<strong>i think this thread has spiralled out of control as threads seem to do. if apple had the opportunity to be a predatory monopoly, would they?</strong><hr></blockquote>
It's hard to tell until they're in that position. Apple has certainly been arrogant before, when they had a 40% marketshare. Once people acquire that much power, there is the constant temptation to use it - which is why we have antitrust laws.
However, this thread is more narrowly concerned with Apple's late practice of buying up applications, and killing off Windows versions if there are any. The only acceptable reason I can see is that they're planning to turn the app into something that really does need to be on a Mac (because of close hardware/Core Audio/FCP integration) and the Windows version would essentially be its own codebase, its own UI, etc. and thus a lot of expense and inconsistency between platforms. I hope that's the case, because if they are just killing the Windows versions to make the Mac look more attractive by default, that's not confidence inspiring. Also, if Apple can't produce a compelling reason to switch platforms, it'll come back to bite them.
Unfortunate? Sure. Mac users are familiar with the pain of an app going to the Other platform if anyone is. Hardball? Perhaps. Monopolistic? Not with the other options available, and not with Apple's marketshare.
I recall the days of Windows 3.0-3.11. Back then it was rumored that Windows wasn't ready untill a certain competing word processor ran with somewhat less than seamless ease. In light of the recent anti-trust revelations, in retrospect, I suspect those rumors had a bit more substance than anyone thought at the time.
That is an abusive use of monoploy. I don't see Apple doing that. They buy one of many competing technologies who are willing to sell and add their product, technology, and talent to their own pool of professionals. They edit the offerings to fit their strategy, combining, removing, and introducing features to offer a clean, balanced and easy to use interface/application.
Market-share surely plays a role in the perception of monopolistic practice. Some things that slide (or are even enouraged) when you're 5% of the market are a definite no-no when you're 95%. However, Apple has not (as far as I can see) maliciously attacked all/any possible competitors or open standards. They save their malicious attacks for the press/loyalists, don't'cha know?
hmurchison, All is well. I have a short memory when it comes to offenses.
I understand the points that you all are making. I know that Apple has not crossed the legal line. But no matter the market share, there are some things that are a matter of principle. Even if they do something awe inspiring with Logic that can?t be done on the PC, there is still no good reason to kill support and development of a PC version. Consider these three reasons:
1. The Windows code base already exists. It would only need to be maintained and updated, not rewritten. The Mac version would have features that were clearly superior because of certain platform advantages that would be obviously to everyone. This would truly be a compelling reason to switch. platforms.
2. The cost of such development would be supported by the user base of the Windows version. There are 70,000 Windows users of this product that would gladly continue paying for the product. There is no good reason to slam the door in their face.
3. It just plain looks bad. It looks like Apple is desperate to keep its position in a market that was once its strong hold. Windows/PCs have made a quantum leap since Apple first dominated the industry. And there are fewer and fewer reasons to be Mac only in the creative field. In the absence of strong technical reasons to stay Mac, Apple buys the best cross platform product it can, and boots out the other platform. Following so close on the heels of the ?Nothing Real? acquisition, this cut throat tactic looks a lot like a pattern. Couple that with the fact that Apple has done very little to woo the music industry in some time. As well as the fact that the music industry seems to be none to impressed with OS X, (at least to the extent that they have delayed OS X versions of their products).
What does Apple do in response? They buy the best, and perhaps most popular cross platform app of its kind and throw our the other platform. I repeat, it just plain looks bad. Why not buy an Apple only product? Perhaps that wasn?t an option. I don?t know. At any rate, I hope they do something wonderful with the technology. Whatever happens, you all should know that I am not alone in my initial impression of this deal. The music boards are abuzz with this sentiment. And the competition for the disaffected Windows users is already heating up.
Thanks for the chat, folks. It?s been a blast. Can?t wait to see how it all turns out.
MV. Thanks. We all have our bad days. I've been spending too much time defending Apple's purchase of Emagic on other boards. I was too jumpy.
All I draw from is my miniscule experience with Final Cut Pro. It's not a cross platform app but it is fairly stable and as a total neophyte I was able to actually do something with it over a weekend and not one crash(mind you this was OS9 and that OS was by no means impervious to nasty crashes). I hate to see PC users get the shaft but my own greedy needs dictate that I be excited to see what Apple/Emagic can come up with.
I look at Apple as a "Proof of Concept" company. Even though they don't always maintain a particular market(PDA) they do show the rest of the industry that a particular item will work.
[quote]This does not make them less innovative.<hr></blockquote>
I disagree.
