, I imagine that even getting donations is tense. It is my understanding that many of the people working on Debian or with past ties to Debian feel that the Ubuntu project's primary purpose is to leach off their effort.
Meanwhile, I contend that things can get even worse if you start charging. Of course, as I believe that charging is the right course of action, I actually do charge for things personally, so I can talk about how people react to these kinds of charges.
The result is that a lot of people now believe you are "rolling in the money", when in fact you are a community project that is reinvesting the money you receive in improved output by hiring people and donating the rest.
This is difficult for end users to contemplate, however, as all they see is that they are having to pay $200 for an operating system distributed via a medium with a near-$0 marginal production cost (downloadable/copyable files).
However, again, I think that this entire diversion is weird, because I spent an entire post attempting to argue that Ubuntu should charge for things, linking to an argument made by other people, and attempting to state that donations might not be enough.
Thereby, my arguments for why Ubuntu should not accept or even demand money might not be very good: if you are seriously attempting to ask that question, you should ask it to someone who is actually on that side of the argument.
Not talking about tablets and mobile devices. I'm talking about the way they bundle their PC hardware and software. And specifically about the way their TOS forbids installing OSX on non-Apple hardware.
Yes, but that decision in itself doesn't "drive up prices." They offer a product that consumers are willing to pay more for. They aren't a monopoly and don't have pricing power.
The hardware market is a competitive market, but the OS market is an oligopoly. I think it would be fair to say that most consumers want the OSX and care less about the hardware. Indeed, you could build a PC with equivalent hardware to a Mac Pro for 60% of the price.
But Apple won't sell the OS separately from the hardware. This is bundling/tying and can be grounds for an antitrust suit. The bundling of the OS (which they do have pricing power over) with hardware (which they normally wouldn't) allows them to overcharge for hardware:
That's just ridiculous. First, you assume that people buy Macs for the OS rather than the the beautiful hardware. Even if it's true, where's the evidence?
And why does it matter that Apple ties the OS to the hardware? Still not illegal because the according to your link, it's illegal if it's a tying of unrelated products. OSX and Mac hardware happen to be very related.
Apple positions itself more as a luxury brand with a somewhat higher price point (arguable) and the consumers are allowed to choose what they want. And they have spoken.
Hardware that the majority of consumers aren't paying for. If they had a stranglehold on the supply chain, you'd have a point, but Apple raising prices on Mac hardware does nothing to the overall market.
1. Commodities don't make record profits. There is nothing "dickish" about that… That's how companies work.
3. I've hear equally terribly, if not more terrible percentages from Amazon on physical books. In fact, I've heard worse. Amazon has been known to require publishes to set lower prices… At least Apple lets you set your own price!
4. Apple seems to have done more to improve working conditions than any other company that uses Foxconn.
5. False. While Apple might not directly donate (although, I'm not entirely certain they don't), they have implemented a policy in which they agree to match the donation of any employee (up to a certain amount).
6. That's not patent trolling. Patent trolling is when you have a patent which you don't use yourself, yet sue people who do… and thus make most of your revenue on patent lawsuits.
You cannot compare percentages between physical and electronic books. Amazon's costs for a physical book are substantially higher than anybody's costs for an electronic book. You have to compare apples to apples here. Doing so, you won't find Amazon to be any better than Apple, but neither will you find them to be any worse. Their percentages for physical books are substantially worse because their costs are substantially higher. That's the cost that comes from selling paper: you're obligated to give a lot of money to middlemen because the material is inherently expensive to create and sell.
I love it when people complain about how Apple likes to control their store. Next time you are your Walmart, ask the manager ask why they engage in censorship because they don't carry your favorite magazine.
And your 30% complaint is silly, considering that retail markup is often far greater than that, and that anybody can sell their own enooks direct to consumers if they like.
Apple controls what I can install or not install on hardware that I already bought and which is mine, Apple does all it can (which is a lot) to make it close to impossible for me to run any software I have not got from them on hardware I own.
Even if I write the software myself I'm supposed to pay Apple for the privilege of running software I wrote on hardware I own!
If that is not insanely outrageous, I don't know what is.
