Tin-foil hats on
Now tell me that removing the Wikileaks app from iTunes was not to ensure the "all glorious one" stays in favour with the President?
Steve Jobs is the kind of rich guy America should celebrate, according to Barack Obama. "We celebrate somebody like a Steve Jobs, who has created two or three different revolutionary products," he said in a digression from a speech about the US economy, "We expect that person to be rich, and that's a good thing. We want that …
"We expect that person to be rich, and that's a good thing. We want that incentive. That's part of the free market."
So that we can tax it. Did I tell you VAT is coming?
To show our support and good faith, we provide enforcement of arbitrary "Intellectual Property Rights" for a small fee. Don't go too far though, or Antitrust might come calling to liberate a few dollars more.
I can;t find a single product that Apple makes that wasn't already done.
GUI: Xerox
Mouse: Xerox
MP3 player: Many others
Cell phone with touch screen
Tablet: Bill Gates (Not sure if he was the first, but he did go on about them long before Steve-o made one)
Making profits by endangering the lives of foreigners
I suppose you _could_ attribute these things to Apple:
Computers that are near-impossible to upgrade / repair (Original Mac series / all iMacs)
Reality Distortion field
GUI and mouse are not products. They are technologies.
What Apple has done really well is branding and focusing on what makes a successful product. That's why Mac OSX, ipad, ipod and iphone have been a huge success even though they were not first to market.
Yes, MS has fiddled with tablets many times since the 1990s but they have all Zuned(*). Nothing you could really call a product.
There's a he'll of a difference between building a prototype and building a commercial product. Microsoft were trying to push tablets for years with very little success. Apple realised that to make a tablet work, you couldn't stick a desktop OS on it. Apple have always been about making things accessible to your average Jo, to Mum and Dad. So while Ceative were adding features and gimmicks to their music players, Apple focused on making them easy to use.
The public clearly see Apples products as innovative, they keep getting their wallets out and buying Apples products.
Apple is good for the tech industry, they help drive the market forward, do you really think we'd have seen the Galaxy tab if it wasn't for the iPad?
...30 seconds of research shows that Mr Jobby "tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone in autumn of 2006".
Another 30 seconds shows that Google bought Android Inc the summer of 2005 and they had already been in existence for 22 months.
So, yes, we possibly would have seen Android phones whether the iPhone existed or not.
So the important thing is that a few people in America become extremely rich and powerful? It doesn't matter if they become communist-style dictators who control customer, employees, other companies, and media? It doesn't matter if they use the resources of their wealthy companies (out of the pockets of Americans) to attempt to destroy other competing companies via lawsuits and patent cartels, to enforce their monopolistic economic dictatorships? Well, I am glad Obama cleared up that whole "land of the free/land of opportunity" misconception.
There was an analysis done by the WSJ that found that the iPhone actually added almost 2 billion to the US trade deficit with China http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021142902413796.html?mod=wsj_share_twitter
You've gotta wonder how making products that cost your country money ends up making you one of the country's best business leaders.
The problem is not that the iPhone adds to the trade deficit (it does, though - but so does every other phone, laptop and PC, of which there are far more in volume and value, still).
The real problem is that the US barely has any products that the rest of the world wants to buy.
Germany sells a lot of tools and machinery to actually build stuff (and some cars, though production of those moves to China, too).
What kind of (high value) products are actually still built in USA?
You'll find Free Software people have a much bigger problem with the Apple's cult of personality than say Microsoft (but only just). After all Apple defines itself as a company of super style, definitiveness and a self gratifying moral position where as the Free Software personality defines itself on responsible ownership, chaotic freedom and a neighbourly moral position.
Basically Apple scares the bajesus out of various groups because it's more than a company, it's an ideology. And to see Obama praise the leader (and greatest advocate) of the ideology doesn't exactly say much about Obama's ideology. Although it comes as no surprise to me, Obama's administration was always toadying up to big media and silicon valley. Anyone who had a big cheque book or mass market of listeners or readers or quite often, both.
Mind you, I suppose that using Windows as the motivation might be a bit wrong.
Actually, I'm slightly puzzled here, and have been for a few years. Apple does one thing very well, which is to take one or more previous bits of technology, and re-engineer it or them into a well integrated, balanced, and often beautiful product. Look at the Macbook Air, the iPad, and various desktop machines, and they are things of beauty, much though it hurts me to admit it.
But where did the iPod, which bankrolled all of this, come from? The early iterations were all arguably worse than the competition in just about all respects, the *only* differentiator was a set of white headphones, which the adverts emphasised. Surely the market isn't facile enough that this was enough to build a brand and complete market dominance on? Please, someone, tell me I'm wrong?
GJC
Yet the two above comments that point out this simple truism have both been voted down.
Yes, the way that Apple implements technology can be frustrating to us who live to tinker or do things our own way. However, Apple have created products that sell very well at margins ranging from comfortable to very healthy, and are generally considered to be of good quality.
Indeed, they have to be of good quality and and be of high perceived value, else Apple would not be able to dictate terms to its users (You want this sleek mp3 player? Fine- but you gotta use iTunes) The desire / frustration that Apple products can bring out in people are two sides of the same coin.
Vote this down if you want to- but please do say why.
Any way, whatever melange of silicon and code you poke at
Enjoy the festives
I own Apple products. I do not love apple, in fact I despise many of their business practices. I chose their products because they were the best fit for my requirements. There is a world of difference between how a company is run and the quality of their products. While some of the posts here do criticise Apple's products many more are critical of their practices.
As a disclaimer, I'm visually impaired. I bought Apple products because of their included "Voice Over" software at no extra cost and how well this works with the OS. I could have used other systems with third party software to enable speech synthesis output but these companies charge extortionate amounts, way above Apple's high prices, and gouge those people who rely on their products to be able to use devices at all rather than Apple charging a premium for their brand. As an example a "screen reader" which allows people with no sight at all to use a Windows PC costs in the region of £600, plus £125 for each new version upgrade. This is not including the computer which runs it. While Linux accessibility has made a lot of progress Linux itself has a tendency to break quite easily with new software or updates, and it would be quite easy to break something that is a dependency of the access software. Google's Android does not yet have mature access software worth considering. The price of a Symbion series phone plus the extra cost of access software is close to that of an iPhone which I find much easier to use than a symbion 60 despite having no sight at all. If I wasn't visually impaired I would probably have stuck with a cheap mobile for calls and text messages when necessary, and used a netbook or mp3 player for my other needs (though an iPod touch would have been a viable option in place of an MP3 player).
Of course obama looks up to jobs about the same way as the republicans would.
He is both the crony capitalist and also communists idea of a free market guy.
How can you have a free market when apple utilizes the third world to produce it's goods? What is free when your employees need $10-15/hr+ just to survive (along with all the industry rules and regulation we have) when you can simply outsource to an area that you can pay a few bucks an hour (if that) and have no workplace safety.
Sounds like obamas kind of guy since Obama sees us equal to the third world. Wasn't it this administration that said we need to compete with China?
How about they start with having the government sector compete with the private sector. When will amtrak make a profit? How about government motors and chysler? How about the postal service?
When are these government fiascos going to compete?
How about fannie mae and freddie mac who are exempt from the recent financial reform bills?
Take a ride around old steel citys and the auto industry in detroit. Or big industry that was one in Indiana. Take a look at what this concept of free trade has provided to us.
You have that $500 flat screen and $10 toaster however the price we pay for that is we are killing ourselves.