Buying other people's work is not innovative, it's having a big wallet and an eye for what you need to keep the wallet fat.
I understand that the time factor prohibits writing all this stuff from line 1, but refining the work of others is not innovation.
hmurch:
[quote]Macromedia started to pull away from even wanting to ship Key Grip at all. That's why they shopped it and sold to Apple. Notice that Macromedia has focused on Web apps and for the most part stayed away from video?<hr></blockquote>
Why would Apple buy KeyGrip if it wasn't essentially FCP?
[quote]I don't hear it.<hr></blockquote>
You must be deaf and blind.
Go to Apple.com and search for the words "innovation" "innovator" and such. 690 hits for the word "innovation" alone.
[quote]Anyone can tell that MV's post was an attack on Apple.<hr></blockquote>
I don't agree. I think he made a valid point that is very often overlooked by the teeming masses here.
You could take it as an attack, sure, but Amorph seems to disagree that it's necessarily a bad thing.
Buying other people's work is not innovative, it's having a big wallet and an eye for what you need to keep the wallet fat.
I understand that the time factor prohibits writing all this stuff from line 1, but refining the work of others is not innovation.</strong><hr></blockquote>
How is it possible not to refine the work of others? If Apple built FCP from scratch, they'd still be refining the work done by other people who'd worked on DV solutions (not to mention algorithms, program organization, team strategies) - they'd just be starting with a clean .c file.
What matters is the result. The result is a piece of software that opened up an industry.
The issue here is clear: What makes a product or service innovative is what it makes possible. Apple refined the GUI into something truly innovative: a system-standard graphical interface for ordinary people at a sane price point (with the Mac, not Lisa!). Apple refined the laptop computer into something truly innovative more than once - all current notebooks owe their layout (and, in almost all cases, their color) to the PowerBook 100. Apple refined various apps into iTunes, iMovie and iDVD, which offer ordinary people options that they did not have before - neither iMovie nor iDVD was the first in its category, but they were easy enough to use, and well enough integrated, to make movie editing and burning a realistic option for ordinary people. In this case, the innovation "merely" involves coming up with a design that takes the product past an invisible but crucial point where it's easy enough to use that a critical mass of people actually use it. Bam, just like that, there's a whole new use for the home computer. It doesn't matter that Apple wasn't first. It doesn't matter that they might not have written much of the code. They made it compelling, and that's what makes their solution innovative.
Ditto the iMac. They didn't make a lot of the parts inside. They just arranged them in a way that redefines the way a user sees and interacts with a PC. Innovation.
Otherwise, your standard is so high that astonishingly few products - or, if your statement is taken literally, hardly any accomplishments throughout history - are innovative.
To innovate, to do anything, you need tools, ideas, and perhaps workers. Where do you find them?
Let's say iTunes
You need people that specialize in the audio mp3 field. The soundjam team, were praised in the mac area so that a good choice. They are familiar with mac programing, Audio, and actively coding.
You can tell the team to start from scratch, but you won't because it's like telling a story writer to write something new that they already wrote sort of. So a writer would rather just revise and polish with what they have with your critia in mind.
While that's happening you add your own collective and done, innovation(debateble).
Just like a portable computer was inovated from a desktop, you have to have raw materials, ideas, and specialists that already existed in one form or another.
Probably the inventing of the wheel was a tree falling down and rolling around and all the person did was chop it, bundle it together and put something on top of it.
On M$, they are slightly different on their products. If they inovate anything, they inovate in the means of being controlled by M$. Which is another discusion alltogether.
[quote]What matters is the result. The result is a piece of software that opened up an industry.<hr></blockquote>
Eh.... no.
The industry was moving along just fine sans FCP, if I remember correctly.
[quote]What makes a product or service innovative is what it makes possible. Apple refined the GUI into something truly innovative: a system-standard graphical interface for ordinary people at a sane price point (with the Mac, not Lisa!).<hr></blockquote>
Silly Maclots living in the mid 80s.
Even so, the Mac and her original OS doesn't relate to what we're talking about here. A better comparison would be MS buying DOS to sell to IBM.
[quote]Apple refined the laptop computer into something truly innovative more than once - all current notebooks owe their layout (and, in almost all cases, their color) to the PowerBook 100.<hr></blockquote>
See above.
[quote]Apple refined various apps into iTunes, iMovie and iDVD, which offer ordinary people options that they did not have before - neither iMovie nor iDVD was the first in its category, but they were easy enough to use, and well enough integrated, to make movie editing and burning a realistic option for ordinary people.<hr></blockquote>
First off, drop iTunes off the list with a quickness and we can keep moving. Apple was so far behind the curve on that even Luddites were tapping their feet at them.
iMovie - I'll give you this one. I don't think it's still in the realm of the ordinary person because the entrance price is still high.
iDVD - People actually use this to make DVDs to mail to family members and such?
