Is Apple the new Microsoft?

It might be…. with better looking products, though. ;-)

@Captain_Fantasy Can you describe these practices?

Not if you ask Bill Gates. Steve Jobs would probably like it to be.

As far as questionable business practices go, isn’t this pretty much the norm for today’s day and age in numerous companies?

I think Apple may have a shot at it when it begins to approach the same percentage of headlock on market share of OS being used as Microshaft.

Or maybe when they begin rolling out software products and claming them as complete when they are, in reality, an ill-thought-out Beta version for which they are charging inflated prices for crap.

When they begin approaching those criteria, I’ll start chewing my fingernails in anxiety :)

Steve Jobs’ assault on Adobe is not that much different than Microsoft’s strong arm tactics.

Personally, I think that they are worse.

@gtreyger Amongst their other things are basically monopolizing anything that you do with your Apple products. If you pay for a copy of OS X, you must run it on Apple hardware even though that conflicts with the BSD license, and there is enough BSD code in OS X to bring Apple into the courtroom over that one. Microsoft doesn’t care what you do with your copy of Windows so long as you are only running one copy of it at a time per license purchased; you can use it however you want. And Linux doesn’t even care that much!
Developers are hamstrung by the cost of development tools and Apple doesn’t need any reason to deny an app from being approved, meaning that the only way to run stuff is either get official Apple-brand software or “jailbreak” your gear. And if you do want to develop for Apple, you must pay onerous licensing fees for the tools to do so.
Then there are the points I touched on here about Apple having the right to disable/delete anything from your iPad/iPod/iPhone.
All Microsoft really did was get a licensing agreement that allows them to make money off of every PC sold unless the computer maker decides to include a different OS, like Ubuntu, and pre-install IE and WMP for free to make it hard for third-party browsers and media players to compete in a marketplace full of people too lazy to shop around and install their own software. -(Most people I know who use IE only do so because it was pre-installed, and the rest are developers that only use it to test their pages work in a browser that don’t follow standards.)

@Captain_Fantasy Don’t forget that Adobe has repeatedly screwed over Apple; karma’s a bitch (especially when you piss off Steve Jobs).

@jerv You can’t buy a “copy of OS X” in the store. Those Snow Leopard boxes (or any of the previous operating systems) you buy are upgrade licenses for the original license that came with your machine. Apple doesn’t offer full licenses for sale.

It’s free to download the Apple Developers tool, it only costs money if you want access to pre-release software (and to sell software on the iTunes store, but this isn’t bad, it’s only like $99 I believe). Compare it to the costs to develop for other platforms like the Sony Playstation or the Xbox 360 and you’re looking at 10’s of thousands of dollars I think.

I do agree with the App store screening. I personally think they should have two stores, one for approved apps, and a second free-for-all store that comes locked by default (probably with a lot of porn and buggy crapware). In order to unlock it you have to prove your 18+ age at an Apple Store or AT&T location or something like that.

@gorillapaws Just out of curiosity, what would you suggest the Apple store do when one of those crappy apps from the “18+ App Store” releases a bug on your phone, or adversely affects its functioning?

@gorillapaws Not all of them. This is what you are talking about which is different from this, which is a full version . I agree that there is a difference between “OEM”, “upgrade” and “retail” versions, but if you can buy the full OS separately then I want to be able to run it on any computer.

Considering that you can develop for Windoze or Linux for free, that argument doesn’t hold much water, especially since that the platforms you mention are not computers.

As for screening, I would agree if they were impartial, but their squabbles with Google and Skype make me wary at best. Ubuntu gets around it by having multiple “stores”; one is full of official, bug-free, proven and approved stuff, other sections may contain stuff that hasn’t been checked, untested beta versions, or similar stuff. Use the untested stuff at your own risk, but you do have that option.

As for the anti-pR0n, let’s be realistic here. I’ll bet that if they tried that then there would be at least 12 zero-day cracks for it and hundreds within a week. People use fake IDs to buy booze all the time. Age verificaton barely works in meatspace; what makes you think you can get it to work in a realm where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI?

@jerv Those 2 discs mentioned hold the exact same disc, with the exact same content. Apple lets its customers work on the honor system, and neither of those include DRM that forces one to only upgrade from the original OS or install it as a full version. Both allow as many installs as possible as well.

