Yes these things would be nice to alot of people, but almost all of them involve apple spending money with no real gaurentee of making money.
We all need to rememeber Apple is a business.. weather your a fan of big business or not, you can't honestly expect them to spend time, money and resources on something that will give them little or no gaurentee for return. And I know the best common arguement is "well if they did these things, alot more people would want these products" but the reality is all of these things, in large part, only really make a difference to techy geeks like you and I who love to tweak, hack, unlock and expand anything we can get our hands on with a circuit. This seems over powering in here because we take up the vast majority of blogs, but in reality we are an extremely small fraction of the market.
Apple must first approach all of these things from a business perspective and ask themselves "is this in our best interests as a profitable successful company?" It seems so nice to just say "screw money, I'm just gonna do what the people want!!", and I know alot of company's try and slogan themselves like that but it just isn't how the world works.
I mean come on... all of you work for a living. Would you really go work all day for free?
you are saying apple can only do things that make money, ie having a closed system to sell things an approve all content that goes into the iphone/ipad. sorry i dont agree with that. Macintosh computers get content installed from tons of places. under your thoughts Apple ought to open up an exclusive store to sell Mac software and ban any outside software.
I just believe in times of RECORD APPLE PROFITS, where they are literally rolling in piles of cash. Apple needs to allow more open access for software and programs, and heck even blu-ray hardware in their systems and portable devices.
Apple has proven they censor not only on a content basis, but on a functionality basis as well. ie preventing the google voice app, preventing a vonage app which would add another phone line to your phone, ie a tel #, not the app they approved which is intl long distance only.
I love apple's products, i just don't like the closed systems and minds they are doing with it lately. and i am in a growing amount of people.
(honest, we collected that data from open wifi networks completely by accident)
Was that the best you could come up with? Seriously? You really imagine a google street view car moving at speed connecting to mostly secured wi-fi networks for a fraction of a second for location purposes is in any way like Apple wanting to 'free' users from porn and ban any app they don't like the look of?
Google isn't perfect, no company is, but Google is on a roll now and have surpassed Apple in several areas. Android 2.2 is better than iPhone OS (even 4.0) as it has superior multi-tasking, an open app store, flash support etc. Google TV certainly looks like a huge leap over Apple TV, and Chrome is the best browser on the market. And it's stating the obvious to say that Google's cloud services - email, calender, contacts, video, photos, location, word processing etc are many years ahead of anything Apple have.
On the flip side Google lack any media management software (surprising given how terrible iTunes is on Windows), and I can't imagine Chrome OS ever being more than a novelty item. Plus working with third parties for your hardware has both good and bad sides.
But Apple should be afraid of Google now if they aren't already. Endless money and a clear desire to take on Apple and beat them should make for some interesting years ahead.
it is interesting to see all the Google trash talking. their problem of course is the arrival of iPhone OS 4 next month and a new generation of Apple hardware, and all the hype that comes with that. not to mention the big success of the iPad. but most of all, the Verizon iPhone which will invade Android's current safe haven. so you got a lot of bravado this week
no, we'll likely do what we've always done. Create content that has the ability to use multiple ways of delivery. I'm still doing it! That's the beauty of H.264. Something many people conveniently forget, that it allows 'choice'. There things flash video can do which is significant, which html5 -cannot-. Same for other things. html5 cannot despite the bleating of the know-it-alls who know what they read on some blog, do all what flash can. It never will. .
And HTML can do something that Flash will never do - run on 100,000,000 iDevices (plus all the other non-Apple smartphones that don't run flash - must be pushing a billion by now.
You're pretending that one must write in a finished html 5 today - which is absurd. Lots of people have written very useful sites in html 4 - and they run on everything. As html 5 matures, they can pick it up.
That's the really hilarious part of Adobe's Flash message "write once run everywhere" is far more true of html than it is of Flash since NO smart phone runs Flash.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Groovetube
what about the free iphones, they aren't counted?
Go ahead and count them - if you can find any. Then tell me where I get my free iPhone. It's easy to get a free Android phone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Groovetube
There's no hard evidence out there to support this {Flash's impending demise}, other than predictions.
Other than the near daily reports of companies that are switching from Flash back to html.
Android's marketshare is up over 800% year over year, iPhone up 112%. Extrapolate.
Android is already outselling iPhones in the US and is on pace to pass worldwide this year. Android is on a meteoric growth curve right now, growing far faster than iPhone is. And there's no reason to believe that won't continue with how many carriers, how many hardware makers they support. They're activating 100,000 Androids every day right now, and 12,000 apps were added to the Android Market in the past month alone. It's catching up very, very fast.
