Non-Apple's Mistake

I've been patient, I've been gracious
And this mountain is covered with wolves
Hear them howling, my hungry children
Maybe you should stay and have another drink and think about me and you.
Jonathan Coulton, "Skullcrusher Mountain"


The howls of protest coming from iPhone and iPad developers are loud and shrill, and are sure to grow louder and shriller as their Golden Cage grows smaller and smaller, as I'm certain it will.

The Golden Cage is indeed a cage, and a strong one.  Yet it has no door.   Still the poor imprisoned wretches continue, on their own free will and in battalion strength, to pack subway-rush-hour-tightly into their curious prison.  I suggest that the jailbirds' grievances should lie not with their jailers, but with the outside world, which offers them so little.

It appears that no one (not PG, either) has a grasp of the real problem behind Apple's tyranny.  At any rate, no one is talking about it.  It is quite true that Apple's new App Store policies are exactly the kind of behavior one might expect from a tyrannical monopoly.  But, having cornered no markets, Apple is not a monopoly.  Or is it?

I argue that Apple now has not one but two monopolies:

I)    A nearly-total monopoly on computer (and pocket computer) systems designed with good taste.
II)  A total monopoly on the Microsoft-free, hassle-free personal computer. [1]

Mr. Jobs is indeed starting to behave like that other convicted monopolist we know and love.  Yet unlike the latter, Jobs did not engage in underhanded business practices to create his monopolies. They were handed to him on a silver platter by the rest of the market, which insists on peddling either outright crap [2] or cheap imitations [3] of Apple's aesthetic.  In order to resist the temptation this worldwide herd of mindless junk-peddlers and imitators have placed before him, it would not be enough for Jobs to merely "not be evil." He would have to be a saint (and a traitor to his shareholders.)

Imagine that every car maker save for Toyota insisted on using the infamous East German Trabant as a standard of quality - yet blindly imitated random elements of Toyota's visual design.  How long would it take for the whiners to appear on the scene and start making noises about monopolistic tyranny?  How long would it take for Toyota to start living up to these accusations in earnest?  And why should it not do so?  What is to be gained from corporate sainthood?  From a refusal to fleece eagerly willing suckers for all they're worth?  Idle threats of defection by outraged iPhone developers [4] are laughable nonsense simply because - in the two categories listed - Apple has no competition. Every commercial product which competes directly with an Apple product (particularly the iPhone) gives me (and many others) the distinct impression that "where it is original, it is not good, and where it is good, it is not original."

Of course, Apple's competitors cannot actually copy the secret of its greatness, because Apple is a fundamentally different type of organism.  Rather than a brainless government-by-committee, it is an extension of one man's will, projected with the aid of a small group of trusted lieutenants: no focus groups in sight.  For the Apple-imitators to turn into genuine "Apples" would be as fantastic and unlikely as it would be for a slime mold to spontaneously become a true multicellular animal, equipped with a central nervous system.  It is also unclear that, from their own perspective, they should want to grow brains - for a creature with that kind of centralized point of failure is decidedly no longer immortal. [5]  There is every reason to believe that when Jobs dies, Apple will also die [6] - or at the very least, "diminish, and go into the West," becoming a pale imitation of itself - like the post-Edison zombie of General Electric, or Hughes Aircraft after Hughes.  Yet we, the consumers and developers, could certainly use more products from corporations endowed with an actual mind and will.

You want a non-tyrannical Apple?  Rather than striving to weaken Apple so that it can be devoured by its brawny-yet-mindless competitors, do something constructive.  Experiment with GUIs which don't trace their descent to Xerox PARC.  Forever renounce the idiotic practice of copying Microsoft, that cheap imitation of a cheap imitation.  If you are creative, create.  Otherwise, strive to find a strong-willed Jobs figure gifted with good taste, and become his loyal servant.  This is how we get quality products, everywhere from architecture to operating systems.  There is no other way.  Creativity requires a mind, and a herd has none.


Edit:

A number of people linking here seem to think that I like Apple or forgive its sins (as if Apple needs my forgiveness.)  This is a mistake.   I loathe Apple products, and chafe under the straightjacket of their aesthetic whenever I use one.  I simply happen to despise their competition that much more.  At least Apple has an aesthetic.  Its works, however flawed, are the works of a person, rather than an amorphous blob.


[1] For a variety of reasons, Apple's OS is not my choice on the desktop.  Yet my only laptop is a Macbook Air.  No one else makes a portable where every hardware component simply works, including suspend mode, while entirely freeing me from Microsoft. (In an important sense, Apple's dominance stems partly from an unholy "good cop, bad cop" symbiosis with the Redmond Tyrant.)  I should also note that no one else makes a laptop whose metallic chassis enables it to pass the "Creak Test" - hold a device by two opposite corners and flex gently.  Do you hear a noise of any kind?  If so, you are holding a mechanically-unsound piece of garbage.

[2] The still-ubiquitous non-touchscreen phones, for instance.

[3] What else would you call this?  And were it not for trademark and patent laws, I imagine that Apple's mobile phone competitors would pull out all the stops and make outright copies without shame, just as Microsoft continues to shamelessly ape the Apple GUI - as it has continuously done since Windows 1.0.

[4] The fabled Google Android?  It is entirely the piece of junk one ought to expect from a development process driven by committees and steered by non-creative minds.  And it appears that many would-be buyers know it.

[5] In addition to the likely loss of immortality, such a transformation would also make a company far less hospitable to the time-servers, sycophants, and sociopaths who presently dominate American corporate culture.  It would be vigorously resisted by almost everyone who is in any kind of position to resist it.

