The Latest Meme – Apple Bashing

By Kfir Pravda | Published: August 12, 2009

Bashing Apple is the new black in the blogosphere. It started with Michael Arrington that announced that he dropped iPhone due to the Google Voice Debacle, followed by a less than accurate  (to say the least) post by  Calacanis where he bashed Apple for reasons starting with Google Voice story to their unwillingness to open iTunes to competing MP3 players.To sum it up, some people believe that Apple is nothing but an evil force  with an awesome design capabilites

Now, I don’t consider myself a fanboy (though I own two Macbook Pros, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, iPhone, and a life size poster of Jobs in my living room), but a lot of these arguments are lame.

Let’s start with the definition is Evil. Evil is a big green monster eating small children , World War Two otrocities, the guys who let Kevin Costner do Waterworld, and the inventors of hair metal. A company that creates awesome products but doesn’t like to play nice is not evil, but aggressive at best.

Why iTunes doesn’t allow to sync music with other devices? WHY WOULD IT? Does anyone stops Microsoft, Archos, or any other manufacturer to create their own sync application for Mac and PC? NO. Apple doesn’t block other sync applications, they just have the strange tendency not to shoot themselves in the foot.

Why AppStore approval  process suck so much? Cause they weren’t prepared for the amount of apps they need to authorize. iPhone developers know it, so why are they saying that it makes Apple evil? Unorganized at best will be my choice of words.Yes, Apple needs to get their act together, but at the end of the day – if developers don’t like the way things are they are more then welcome to develop for other platforms. Like Windows Mobile. Ha? no hands? why? CAUSE THE iPHONE ECOSYSTEM IS WAY BETTER THAN ITS COMPETITORS. After years of mobile developers eating crap from carriers and aggregators , who leave them with %10 of the revenues, they have the chance to make decent money. True, it is still hard, but at least they keep 70% of the revenues!

Now, the Apple Tax – the strange claim that Apple products cost more than its competitors. Well:

1. Mercedes costs more than Toyota.

2. You pay for quality

3. No one is forcing you to buy Apple

4. Apple doesn’t have low end products at all. Comparable hardware costs the same  in some markets.

5. Don’t buy if you don’t like it

6. The real Apple Tax is iPhone battery life, but that’s a whole different  post

The funniest thing ever is that people are protecting Google from Apple. GOOGLE. The guys who know almost everything about us, starting with our search history, through our emails, documents and even location. If Apple didn’t do the right thing with the Google Voice application, the big guys from FCC will know what to do with them – but, do you really believe that Google needs protection from Apple?

So let’s put things straight – Apple are selling high priced, high quality technology products, and isn’t interested at all in helping the competition. It is a business, not a peace corps branch.  Strange guys, I tell you.

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  • Udi
    You are forgetting one important thing,
    Apple is using their hyped and well deserved technology / design advantage to do things that eventually hurt you, but you keep saying, hay, i love you guys coz of all that youve done.

    the fact that they have an "open" app store is wrong, they control it strongly and force us all to live up to unknown criteria by which the select whomever goes through the gate and who stays out side.

    you may say, this is their product and their power, but when you are an almost monopoly, this power is taken from you by the state, and there is a reason for it.

    this is why i believe that apple is now a leader, but google openness will win here eventually.
    as a developer, i will soon move to target android and not iphone simply because i know i can put whatever i want on the phone and the market will judge my app, not some american company with its own agenda.
  • Udi thanks for your comment.
    Apple never said they have an open store - they allow others to play in their garden, as long as people accept the fact that it has very, very high walls, which is legit.
    Yes, you have the ability to do tons of things on Android - but Apple provides a lot of value through their channels as well.
    Re monopoly - in which market are they exactly a monopoly? they have less than 10% market share in computers market. MP3 market? well, the guys managed to do both awesome product AND cater the needs of the right holders for premium content. So yes, they have the lion share of that segment, but there are no switching barriers, especially now with the DRM free music you buy from iTunes. Ah, yeah, they are a monopoly in the cool-phone-ever department, and they have 100% of the iPhone market :)
    You see, I can't get those who complain. The rules are known to everyone - customers know they get a superior product, but not easily tweaked, developers know they can create products for amazing platform, but it comes with a price tag of Apple control.
    Re who will prevail - yes, open means bigger market share. BUT Apple market cap is 70% of Microsoft's - even though they are not pulling in as much revenues, and are much smaller.
    So, yes, go open. But don't bitch about the side.
  • Udi
    What you are saying is the since apple is so cool we must bow down to every whim or just stop using their service.
    reality is different. if i want to compete in this market with my service i must make it "appleable" since apple did such a wonderful job in making an amazing product.
    making it appleable means not doing apps that violate all american values.
    if you believe that its ok, good for you. i want alternatives.
    I am not bitching, this is the eco system and i have to work within it. but when Android will hit the market with a mature version, it will crush the AppStore since so many americans dont want american values in their apps.
    i will be one of those moving to away from apple as fast as possible when i have the chance.
  • How did American values get into the mix? And you want to develop for Google, the guys who help the Chinese government :)
    So you are saying something very simple:
    1. Apple create awesome products
    2. These products have a valuable ecosystem
    3. Apple wants to manage it in a way that they will control the experience and the value derived from it (funny people - they want to make money)
    4. So Apple should change their policy to fit your needs
    Right?
    If anything, Apple is very good in creating products that people covet, and willing to pay a tax for it. It is not a dictatorship, you are not forced to buy their product - and most people don't buy them.
  • Udi
    :) you are over simplifying.