It really is Mac vs PC from the 80s all over again. That's not to say PC is better than Mac, but far more people will use PCs than Mac. Apple simply can't monopolize the entire market with their couple iPhone models.
Extrapolate?
Riiiight. Cuz you know what Apple's going to do next. Cuz you assume Apple will stand still.
Cuz you assume that Android will keep going the way it's been going.
As soon as people realize that upgrading is a bitch, and that Android doesn't always == Android, and that it's a fragmented market *already* which will only lead to pain and suffering, and that it's all a bunch of shortcuts taken to get to market faster to generate that so-called 800% (which is a bullsh*t number anyway), it's just as likely that Android will fall apart.
Look at the lying and the stupidities in the Google TV promo video!
It's just a blue sky idea and the only way they could make it work was to pretend TiVO never existed...and STILL they expect people to TYPE AT THEIR TVs!
And HTML can do something that Flash will never do - run on 100,000,000 iDevices (plus all the other non-Apple smartphones that don't run flash - must be pushing a billion by now.
You're pretending that one must write in a finished html 5 today - which is absurd. Lots of people have written very useful sites in html 4 - and they run on everything. As html 5 matures, they can pick it up.
That's the really hilarious part of Adobe's Flash message "write once run everywhere" is far more true of html than it is of Flash since NO smart phone runs Flash.
Go ahead and count them - if you can find any. Then tell me where I get my free iPhone. It's easy to get a free Android phone.
Other than the near daily reports of companies that are switching from Flash back to html.
First of all, I wasn't taking about html4, how is that relevant. I was referring to the notion that flash is -now- dead-, apparently, and html5 has replaced it. It hasn't, and certainly has a ways to go before it can replace a number of things flash does now. Of course by that time, flash will have released new full versions, it's a mistake to assume it will stand still, certainly more so now that the stakes are much higher. It seems most I chat with, have no idea of it's capabilities. People seem to think it's only used as a video player, and it has some vector animation capabilities.
Anyway, you'd get a free iphone in Japan, I hear they trouble selling them there, so now they're giving them away.
I love the iphone, don't get me wrong, I think apple has a great product. But the sometimes the silliness, hyperbole and outright fabrications on either side can get a little funny at times.
Sorry your wrong. They're down for the count. It's over.
yep. They have one chance left in my eyes, and thats if they buy blackberry. Even then its a long shot. I will actually miss them. They were an amusing opposition in the computer wars. Brain dead on every level.
Big brother?!? This from the guys that took private information from people's wifi networks and continues to gather more private information from every single query in their search engine? Not to mentions gmail, gchat, google docs, youtube, etc. etc.
Talk about Big Brother. So Google is keeping track of where we're going when we use Google Maps navigation? So let's say they get a subpoena to release tracking data by the Feds, are they going to cave?
Because they believe that given all relevant factors, their strategy will yield the greatest total profit.
If they thought that 2 or 3 versions would produce higher total profits, all other factors considered, they would do it in a heartbeat.
If they did anything else, they would face lawsuits from the stockholders.
Apple has one goal and one goal only: to maximize total profits. Everything else is just a means to that goal. This is true of every publicly held company.
Ya I think I'm going to have to give you that one.. but that doesn't necessarily mean their intentions are Evil/Bad. The doesn't mean their strategy for maintaining that maximum product isn't providing the best product and service they possibly can.. Companies like this are few and far between but I think Apple has shown time and time again that this is where their minds are.
I think another impossible issue with this whole openness argument is that it is, for the most part, made by people who's only real concerns have to with features THEY personally want. If John Smith is upset because his phone won't let him download non-app store apps and apple decides to change that, is he going to come back and fight the same fight for people who want the phone not to be locked to one carrier?
When most people say their phone isn't open or apple is making their decisions for them what they really mean is the phone just doesn't do everything THEY specifically want.. which by definition makes "openness" a myth for any phone because no phone is ever going to make EVERYONE happy.
And this is kind of a side note but I just simply do not agree with anyone who thinks Apple shouldn't screen apps going into their store. It's just ridiculous!! They provide the software to create them and all the advise you need, and the rules are simple.. it can't be excessively inappropriate, it can't be useless (which I concede is debatable :P), and if it comes down to features that provide functionality for this APPLE phone then they get first dibs.. can you really expect ANYTHING else? They're putting their name on it, so they need to be ok with it.