[quote]In this case, the innovation "merely" involves coming up with a design that takes the product past an invisible but crucial point where it's easy enough to use that a critical mass of people actually use it.<hr></blockquote>
How many people "actually use it", though. If you want to go with such a nebulous definition of "innovation" then I'm afraid that Microsoft is the undisputed king of computing innovation.
Windows has done more than anything else to spread computing to the masses. Is that also innovation?
[quote]They didn't make a lot of the parts inside. They just arranged them in a way that redefines the way a user sees and interacts with a PC. Innovation.<hr></blockquote>
Apple made it cute: period.
The only thing innovative about the iMac was the way it looked: period.
(I never was too hot on the color of the original iMac, myself. )
[quote]Otherwise, your standard is so high that astonishingly few products - or, if your statement is taken literally, hardly any accomplishments throughout history - are innovative.<hr></blockquote>
Granted, but I think there should be a higher standard to use the word instead of throwing it around as often as "the" or "as" like Apple does.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm basically this thread have turned into a "I think it's red" vs "I think it's Fuschia"
Innovation is in the eye of the beholder. But at any rate Grove. Apple for it's size generates ALOT of patents so to distill their efforts down to "cute" is a little trivial. The "NEW" Apple has realized that many of it's efforts to innovate will simply be ignored...watch how Rendevous<sp> will get ignored on X86.
Remember you're still plugging your mouse to the BACK of your PC. Every think about how much sense that makes? PC's have a large degree of idiocy that it's users must ignore.
[quote]Apple for it's size generates ALOT of patents so to distill their efforts down to "cute" is a little trivial.<hr></blockquote>
Don't even go there. I think most sentient beings have long since stopped equating number of patents with innovation, either technical or aesthetic.
Or does the amazon "one-click" patent not ring a rather sour chime, or for all you still fighting the good fight out there <sarcasm for the humor impaired>, MS's patent of style sheets.
Don't even go there. I think most sentient beings have long since stopped equating number of patents with innovation, either technical or aesthetic.
Or does the amazon "one-click" patent not ring a rather sour chime, or for all you still fighting the good fight out there <sarcasm for the humor impaired>, MS's patent of style sheets.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Point taken. I would say Patents are the sole criteria but Apple has been a research company more so than even larger companies like Dell.
Comments
<strong>i think this thread has spiralled out of control as threads seem to do. if apple had the opportunity to be a predatory monopoly, would they?</strong><hr></blockquote>
It's hard to tell until they're in that position. Apple has certainly been arrogant before, when they had a 40% marketshare. Once people acquire that much power, there is the constant temptation to use it - which is why we have antitrust laws.
However, this thread is more narrowly concerned with Apple's late practice of buying up applications, and killing off Windows versions if there are any. The only acceptable reason I can see is that they're planning to turn the app into something that really does need to be on a Mac (because of close hardware/Core Audio/FCP integration) and the Windows version would essentially be its own codebase, its own UI, etc. and thus a lot of expense and inconsistency between platforms. I hope that's the case, because if they are just killing the Windows versions to make the Mac look more attractive by default, that's not confidence inspiring. Also, if Apple can't produce a compelling reason to switch platforms, it'll come back to bite them.
Unfortunate? Sure. Mac users are familiar with the pain of an app going to the Other platform if anyone is. Hardball? Perhaps. Monopolistic? Not with the other options available, and not with Apple's marketshare.
[ 07-08-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
That is an abusive use of monoploy. I don't see Apple doing that. They buy one of many competing technologies who are willing to sell and add their product, technology, and talent to their own pool of professionals. They edit the offerings to fit their strategy, combining, removing, and introducing features to offer a clean, balanced and easy to use interface/application.
Market-share surely plays a role in the perception of monopolistic practice. Some things that slide (or are even enouraged) when you're 5% of the market are a definite no-no when you're 95%. However, Apple has not (as far as I can see) maliciously attacked all/any possible competitors or open standards. They save their malicious attacks for the press/loyalists, don't'cha know?
hmurchison, All is well. I have a short memory when it comes to offenses.
I understand the points that you all are making. I know that Apple has not crossed the legal line. But no matter the market share, there are some things that are a matter of principle. Even if they do something awe inspiring with Logic that can?t be done on the PC, there is still no good reason to kill support and development of a PC version. Consider these three reasons:
1. The Windows code base already exists. It would only need to be maintained and updated, not rewritten. The Mac version would have features that were clearly superior because of certain platform advantages that would be obviously to everyone. This would truly be a compelling reason to switch. platforms.