    1. awesome.
    2. yes.
    3. 3 -> leading to their value, no nude, no bikini, no swearing (did you know that they killed a dictionary app simply coz it has swearing as some of the words in the dictionary, people could look the work FUCK... oh no)
    4. apple should do nothing, i will do something, i will wait until the market share of other possibilities will grow enough for me to make a profit developing for other platforms and then i will drop the iPhone.

    think of this.
    i can invest tons of time working on an iphone app and then get rejected.
    why?
    i dont know, since they dont publish the criteria, its a black box, that wrong for me.

    you, as an apple lover, are missing on tons of apps that might have been your favorite simply becoz they threat apple business model. you love it, you protect this view, go ahead and enjoy it, i want to consume whatever i want and i am willing to use an "inferior" platform like android that represents my need for openness better.

    its just a question of what you feel is important, no one is forcing anyone to choose one way or the other.
  • 3 - this is not accurate. the dictionary was pulled back due to the fact that the developer refused to wait for 17+ rating to be implemented in the store - Schiller emailed the devs personally about it.
    You are interested in developing for iPhone cause you believe there is money there.
    I am not an Apple lover - I am an experience, usability and creativity junkie. Apple products provide me higher value than their competitors in these fields, and that's why I buy their products.
    Every company protects its business model, unless it is managed by lemmings.
    I didn't say that Android is an inferior platform - I said the opposite - it will have more users and more apps.
    Open vs. closed ecosystem in my opinion is a strategic business decision, not a moral one. It might be that Apple is losing their innovation by doing so, but they were able to reboot two segments - MP3 players and smartphones, so they are probably doing something right.
  • PooFar
    The first analogy what comes to mind about Apples policy on AppStore and the way you think it's OK is like saying that it's alright for in some countries to oppress women because it's just how their culture is...
  • mmmm... I believe it is a bit extreme to compare women oppression to banning Google Voice from iPhones... you know, these women don't have a choice, Google is a billion dollars company, and you are not forced to use iPhone or to develop for it....
  • PooFar
    Well, it's extreme but that's what first came in to my mind. ;) Google is forced to live in Apple universe because they still have a major share of users. They can't just not develop for iPhone, because they would be dissing a big share of users.

    For an average developer it might be wise choice to skip developing on the iPhone because you can't really know what you can or can't do. For a company as big as Google that just isn't an option, they have their users to please.

    When Apples AppStore policy is in the way of innovation, then they're going in to wrong direction...
  • Agree with both points. Apple is missing a major point with the app store, and they will suffer if they lose the dev community.
  • Dude! You can say what you like about Apple, but why'd you have to bash Waterworld. That movie was awesome and KC is a superstar... with gills!

    On a more serious point, I own no Apple products and tend to veer away from them when given the choice. Here are some of my reasons.

    iTunes. It's messed up. It messes with my mp3s and it looks awful. I don't want a device which forces me to use a certain kind of software to synch up. My mp3 players (Archos and Creative) are drag and drop and they easily play the avi files that I bittorrent.

    Also, how can a global company get away with charging 99 cents for a track in the US and 99 pence for the same track in the UK. That actually is evil. I don't live in either the UK or the US but I'm penalized because I don't have a US bank account.

    Finally, the iPhone. I think they look sexy as hell although I'm happy without one. Nevertheless, the decision in the US to only offer them through one company (and a crappy one at that) just puts me off the brand. It's a silly way to make more money prior to launch which alienates people tied in to other service providers or forces them to pay a penalty. Arrington's pushback several years later is the legitimate response to a decision that Apple made at launch that was based on money and not customer satisfaction.
  • Thank you. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy Apple products. If you like it, buy it. If not, go buy your Microsoft products, or any other brand. The world runs on both Mac and PC. My preference is Mac, but is still work on 4 PC's during the week. Can't we all just get along?
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