Personally, I like that. It shows Apple has at least some sort of trust in their customers, and I’ve bought new licenses of OSX per computer just because I respect a company that doesn’t tie their customers into DRM and restrictions on the software.

Now I fully understand the iPhone OS is a completely different story, but I don’t have a comment on that just because I don’t own one.

Also, the question is talking about if Apple is the new Microsoft, not the new Google, so I think OSX should take more of a forefront than iPhone OS because that’s directly how Apple competes with Microsoft.

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@jerv: Thank you for your detailed answer showing some of the ways in which Apple is in fact the new Microsoft. The reasons you have detailed are why I so strongly support Linux and Google. When you purchase (or even use) a product you are casting a vote for that company and I wish to vote for Google and Linux at every opportunity. Almost 100% of my software development takes places on Linux (or Solaris)

@dverhey No need for DRM when you can just reach in and disable/delete stuff on a whim anyways. Also, that is like omitting guardrails and trusting people not to drive off the edge of the road.

That is why I prefer Linux and other open-source software. If you like the honor system, then you’ll love an environment that is self-policing, where the bad software gets either fixed or shit-canned by peers.

And with the iPod going against the Zune, and some smartphones running Windows, I’d say that they compete directly with iPhone OS as well.

@Allie I think Apple should show you how to do a clean reinstall of the iphone, but the risks should be explained when you get your free-for-all store unlocked. It should be handled in the same way that it would if you downloaded harmful software onto your Mac and had to do a clean re-install.

@jerv You’re mixing things up a bit here. First, the full version you linked I believe is mislabeled by the third-party site. I’m not 100% certain, but I’m very confident that if you read the EULA (not that anyone would want to) it will tell you that you’re legally getting an upgrade. I agree that if Apple sells a true full version then they should allow you to install it on any machine, but I think they deliberately don’t offer one in order to prevent this.

“Considering that you can develop for Windoze or Linux for free, that argument doesn’t hold much water, especially since that the platforms you mention are not computers.”

There are several problems in this statement. First, you can develop for OSX for free, just like you can with Windoze or Linux. You could literally download Apple’s dev tools, or install them from the disk that came with your machine, write an app and sell it without paying Apple a cent beyond the cost of the Mac. Second, those other platforms ARE computers, they’re just computers that are designed to perform a specific task (in this case gaming)...much like the iPhone is used as a mobile communications/phone device… I think the $99 barrier to entry is a good thing, because it’s not going to prevent anyone willing to devote even a modicum of effort into making a decent app, and will really just filter out trash. To put it another way, I don’t believe that there’s a single worthwhile app that was discouraged from being produced by that policy, while simultaneously preventing a ton of crapware.

I 100% agree that the screening process is flawed and that Apple needs to change how it works. I’ve always thought that Apple should handle the technical approval (app won’t crash, leak memory etc.) and subcontract out the content evaluation and ratings to an independent body that specializes in that kind of thing like the ESRB.

As for worring about kids with fake ID’s, I think there’s only so much you can do. If a kid has a fake ID, he’s going to be able to get as much porn as he wants anyways so it’s kind of silly to worry about that.. As to the 0-day cracks, I believe it would be hard to implement it with parental controls activated. It would simply be a tool to help parents keep their child’s device protected, but it’s still ultimately the responsibility of the parent to monitor their child’s internet/gaming/movie content on the device, and if somehow manages to bypass the parental controls, then I believe Apple should close the vulnerability in the parental controls.

“No need for DRM when you can just reach in and disable/delete stuff on a whim anyways.” But if you’re ever doing a clean install or something, it’s amazingly nice not to have to dick-around with serial authorization and calling upgrade centers an getting authorization numbers and stuff. I realize you can hack Windows, but it’s nice not to even have to bother (I believe this is one area where Apple remains very different than Microsoft).

That’s great that you prefer Linux. I just started learning how to work with linux servers, and it’s pretty cool. In my opinion, OSX provides a richer user experience as far as the OS is concerned, but I certainly respect those that prefer Linux. It’s the people who LOVE windows that make me scratch my head.

@gorillapaws I beleive that that is where you are mistaken. There are different licenses available. The upgrade licenses are written as such; the “single-use_ licenses are a different beast altogether.