Apple doesn't block what you can install. They control what you can download and sell using THEIR store. I have shared apps that I have written with other people without having to deal with THEIR appstore.
Yes, Apple sells their developer program. They are a for-profit corporation.
If you really are an iPhone user, I find it hard to believe that you weren't aware of these issues before you bought your iPhone.
The thing that bugged me the other day is _just how far_ they seem to think their ownership extends.
I plugged my iPhone into my MacBook, just to charge. -- This MacBook knows of my iPhone because they are both linked to one Apple ID. However this laptop is _not_ my primary sync agent. In fact, this computer doesn't have any backups for my iPhone, nor does it have _any_ of my music library, photo library, etc.
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So Apple thought it'd be a great idea to go ahead and start downloading iOS 6 for my _jailbroken 5.1_ iPhone.
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Now a few things anger me regarding this "reasonable" default:
(1) This is a major OS upgrade. Windows has never even _asked_ me to move from XP to Vista, Vista to 7, and so on...
For that matter: Apple doesn't do major upgrades without user confirmation, either.
Even major upgrades of the same family (MS' service packs) usually require confirmation or an explicit download.
So why is it OK to do this on my phone? [Which, by the way, has auto-updating explicitly turned off. Rather, auto-updating is turned off on my main machine. Why this setting is stored on a per-iTunes-install basis, rather than a flag on the phone, escapes me.]
(2) This hardly constitutes an OS upgrade. This is a firmware update; an important distinction.
There is now a non-zero risk that you are about to _brick my phone._
Leaving the OS itself, or possibly just the baseband, corrupt and unusable.
Thanks Apple, I'm sure you had my best interests at heart when you [could have] left me stranded at a customer site, unable to call for directions, looking like a buffoon as I realize I left my maps in my personal vehicle!
Why? Because I _plugged my phone in so it could fucking charge._
(3) As I mentioned: this computer doesn't even have any of my iPhone's content. You'd think there'd be a sanity check here, but no, I have no doubt Apple would've happily deleted gigabytes of data in their quest to have every user on the same, crippled version of their mobile OS.
Why? Because they've _wiped my devices in the past._
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Given how they execute their update, it does not make sense for it to be an _automatic_ action.
With all that aside: my phone being upgraded would've made it inherently worthless to me. A non-jailbroken iPhone is basically unusable in my daily routine.
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I can't stand these companies parading around like they own my hardware. I wish I could say it's limited to Apple, but this behavior has swept the industry. I've owned a number of PVR/DVR devices that have similar restrictions. Sony's PSP is another community where the jailbroken experience is a _major_ usability enhancement, yet Sony fights the homebrew community at every available opportunity (read: FW update).
seems like more people are in the same boaat as you but unfortunately apple is targeting mainstream consumers and not the hardcore users who know what they are buying and also tend to be much less in numbers to affect apple's revenues.
if all developers stopped buying apple hardware tomorrow would it really hurt apple ?
Eventually, as they would start developing on new platforms, revitalizing Apple's competitors, and so, after a while, people would notice that there is a better (and most probably cheaper) alternative.
If you want to make "user" apps (apps that average users, not computer nerds use), you have to go with Mac/Windows/iOS/Android/Web. None of them gives Linux a competitive advantage over other platforms.
Linux will never be mainstream[1]. It's an operating system for hackers by hackers. The sooner people accept that, the better.
[1]: I'm aware of Android. But that's not Linux. Just like iOS and OS X are not "Unix".
Yes, they are just (ab)using the system that currently exists, but it takes a lot of gall to ask for yet more, when the positive verdict was so precariously and unfairly won (the jury foreman that completely misunderstood what prior art means and invented an "interchangeability" definition for infringement).
Well this just makes them absolutely nasty cunts then. Surely even the most hardcore Apple fanatic thinks this is completely unnecessary and designed to stifle competition?
Yes, the battle is nasty and Samsung/Google (both are immensely powerful, and not human) is in no danger of being driven out. Why should I feel bad about it?
I'd like to see 3X damage preferably as an AAPL shareholder.