2. The cost of such development would be supported by the user base of the Windows version. There are 70,000 Windows users of this product that would gladly continue paying for the product. There is no good reason to slam the door in their face.
3. It just plain looks bad. It looks like Apple is desperate to keep its position in a market that was once its strong hold. Windows/PCs have made a quantum leap since Apple first dominated the industry. And there are fewer and fewer reasons to be Mac only in the creative field. In the absence of strong technical reasons to stay Mac, Apple buys the best cross platform product it can, and boots out the other platform. Following so close on the heels of the ?Nothing Real? acquisition, this cut throat tactic looks a lot like a pattern. Couple that with the fact that Apple has done very little to woo the music industry in some time. As well as the fact that the music industry seems to be none to impressed with OS X, (at least to the extent that they have delayed OS X versions of their products).
What does Apple do in response? They buy the best, and perhaps most popular cross platform app of its kind and throw our the other platform. I repeat, it just plain looks bad. Why not buy an Apple only product? Perhaps that wasn?t an option. I don?t know. At any rate, I hope they do something wonderful with the technology. Whatever happens, you all should know that I am not alone in my initial impression of this deal. The music boards are abuzz with this sentiment. And the competition for the disaffected Windows users is already heating up.
Thanks for the chat, folks. It?s been a blast. Can?t wait to see how it all turns out.
By the way, my name is David.
All I draw from is my miniscule experience with Final Cut Pro. It's not a cross platform app but it is fairly stable and as a total neophyte I was able to actually do something with it over a weekend and not one crash(mind you this was OS9 and that OS was by no means impervious to nasty crashes). I hate to see PC users get the shaft but my own greedy needs dictate that I be excited to see what Apple/Emagic can come up with.
I look at Apple as a "Proof of Concept" company. Even though they don't always maintain a particular market(PDA) they do show the rest of the industry that a particular item will work.
[quote]This does not make them less innovative.<hr></blockquote>
I disagree.
Buying other people's work is not innovative, it's having a big wallet and an eye for what you need to keep the wallet fat.
I understand that the time factor prohibits writing all this stuff from line 1, but refining the work of others is not innovation.
hmurch:
[quote]Macromedia started to pull away from even wanting to ship Key Grip at all. That's why they shopped it and sold to Apple. Notice that Macromedia has focused on Web apps and for the most part stayed away from video?<hr></blockquote>
Why would Apple buy KeyGrip if it wasn't essentially FCP?
[quote]I don't hear it.<hr></blockquote>
You must be deaf and blind.
Go to Apple.com and search for the words "innovation" "innovator" and such. 690 hits for the word "innovation" alone.
[quote]Anyone can tell that MV's post was an attack on Apple.<hr></blockquote>
I don't agree. I think he made a valid point that is very often overlooked by the teeming masses here.
You could take it as an attack, sure, but Amorph seems to disagree that it's necessarily a bad thing.
quote by Amorph:
This does not make them less innovative.
<strong>I disagree.
Buying other people's work is not innovative, it's having a big wallet and an eye for what you need to keep the wallet fat.
I understand that the time factor prohibits writing all this stuff from line 1, but refining the work of others is not innovation.</strong><hr></blockquote>
How is it possible not to refine the work of others? If Apple built FCP from scratch, they'd still be refining the work done by other people who'd worked on DV solutions (not to mention algorithms, program organization, team strategies) - they'd just be starting with a clean .c file.
What matters is the result. The result is a piece of software that opened up an industry.
The issue here is clear: What makes a product or service innovative is what it makes possible. Apple refined the GUI into something truly innovative: a system-standard graphical interface for ordinary people at a sane price point (with the Mac, not Lisa!). Apple refined the laptop computer into something truly innovative more than once - all current notebooks owe their layout (and, in almost all cases, their color) to the PowerBook 100. Apple refined various apps into iTunes, iMovie and iDVD, which offer ordinary people options that they did not have before - neither iMovie nor iDVD was the first in its category, but they were easy enough to use, and well enough integrated, to make movie editing and burning a realistic option for ordinary people. In this case, the innovation "merely" involves coming up with a design that takes the product past an invisible but crucial point where it's easy enough to use that a critical mass of people actually use it. Bam, just like that, there's a whole new use for the home computer. It doesn't matter that Apple wasn't first. It doesn't matter that they might not have written much of the code. They made it compelling, and that's what makes their solution innovative.
