[iDC] Undermining open source: iTunes U

[Andreas Schiffler]

E. Miller wrote:
>> i think Apple has been let off the hook for a long time especially by cultural
>> activists. Bill Gates and Microsoft have been an easy bugbear, but Apple are
>> monopolists too and have been since they first started making an OS that works
>> only with their own hardware.
>>     
Let's play some games first  ... http://www.miniclip.com/badapple.htm

Here are my thoughts on Apple.

I've been doing computing since around 1983 when the ZX81 became 
affordable (http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zx81/zx81.htm). 
Interestingly enough though, I've never owned or missed owning an Apple 
during my geek-career. Some friends had Apples][e machines - and were 
playing games on it for most parts. But by that time though, we had the 
C64 (I got one) which was superior for gaming than anything out there at 
the time while at the same time providing a computing platform that 
essentially created the assembly- and demo-scene 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene). So looking through the long 
list of machines they made (http://www.apple-history.com/) many were 
technically not state-of-the-art and commercially considered expensive. 
They also never reached the demo scene much for example - not that the 
Mac community had no coders, it was just that they were a different 
breed. Maybe the coding youth of the day felt they were the boxes for 
the ivory-tower's - not made for the real "Scotty's" 
(http://www.danhausertrek.com/AnimatedSeries/Scotty.html) of the world 
that could wire PCs while laying on their backs in a "Jeffery's Tube" 
(http://www.thejeffriestube.com). And then along cam the PC - with 
extension slots and design that opens up the hardware to a multi-vendor 
scheme. So us hackers could plug and play with ISA, MCA, VL-BUS, PCI, 
PCIe. Whats more, the RAM  was sockets, so was the CPU and the drives. I 
still have a box with hundreds of PC parts from that era laying around 
(anyone interested?). My point is, that Apple was (and still is) shaped 
by this model of closed hardware design. Designers and schools got Mac's 
(which "just worked") - everyone else got a PC for their better 
computing-bang-for-the-buck ration and tinkerability index (and in the 
process were cursed with Microsoft software). As most private people 
then and now run the bulk of their software from unlicensed copies, the 
PC won out in the closed loop of operating system monoculture: more PCs, 
more Windows, more commercial software vendors coding on Windows, more 
free Windows based stuff and games to crack and copy. Apple was 
struggling, but got indirectly and directly help from  ... Microsoft. 
After all, Microsoft needs a competitor in the big consumer market that 
keeps the prices for operating systems and other productivity software 
high - Apple always charged a decent price for their OS. Apple responded 
in addressing the needs of their original "ivory-tower" customer base 
with a solid OSX and generally picking up on the need for more 
"designer" computing - as computers intruded more and more our lives, 
they needed to blend in better than the grey PCs of the day. iPods were 
more a fashion statement and a consumer statement against all the crappy 
industrial design coming out of Taiwan than real technical innovation. 
Plus, since we all hate Windows, its a nice and cheap way for many to be 
different from the Wintel world (and than sit down on that XP laptop 
again). So these days with all that talk of the Apple-Disney-pie and 
iTunes, Apple redirects again in a response to the better designs coming 
out of Taiwan (http://global.shuttle.com/default.asp) and a general 
trend towards slick looking, usable desktops (MS Vista or any Linux 
desktop) - which erodes its raison-d-etre - towards a focus on content. 
With hardware and software become more a commodity by the day, content 
is king. The device and the software is just a means to push YOUR 
content. That is the reason for the initially huge losses the original 
Xbox ran - a viable business expense for Microsoft to control the 
content (computer games). So far it seems to work - with 1,000,000,000 
legal iTunes downloads (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29879) their 
content vision sets the stage for what is to come. And what I read into 
it, is not all bad. While they did incorporate DRM, they allowed 
personal several copies and made it cheesy enough to be broken within 
months of its release (http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=706). They 
also started with a price-point of 99c which was much lower than what 
Sony and Co. charged at their onlines sites at the time. But its just 
music - while and important market, its small compared to games for 
example. Where is Apple in the interactive-gaming front? So I think, 
Apple was and is a niche player but will always remain an influence on 
the industry  - and so was the now defunct Silicon Graphics Inc. ... I 
guess they didn't have a Steve Jobs, his ego and his team.

Cheers
Andreas

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: aschiffler.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 135 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20060306/2e3d78ce/aschiffler-0002.vcf