Was that the best you could come up with? Seriously? You really imagine a google street view car moving at speed connecting to mostly secured wi-fi networks for a fraction of a second for location purposes is in any way like Apple wanting to 'free' users from porn and ban any app they don't like the look of?
Google isn't perfect, no company is, but Google is on a roll now and have surpassed Apple in several areas. Android 2.2 is better than iPhone OS (even 4.0) as it has superior multi-tasking, an open app store, flash support etc. Google TV certainly looks like a huge leap over Apple TV, and Chrome is the best browser on the market. And it's stating the obvious to say that Google's cloud services - email, calender, contacts, video, photos, location, word processing etc are many years ahead of anything Apple have.
On the flip side Google lack any media management software (surprising given how terrible iTunes is on Windows), and I can't imagine Chrome OS ever being more than a novelty item. Plus working with third parties for your hardware has both good and bad sides.
But Apple should be afraid of Google now if they aren't already. Endless money and a clear desire to take on Apple and beat them should make for some interesting years ahead.
I disagree with you on everything you mentioned here EXCEPT their cloud services.. I do think that is the future of business.. but in retrospect I also see Apple expanding it's mobile me or an extended version of to strongly compete in this rapidly expanding area. Tons of potential. I'm actually surprised you're the first person to mention that so far.
you are saying apple can only do things that make money, ie having a closed system to sell things an approve all content that goes into the iphone/ipad. sorry i dont agree with that. Macintosh computers get content installed from tons of places. under your thoughts Apple ought to open up an exclusive store to sell Mac software and ban any outside software.
I just believe in times of RECORD APPLE PROFITS, where they are literally rolling in piles of cash. Apple needs to allow more open access for software and programs, and heck even blu-ray hardware in their systems and portable devices.
Apple has proven they censor not only on a content basis, but on a functionality basis as well. ie preventing the google voice app, preventing a vonage app which would add another phone line to your phone, ie a tel #, not the app they approved which is intl long distance only.
I love apple's products, i just don't like the closed systems and minds they are doing with it lately. and i am in a growing amount of people.
Wow.. thank you for telling me my thoughts, I was clearly unaware of them.. dick.
Why? I stopped using Google about a year ago and am happy with Bing.
Google, OTOH effectively controls all your data on the Internet and all your personal information. There's absolutely no way to stay out of their sights (unless you're a hermit living in the hills of South Dakota). Who's Big Brother, again?
I thought you use Bing for Search. You don't have to use GMail, Google Maps, Picasa, Google Voice, Google Navigation. So they only access the data that any crawler can access. I can understand the irrational angst over Google on AI since Android is miles better than the iPhone OS (in my view) and the hardware has now eclipsed the iPhone (possibly the upcoming 4th gen as well). I switched from the iPhone to the G1 and loved it back then, in spite of a substantially inferior hardware. Now that it's gone mainstream, the iPhone mind share will eventually decrease as well. The iPhone 3GS is a good phone on it's own merit. It's not for me, but obviously it's for many.
In the last few months, I have been seeing a lot of general negativity against Apple - not just user posts in various forums, but also in the media. I don't understand some of the nastiness, but Apple has been doing a piss poor job of PR - mostly by their actions. I saw the same thing (fawning turning into slamming) of Microsoft in the late 90s - again, mostly because of their actions. I think Apple thoroughly deserves this, just like Microsoft did back when. And if Google oversteps their bounds, so will they. But so far, they haven't. If they do, some one else will come along and we'll all use that.
Apple is indeed the Big Brother of this generation. I have no problems saying that.
It all started with the iPod though, not as recently as the iPhone as Google is saying.
If you want to use an iPhone or iPad you NEED to use iTunes... You NEED an iTunes account. That right there is restricting. And what is Apple's reasoning behind this? "It just works better that way" is the usual response. Well I'm sure IBM thought the same way when they were considered the top dog.
But the funniest thing about this whole story is that this argument is coming from Google...
They are actually more of a threat to being the next Evil Empire. Hell they have been collecting data on people for years and when they get caught only reply with "Oops, our bad. Sorry."
What we have here is the basis of Capitalism. The reason for starting a business is to grow your business and make more money. Being the top dog SHOULD be your goal. So why is one business pointing fingers at another because they are successful??? A little bit of Marketing and a pinch of jealousy thrown in for good measure, that's why.
Comments
I just can't get on board with this comment.
Yes these things would be nice to alot of people, but almost all of them involve apple spending money with no real gaurentee of making money.