And what of distribution? Personally, the way I see it, if peer-review can’t filter out trash then that means that the user base is a little too dim to be trusted with silverware. Maybe I am a little harsh, but I am the type of guy whose mother taught them to look both ways before crossing the street and has little sympathy for those that get mowed down because they lack common sense.
That is why I like the Ubuntu model; you are allowed to risk it by doing a minor edit (one Control Pnael setting), but the default behavior is hand-holding and bottom-wiping. Even I am a bit skeptical of anything not in the “Canonical” section, but over the years, the only freeware that I have had problems with were

Oh, and it’s $99 per year. For someone like me who has been at it a while, that could add up to some serious cash.

I heard that Sony altered the new PS3 specifically to prevent people from turning them into Linux boxes. Booo!!! Hissss!!! If I buy the hardware, I want to be able to do anything I want with it, short of making a profit off of someone else’s copyrighted/patented work. I am a big fan of the Fair Use doctrine.

“I believe Apple should close the vulnerability in the parental controls.”
That would involve reprogramming the kids. It’s an arms race and one that software developers have historically always lost. The only workaround I can see is biometric ID verification cross-referenced with a database that would make Google look like a Post-it™ note, but them you’d have people spoofing the sensors or amputating the relevant anatomy from an authorized user…. assuming the ACLU even allowed such a database to exist.

I agree about the serial numbers, and think that that is one of the more half-assed ideas anybody ever had. Law-abiding end users are severely inconvenienced while the ne’er-do-wells breeze right through the copy protection. I will concede that one to Cupertino, at least in the modern stuff.

Personally, I’ve never had to deal with service centers since I’ve always had the serial numbers I needed in the packaging or in the manual; most people who lack numbers probably never thought to look in that little booklet that came with the disc.

You can get windows managers, shells, etcetera to give you the OS X interface on Linux, and the back-end stuff is pretty similar. Based on technical merit, I actually like OS X. Based on the shell, give me KDE. Based on the license, give me a sulfuric acid enema. As for Windows…. a necessary evil for those that either can’t configure WINE or are just too lazy to do so.

Microsoft’s software products (Windows and Office) have majority market share and, due to requirements for document interoperability, they have become indispensable in most workplaces. Those products, therefore, have a practical (if not a legal) monopoly.

No Apple product exerts similar control. If someone doesn’t want an iPod, they can pick any one of 100 other music players, and still be able to share music with friends.

Apple is basically a gadget company. Unlike Comcast (or the Chinese government), Apple is not a communications conglomerate, and it does not need a huge army of lawyers (or a huge army) to fend off grumbling citizens.

It would be really cool if Apple licensed Mac OS X to third parties, but no moral case makes it imperative they do so.

@matty82 There are many (myself included) that feel that Apple screwed up there. I mean, there are many people making their own “Hackintosh”, so it seems to me that if they officially allowed OS X to run on PC hardware them they could make millions with no real expense other than “printing” a few more discs and altering one portion of the EULA.
No moral case makes it imperative, but the financial case makes sense to me. The point of a business is to make money, so why turn your back on a market that wouldn’t cost you anything to get into (the R&D has already been done: OS X exists and runs on Intel CPUs) and would add considerable revenue? Maybe Apple knows more about GUI than ROI…

@jerv Apple is primarily a hardware company. I would be willing to bet a large sum that if Apple sold OSX to 3rd party hardware makers, the potential gain would be more than offset by the massive losses from a drop in hardware as people pick up netbooks running OSX. Yes, there’s a percent of hackintoshes out there, but you can bet your ass that having competitors undercutting their high-end machines would really decimate the bottom line.

The modern PC has degenerated into a commodity market where profit is made on razor-thin margins. Apple can’t compete in that market and still come up with the innovations they do. That’s why they focus on higher-margin, sexy products, and also why they force you to buy their hardware if you want to legally run their software.

@gorillapaws Is that why their main business lately has been the iPhone and iPod?

@jerv Exactly. The software is the icing on the cake, but they make the vast majority of their profits on selling new devices every couple of years. I don’t have the latest stats offhand, but Apple still brings in a massive chunk of revenue from Mac sales.

@gorillapaws Mac is still the biggest chunk, but that has to do with the high price-per-unit. Mac sales are shrinking, at least compared to sales of other Apple products. so we’ll see how much longer that remains true.

microsoft all the way ,apple are crap.

@pinkgirl02 That’s not the question.