While that is a somewhat rational viewpoint, I am old-fashioned enough to consider the philosophy that right and wrong don't matter, only profits, to be unhealthy.
It would be rational if Apple could somehow be certain that they have duly licensed all applicable patents for the technology in all of their products.
So, no... it's about as rational as stripping naked and running through Times Square with a vuvuzela, daring the cops to come after you.
It is rational cause Apple can be sure that it does not willfully infringe on others patents and risks regarding those patents mines unavoidable can be managed through ad hoc negotiation and lawyers, lots of lawyers.
Given such a high profile case just resulted in a puny $1B amount, with its over $100B war chest, Apple can take a few dozens of these lawsuits easily. Let's see who's willing to go against Apple and comes out ahead.
Apple is not a company only focus on profits, far from it, regardless what every other HNer is trying to paint them to be.
Philosophically what is right and wrong, and to whom? That's another question.
Of course using metaphysics to muddling the water is not my intention, but even using the common sense definition of "right and wrong" I still do not see what Apple does here as "evil" or "unhealthy". It is self serving to be sure, but I'm not convinced that the market is necessarily harmed in the process. There is and will be fierce competition in the mobile arena for many years to come unlike the portable music player market. Anyone is willing to take a bet against my observation? Apple is using the system to its own advantage, just as Google, if wielding patent bat is fundamentally wrong, then Google the white knight in shinning armor is a bigger cunt for its hypocrisy.
But there are many ways of inflict damages, patent lawsuit is just one of them. Why is this weapon special? If it is inherently evil, then using it under any condition should be condemned. If it is not, then again why treat it like it's special?
No, but I do not consider violence inherently evil either.
As a matter of fact it seems most people do not consider violence inherently evil, it is unjustifiably glorified in western culture I'd say, by western I mean American, by American I mean US.
If you don't think that Apple has more to lose from America's insane patent system than they could possibly stand to gain, I'd submit that you haven't thought the question through all the way.
Do you think even they could afford to pay treble damages on every patent claim they actually infringe?
Oh, but Apple has been operating in this insane environment for 30+ years and trolls come out of the woodwork every week trying to get some quick buck off of them. And Apple has had lost a few IP fights in its years.
I'm confident to say Apple and its army of lawyers will be doing just fine in America's insane patent system.
So the answer is no, I do not think Apple is incompetent enough to have to pay triple damages on every patent claim they actually infringe or do not infringe.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me feel awkward any time I use my Air in public. Business practices like this make me feel guilty for purchasing Apple products.
I've always felt that way about apple, which is why I've never owned any of their products. If this is how you feel, you'd likely feel better if you did the same.
Is anybody really surprised to learn that apple is a scummy business? Their polished exterior hides a rotten core - as anyone who's ever worked with xcode or any of their APIs can cofirm - and their smug, self-satisfied, elitist marketing has always been the biggest indicator of this.
It feels like Apple's soul is gone and now its a zombie hungry for cash. All of their executives and their top engineers are already awash in cash. They are worlds top company. what are they after now ? Is this how the greed looks like at a global scale ? They should learn from nature, Lions do hunt for food but when they are satisfied they leave other animals to scrape meat off their hunt. They have stopped acting like smart group of people and more like a tumor.
I believe Nilay Patel at The Verge has previously said that this is an expected maneuver for this type of litigation after the initial verdict, including asking for maximum damages and sales ban.
If you take asking for the additional damages the law allows (most of which is based on willfulness, which the jury explicitly upheld), plus an injunction (which everyone always asks for) as anything other than lawyers taking the case to its logical conclusion, you're being silly. Whatever you think about the case, this is nothing new or surprising.
1. Partially reversed the commoditization of PC hardware, driving up prices for consumers
2. Engaged in large-scale App Store censorship
3. Gouged 30% from eBook content owners
4. Exploited Foxconn workers (possibly)
5. Are sitting on an enormous pile of cash and donate nothing to charity
And now patent trolling. I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally feel it is unethical to buy Apple products. I think the ethical tone of the company was set when Jobs screwed Woz out of the bonus for Breakout for Atari.
But hey, they made computing shinier. Yay?