We all need to rememeber Apple is a business.. weather your a fan of big business or not, you can't honestly expect them to spend time, money and resources on something that will give them little or no gaurentee for return. And I know the best common arguement is "well if they did these things, alot more people would want these products" but the reality is all of these things, in large part, only really make a difference to techy geeks like you and I who love to tweak, hack, unlock and expand anything we can get our hands on with a circuit. This seems over powering in here because we take up the vast majority of blogs, but in reality we are an extremely small fraction of the market.
Apple must first approach all of these things from a business perspective and ask themselves "is this in our best interests as a profitable successful company?" It seems so nice to just say "screw money, I'm just gonna do what the people want!!", and I know alot of company's try and slogan themselves like that but it just isn't how the world works.
I mean come on... all of you work for a living. Would you really go work all day for free?
you are saying apple can only do things that make money, ie having a closed system to sell things an approve all content that goes into the iphone/ipad. sorry i dont agree with that. Macintosh computers get content installed from tons of places. under your thoughts Apple ought to open up an exclusive store to sell Mac software and ban any outside software.
I just believe in times of RECORD APPLE PROFITS, where they are literally rolling in piles of cash. Apple needs to allow more open access for software and programs, and heck even blu-ray hardware in their systems and portable devices.
Apple has proven they censor not only on a content basis, but on a functionality basis as well. ie preventing the google voice app, preventing a vonage app which would add another phone line to your phone, ie a tel #, not the app they approved which is intl long distance only.
I love apple's products, i just don't like the closed systems and minds they are doing with it lately. and i am in a growing amount of people.
pot kettle etc.
(honest, we collected that data from open wifi networks completely by accident)
Was that the best you could come up with? Seriously? You really imagine a google street view car moving at speed connecting to mostly secured wi-fi networks for a fraction of a second for location purposes is in any way like Apple wanting to 'free' users from porn and ban any app they don't like the look of?
Google isn't perfect, no company is, but Google is on a roll now and have surpassed Apple in several areas. Android 2.2 is better than iPhone OS (even 4.0) as it has superior multi-tasking, an open app store, flash support etc. Google TV certainly looks like a huge leap over Apple TV, and Chrome is the best browser on the market. And it's stating the obvious to say that Google's cloud services - email, calender, contacts, video, photos, location, word processing etc are many years ahead of anything Apple have.
On the flip side Google lack any media management software (surprising given how terrible iTunes is on Windows), and I can't imagine Chrome OS ever being more than a novelty item. Plus working with third parties for your hardware has both good and bad sides.
But Apple should be afraid of Google now if they aren't already. Endless money and a clear desire to take on Apple and beat them should make for some interesting years ahead.
trash talk and knock offs are cheap.
It's just not that simple at all.
no, we'll likely do what we've always done. Create content that has the ability to use multiple ways of delivery. I'm still doing it! That's the beauty of H.264. Something many people conveniently forget, that it allows 'choice'. There things flash video can do which is significant, which html5 -cannot-. Same for other things. html5 cannot despite the bleating of the know-it-alls who know what they read on some blog, do all what flash can. It never will. .
And HTML can do something that Flash will never do - run on 100,000,000 iDevices (plus all the other non-Apple smartphones that don't run flash - must be pushing a billion by now.
You're pretending that one must write in a finished html 5 today - which is absurd. Lots of people have written very useful sites in html 4 - and they run on everything. As html 5 matures, they can pick it up.
That's the really hilarious part of Adobe's Flash message "write once run everywhere" is far more true of html than it is of Flash since NO smart phone runs Flash.
what about the free iphones, they aren't counted?
Go ahead and count them - if you can find any. Then tell me where I get my free iPhone. It's easy to get a free Android phone.
There's no hard evidence out there to support this {Flash's impending demise}, other than predictions.
Other than the near daily reports of companies that are switching from Flash back to html.
On a sober note, google are proving to be bigger scumbags than microsoft could have ever have been.
I wish them all the viruses, trojan's and buggy software that 'openess' brings.
what a bunch of tossers
How could anyone say this with a straight face?
Android's marketshare is up over 800% year over year, iPhone up 112%. Extrapolate.
Android is already outselling iPhones in the US and is on pace to pass worldwide this year. Android is on a meteoric growth curve right now, growing far faster than iPhone is. And there's no reason to believe that won't continue with how many carriers, how many hardware makers they support. They're activating 100,000 Androids every day right now, and 12,000 apps were added to the Android Market in the past month alone. It's catching up very, very fast.
