· apple, copyright, digital rights management, protectionism
You can start talking about policies concerning th...
Anonymous · 2007-09-12T18:47:00
You can start talking about policies concerning things like computers, rather than portable media players, eh?
Exactly right. So why are so many open source gee...
Anonymous · 2007-09-12T20:34:00
Exactly right. So why are so many open source geeks carrying around Mac's? Perhaps it's more a fashion thing and an anti-MS thing rather than the "enlightened" path. I know some have argued that it's the UI or the hardware, but you sure are paying a huge premium for it.
And then again, when it comes to competition. Just ask any of the companies that made Mac compatibles about Apple's business practices? Oh yeah, you can't because they were all put out of business when Apple changed their mind.
Then there's the argument that Mac OSX is BSD-based and that you could download the non-UI portions of it. Of course, Apple has stopped that too.
Good post.
Anonymous: I believe the way it works is I can tal...
Steve · 2007-09-12T22:56:00
Anonymous: I believe the way it works is I can talk about whatever the hell I like.
ScW: I can see the attraction of the MacBook. Nice design, Unix-like software, some cool utilities. The prices are more competitive now they are using commodity CPU chips, too. But I want to support open source with my wallet as well as my time, and I don't want to encourage anti-open anti-competitive vendors by buying their products.
Unfortunately the average person in the street is completely clueless about DRM issues, and will happily pay through the nose for something "cool". Geeks are human too, I guess :-)
Hi Steve,Lets go back in time... I worked as a tec...
Unknown · 2007-09-13T09:19:00
Hi Steve,
Lets go back in time... I worked as a tech in the mid 1980's in a medium size computer store. The Apple software was just outside my service window consisting of about 3 sparsely filled shelves.
Macs where way ahead (technologically wise) over IBM and clone pc's at the time except in one area, software. Apple at that time wanted not just any software, but very high quality software. they charged a fairly hefty price for the compiler and libraries, You needed to pay an extra fee or license to sell software written with Apples compiler. (Or more for the compiler for that purpose.) And an additional fee over that for Apple certification.
The end result was not so many people wrote software for Macs. Most people bought clones because they were much cheaper and had more software to run on them. Apple's over restrictive software policies pretty much guaranteed the situation wouldn't change.
What Apple should have done at that time was to give the compiler away and let anyone write software for Macs. To protect quality they only needed to write a standard set of median quality applications. Thus setting the entry level quality bar so to speak.
If they had done that, there would have been an explosion of software for Macs. And many more Macs sold as a result.
Could they be repeating history again...
Cheers, Ron Adam
Ron: Ironically, at the same time I was one of a n...
Steve · 2007-09-13T10:38:00
Ron: Ironically, at the same time I was one of a number working in pre-sales for Sun Microsystems arguing against their move to charging for the C compiler. The corporate management saw it as a potential profit center, I saw it as throwing away a huge sales advantage.
I don't think Apple will ever get it, which is a pity given the excellent design skills that their products demonstrate. What the heck, if the shareholders don't care, why should we?
You can start talking about policies concerning th...
Anonymous · 2007-09-12T18:47:00
You can start talking about policies concerning things like computers, rather than portable media players, eh?Exactly right. So why are so many open source gee...
Anonymous · 2007-09-12T20:34:00
Exactly right. So why are so many open source geeks carrying around Mac's? Perhaps it's more a fashion thing and an anti-MS thing rather than the "enlightened" path. I know some have argued that it's the UI or the hardware, but you sure are paying a huge premium for it.And then again, when it comes to competition. Just ask any of the companies that made Mac compatibles about Apple's business practices? Oh yeah, you can't because they were all put out of business when Apple changed their mind.
Then there's the argument that Mac OSX is BSD-based and that you could download the non-UI portions of it. Of course, Apple has stopped that too.
Good post.
Anonymous: I believe the way it works is I can tal...
Steve · 2007-09-12T22:56:00
Anonymous: I believe the way it works is I can talk about whatever the hell I like.ScW: I can see the attraction of the MacBook. Nice design, Unix-like software, some cool utilities. The prices are more competitive now they are using commodity CPU chips, too. But I want to support open source with my wallet as well as my time, and I don't want to encourage anti-open anti-competitive vendors by buying their products.
Unfortunately the average person in the street is completely clueless about DRM issues, and will happily pay through the nose for something "cool". Geeks are human too, I guess :-)
Hi Steve,Lets go back in time... I worked as a tec...
Unknown · 2007-09-13T09:19:00
Hi Steve,Lets go back in time... I worked as a tech in the mid 1980's in a medium size computer store. The Apple software was just outside my service window consisting of about 3 sparsely filled shelves.
Macs where way ahead (technologically wise) over IBM and clone pc's at the time except in one area, software. Apple at that time wanted not just any software, but very high quality software. they charged a fairly hefty price for the compiler and libraries, You needed to pay an extra fee or license to sell software written with Apples compiler. (Or more for the compiler for that purpose.) And an additional fee over that for Apple certification.
The end result was not so many people wrote software for Macs. Most people bought clones because they were much cheaper and had more software to run on them. Apple's over restrictive software policies pretty much guaranteed the situation wouldn't change.
What Apple should have done at that time was to give the compiler away and let anyone write software for Macs. To protect quality they only needed to write a standard set of median quality applications. Thus setting the entry level quality bar so to speak.
If they had done that, there would have been an explosion of software for Macs. And many more Macs sold as a result.
Could they be repeating history again...
Cheers,
Ron Adam
Ron: Ironically, at the same time I was one of a n...
Steve · 2007-09-13T10:38:00
Ron: Ironically, at the same time I was one of a number working in pre-sales for Sun Microsystems arguing against their move to charging for the C compiler. The corporate management saw it as a potential profit center, I saw it as throwing away a huge sales advantage.I don't think Apple will ever get it, which is a pity given the excellent design skills that their products demonstrate. What the heck, if the shareholders don't care, why should we?
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