Ditto the iMac. They didn't make a lot of the parts inside. They just arranged them in a way that redefines the way a user sees and interacts with a PC. Innovation.
Otherwise, your standard is so high that astonishingly few products - or, if your statement is taken literally, hardly any accomplishments throughout history - are innovative.
To innovate, to do anything, you need tools, ideas, and perhaps workers. Where do you find them?
Let's say iTunes
You need people that specialize in the audio mp3 field. The soundjam team, were praised in the mac area so that a good choice. They are familiar with mac programing, Audio, and actively coding.
You can tell the team to start from scratch, but you won't because it's like telling a story writer to write something new that they already wrote sort of. So a writer would rather just revise and polish with what they have with your critia in mind.
While that's happening you add your own collective and done, innovation(debateble).
Just like a portable computer was inovated from a desktop, you have to have raw materials, ideas, and specialists that already existed in one form or another.
Probably the inventing of the wheel was a tree falling down and rolling around and all the person did was chop it, bundle it together and put something on top of it.
On M$, they are slightly different on their products. If they inovate anything, they inovate in the means of being controlled by M$. Which is another discusion alltogether.
~Kuku
Eh.... no.
The industry was moving along just fine sans FCP, if I remember correctly.
[quote]What makes a product or service innovative is what it makes possible. Apple refined the GUI into something truly innovative: a system-standard graphical interface for ordinary people at a sane price point (with the Mac, not Lisa!).<hr></blockquote>
Silly Maclots living in the mid 80s.
Even so, the Mac and her original OS doesn't relate to what we're talking about here. A better comparison would be MS buying DOS to sell to IBM.
[quote]Apple refined the laptop computer into something truly innovative more than once - all current notebooks owe their layout (and, in almost all cases, their color) to the PowerBook 100.<hr></blockquote>
See above.
[quote]Apple refined various apps into iTunes, iMovie and iDVD, which offer ordinary people options that they did not have before - neither iMovie nor iDVD was the first in its category, but they were easy enough to use, and well enough integrated, to make movie editing and burning a realistic option for ordinary people.<hr></blockquote>
First off, drop iTunes off the list with a quickness and we can keep moving. Apple was so far behind the curve on that even Luddites were tapping their feet at them.
iMovie - I'll give you this one. I don't think it's still in the realm of the ordinary person because the entrance price is still high.
iDVD - People actually use this to make DVDs to mail to family members and such?
[quote]In this case, the innovation "merely" involves coming up with a design that takes the product past an invisible but crucial point where it's easy enough to use that a critical mass of people actually use it.<hr></blockquote>
How many people "actually use it", though. If you want to go with such a nebulous definition of "innovation" then I'm afraid that Microsoft is the undisputed king of computing innovation.
Windows has done more than anything else to spread computing to the masses. Is that also innovation?
[quote]They didn't make a lot of the parts inside. They just arranged them in a way that redefines the way a user sees and interacts with a PC. Innovation.<hr></blockquote>
Apple made it cute: period.
The only thing innovative about the iMac was the way it looked: period.
(I never was too hot on the color of the original iMac, myself.
[quote]Otherwise, your standard is so high that astonishingly few products - or, if your statement is taken literally, hardly any accomplishments throughout history - are innovative.<hr></blockquote>
Granted, but I think there should be a higher standard to use the word instead of throwing it around as often as "the" or "as" like Apple does.
Innovation is in the eye of the beholder. But at any rate Grove. Apple for it's size generates ALOT of patents so to distill their efforts down to "cute" is a little trivial. The "NEW" Apple has realized that many of it's efforts to innovate will simply be ignored...watch how Rendevous<sp> will get ignored on X86.
Remember you're still plugging your mouse to the BACK of your PC. Every think about how much sense that makes? PC's have a large degree of idiocy that it's users must ignore.
By the way, from my laymen's perspective, I'd argue that FCP is at least redefining an industry in terms of empowering users without huge wallets.
Don't even go there. I think most sentient beings have long since stopped equating number of patents with innovation, either technical or aesthetic.
Or does the amazon "one-click" patent not ring a rather sour chime, or for all you still fighting the good fight out there <sarcasm for the humor impaired>, MS's patent of style sheets.
<strong>
Don't even go there. I think most sentient beings have long since stopped equating number of patents with innovation, either technical or aesthetic.
Or does the amazon "one-click" patent not ring a rather sour chime, or for all you still fighting the good fight out there <sarcasm for the humor impaired>, MS's patent of style sheets.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Point taken. I would say Patents are the sole criteria but Apple has been a research company more so than even larger companies like Dell.