It really is Mac vs PC from the 80s all over again. That's not to say PC is better than Mac, but far more people will use PCs than Mac. Apple simply can't monopolize the entire market with their couple iPhone models.
Extrapolate?
Riiiight. Cuz you know what Apple's going to do next. Cuz you assume Apple will stand still.
Cuz you assume that Android will keep going the way it's been going.
As soon as people realize that upgrading is a bitch, and that Android doesn't always == Android, and that it's a fragmented market *already* which will only lead to pain and suffering, and that it's all a bunch of shortcuts taken to get to market faster to generate that so-called 800% (which is a bullsh*t number anyway), it's just as likely that Android will fall apart.
Look at the lying and the stupidities in the Google TV promo video!
It's just a blue sky idea and the only way they could make it work was to pretend TiVO never existed...and STILL they expect people to TYPE AT THEIR TVs!
Yeah, they're doing well.
And HTML can do something that Flash will never do - run on 100,000,000 iDevices (plus all the other non-Apple smartphones that don't run flash - must be pushing a billion by now.
You're pretending that one must write in a finished html 5 today - which is absurd. Lots of people have written very useful sites in html 4 - and they run on everything. As html 5 matures, they can pick it up.
That's the really hilarious part of Adobe's Flash message "write once run everywhere" is far more true of html than it is of Flash since NO smart phone runs Flash.
Go ahead and count them - if you can find any. Then tell me where I get my free iPhone. It's easy to get a free Android phone.
Other than the near daily reports of companies that are switching from Flash back to html.
First of all, I wasn't taking about html4, how is that relevant. I was referring to the notion that flash is -now- dead-, apparently, and html5 has replaced it. It hasn't, and certainly has a ways to go before it can replace a number of things flash does now. Of course by that time, flash will have released new full versions, it's a mistake to assume it will stand still, certainly more so now that the stakes are much higher. It seems most I chat with, have no idea of it's capabilities. People seem to think it's only used as a video player, and it has some vector animation capabilities.
Anyway, you'd get a free iphone in Japan, I hear they trouble selling them there, so now they're giving them away.
I love the iphone, don't get me wrong, I think apple has a great product. But the sometimes the silliness, hyperbole and outright fabrications on either side can get a little funny at times.
near daily reports? You only wish.
Your original statement was "Oh, please, there's nothing open about Android or Google. "
But please keep going.
DIdn't Google just bless Flash as part of the official Open Web?
I'll agree with you, though, Chrome has open technology in it: The render engine of their Chrome Browser is WebKit.
Y'know. From Apple?
Perhaps microsoft would do well to finally put a fork in IE's ass and take on webkit themselves.
a corporation calls its proprietary products open and some people actually believes them.
...thats because the majority of "people" are thick as shit. A sea of visionless gimps with unwarranted opinions.
Sorry your wrong. They're down for the count. It's over.
yep. They have one chance left in my eyes, and thats if they buy blackberry. Even then its a long shot. I will actually miss them. They were an amusing opposition in the computer wars. Brain dead on every level.
Because they believe that given all relevant factors, their strategy will yield the greatest total profit.
If they thought that 2 or 3 versions would produce higher total profits, all other factors considered, they would do it in a heartbeat.
If they did anything else, they would face lawsuits from the stockholders.
Apple has one goal and one goal only: to maximize total profits. Everything else is just a means to that goal. This is true of every publicly held company.
Ya I think I'm going to have to give you that one.. but that doesn't necessarily mean their intentions are Evil/Bad. The doesn't mean their strategy for maintaining that maximum product isn't providing the best product and service they possibly can.. Companies like this are few and far between but I think Apple has shown time and time again that this is where their minds are.
I think another impossible issue with this whole openness argument is that it is, for the most part, made by people who's only real concerns have to with features THEY personally want. If John Smith is upset because his phone won't let him download non-app store apps and apple decides to change that, is he going to come back and fight the same fight for people who want the phone not to be locked to one carrier?
When most people say their phone isn't open or apple is making their decisions for them what they really mean is the phone just doesn't do everything THEY specifically want.. which by definition makes "openness" a myth for any phone because no phone is ever going to make EVERYONE happy.
And this is kind of a side note but I just simply do not agree with anyone who thinks Apple shouldn't screen apps going into their store. It's just ridiculous!! They provide the software to create them and all the advise you need, and the rules are simple.. it can't be excessively inappropriate, it can't be useless (which I concede is debatable :P), and if it comes down to features that provide functionality for this APPLE phone then they get first dibs.. can you really expect ANYTHING else? They're putting their name on it, so they need to be ok with it.
Was that the best you could come up with? Seriously? You really imagine a google street view car moving at speed connecting to mostly secured wi-fi networks for a fraction of a second for location purposes is in any way like Apple wanting to 'free' users from porn and ban any app they don't like the look of?
Google isn't perfect, no company is, but Google is on a roll now and have surpassed Apple in several areas. Android 2.2 is better than iPhone OS (even 4.0) as it has superior multi-tasking, an open app store, flash support etc. Google TV certainly looks like a huge leap over Apple TV, and Chrome is the best browser on the market. And it's stating the obvious to say that Google's cloud services - email, calender, contacts, video, photos, location, word processing etc are many years ahead of anything Apple have.
On the flip side Google lack any media management software (surprising given how terrible iTunes is on Windows), and I can't imagine Chrome OS ever being more than a novelty item. Plus working with third parties for your hardware has both good and bad sides.
But Apple should be afraid of Google now if they aren't already. Endless money and a clear desire to take on Apple and beat them should make for some interesting years ahead.
I disagree with you on everything you mentioned here EXCEPT their cloud services.. I do think that is the future of business.. but in retrospect I also see Apple expanding it's mobile me or an extended version of to strongly compete in this rapidly expanding area. Tons of potential. I'm actually surprised you're the first person to mention that so far.
you are saying apple can only do things that make money, ie having a closed system to sell things an approve all content that goes into the iphone/ipad. sorry i dont agree with that. Macintosh computers get content installed from tons of places. under your thoughts Apple ought to open up an exclusive store to sell Mac software and ban any outside software.
I just believe in times of RECORD APPLE PROFITS, where they are literally rolling in piles of cash. Apple needs to allow more open access for software and programs, and heck even blu-ray hardware in their systems and portable devices.
Apple has proven they censor not only on a content basis, but on a functionality basis as well. ie preventing the google voice app, preventing a vonage app which would add another phone line to your phone, ie a tel #, not the app they approved which is intl long distance only.
I love apple's products, i just don't like the closed systems and minds they are doing with it lately. and i am in a growing amount of people.
Wow.. thank you for telling me my thoughts, I was clearly unaware of them.. dick.
lol kidding, you make some good points.
Why? I stopped using Google about a year ago and am happy with Bing.
Google, OTOH effectively controls all your data on the Internet and all your personal information. There's absolutely no way to stay out of their sights (unless you're a hermit living in the hills of South Dakota). Who's Big Brother, again?
I thought you use Bing for Search. You don't have to use GMail, Google Maps, Picasa, Google Voice, Google Navigation. So they only access the data that any crawler can access. I can understand the irrational angst over Google on AI since Android is miles better than the iPhone OS (in my view) and the hardware has now eclipsed the iPhone (possibly the upcoming 4th gen as well). I switched from the iPhone to the G1 and loved it back then, in spite of a substantially inferior hardware. Now that it's gone mainstream, the iPhone mind share will eventually decrease as well. The iPhone 3GS is a good phone on it's own merit. It's not for me, but obviously it's for many.
In the last few months, I have been seeing a lot of general negativity against Apple - not just user posts in various forums, but also in the media. I don't understand some of the nastiness, but Apple has been doing a piss poor job of PR - mostly by their actions. I saw the same thing (fawning turning into slamming) of Microsoft in the late 90s - again, mostly because of their actions. I think Apple thoroughly deserves this, just like Microsoft did back when. And if Google oversteps their bounds, so will they. But so far, they haven't. If they do, some one else will come along and we'll all use that.
Apple is indeed the Big Brother of this generation. I have no problems saying that.
It all started with the iPod though, not as recently as the iPhone as Google is saying.
If you want to use an iPhone or iPad you NEED to use iTunes... You NEED an iTunes account. That right there is restricting. And what is Apple's reasoning behind this? "It just works better that way" is the usual response. Well I'm sure IBM thought the same way when they were considered the top dog.
But the funniest thing about this whole story is that this argument is coming from Google...
They are actually more of a threat to being the next Evil Empire. Hell they have been collecting data on people for years and when they get caught only reply with "Oops, our bad. Sorry."
What we have here is the basis of Capitalism. The reason for starting a business is to grow your business and make more money. Being the top dog SHOULD be your goal. So why is one business pointing fingers at another because they are successful??? A little bit of Marketing and a pinch of jealousy thrown in for good measure, that's why.
+10. Agreed totally.