[6] Stock-holders who are outraged over Mr. Jobs' failure to report on his failing health certainly seem to think so.

This entry was written by Stanislav , posted on Friday April 16 2010 , filed under Hot Air, NonLoper, Philosophy . Bookmark the permalink . Post a comment below or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

87 Responses to “Non-Apple's Mistake”

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  • [...] Of course, Apple’s competitors cannot actually copy the secret of its greatness, because Apple is a fundamentally different type of organism.  Rather than a brainless government-by-committee, it is an extension of one man’s will, projected with the aid of a small group of trusted lieutenants: no focus groups in sight.  For the Apple-imitators to turn into genuine “Apples” would be as fantastic and unlikely as it would be for a slime mold to spontaneously become a true multicellular animal, equipped with a central nervous system.  It is also unclear that, from their own perspective, they should want to grow brains – for a creature with that kind of centralized point of failure is decidedly no longer immortal.  There is every reason to believe that when Jobs dies, Apple will also die – or at the very least, “diminish, and go into the West,” becoming a pale imitation of itself – like the post-Edison zombie of General Electric, or Hughes Aircraft after Hughes.  Yet we, the consumers and developers, could certainly use more products from corporations endowed with an actual mind and will. via Loper OS » Non-Apple’s Mistake. [...]

  • Dave says:

    "Yet unlike the latter, Jobs did not engage in underhanded business practices to create his monopolies. They were handed to him on a silver platter by the rest of the market."

    Bill Gates had to start somewhere too. Back in the late 70's and 80's he didn't have that much power. He too had to create better products than others (according to the standards of the time.)

    He and his company did do some bad stuff later. And I think people are start to see the same of Apple now.

    Both companies built strong positions through their merits (and some business shrewdness). And both companies were/are doing what they believed in their own best interests. Yes, Apple is more UX driven than MSFT. While it is an explanation of their decision, it does not justify the other impacts to the marketplace.

    • Nemo says:

      Sorry Dave.... but your comment is a good example of the truth of the axiom "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". Go and read some history on Microsoft.

      • JScottA says:

        Thank you, Nemo. Dave obviously doesn't know Microsoft history. Perhaps he should start his history lesson with Microsoft's dealing with IBM on OS/2 and Windows 3. That is a great little start.

  • Norton says:

    OTOH, you cannot merely have Apple and not the rest of the market to give it the freedom of expression. Afterall, Apple still needs volume, and in some cases you need the illusion of choice to help bump up that volume - at least on the desktop as it doesn't seem to have affected the iPod/iPhone/iPad... And if everyone turned out interesting and great products like Apple, then collectively, none of them would be interesting nor great.

  • Will says:

    It's interesting that you loathe Apple products but compliment and use them. I have a love-hate relationship with my iPhone too, but anytime I go looking for something better, it just doesn't exist.

  • Hamranhansenhansen says:

    I think Apple continues without Jobs. Not only has he created a culture within the company, but even within the users. And their competitors will continue to suck.

    Sony announced yesterday they will start selling PC's made by 3rd parties under the Sony brand. They haven't yet made a profit on PC's and that is their solution? Totally wrong. They should stop using 3rd party software, not start using 3rd party hardware. As you say, they make it too easy on Apple.

  • David Bailey says:

    I think it's interesting that you used the Palm Pre as an example of designers "copying Apple's aesthetic" and yet in the link under "designed with good taste" one of the points in it was that "Good design can copy". I happen to agree that good design can copy to a certain point; it's unfair to say that designs based on real world comforts, (for example a small rectangular screen with a bevel above and below for easy holding and thumb placement) should be usable only by the people who did it first. Technology evolves through people copying good design, and that is because it is more important to be right than original.

    However your post did make me think about some things. Namely, why is it we are still stuck with WIMP, or more specifically real world metaphors? It's good, definitely, but we are constraining ourselves in a comfort zone. Something like Cooliris for example is a great way to view search information on a large scale. Microsoft recently debuted some search software that uses graphical arrangements of multiple images to create a more manageable volume of data.

    I think that recently retrograde steps have been made, particularly by Apple. The iPad (I know, not that again) heavily relies on real world representation, as does most Apple software, in it's software. They keep sticking to solid pages for example in iBooks, and try and make it look as booky as possible. Why not take advantage of the limitless scrolling capabilities for example? They always aspire to make computers simpler, and what that ends up doing is making computers less useful. We should be helping everyone get more tech savvy, not narrow down productivity to a select few. If the iPad is a game changer (which I don't think it is) and everyone ends up following the same paradigms, like those in the tech press (Jesus Diaz and John Gruber in particular) would have us believe, then the growth into technology and the real usefulness that computers could have for society in the future is already being limited. It sounds over dramatic, but simplifying everything at the expense of functionality is going to create a massive group (maybe majority?) of people who can't do anything more than browse the web and download a few twitter apps. Have we no greater aspirations?

    • Roger Clark says:

      The iPad makes computing simpler for certain use cases. While it doesn't necessarily eliminate the possibility of complex functionality, the idea is that you would rather use a device like it when you only really want to deal with the functionality it provides.

      Even if we were left in an Apple-only computing world, the Mac would still exist, and it enables complex and feature-rich UIs. Maybe iMovie is simple, but Final Cut Pro certainly isn't. Photoshop isn't simple. And you've got a rich software development environment that could never be called simplistic. The general purpose computer will be necessary for content creation and software development for the forseeable future -- after all, people have to develop the software that these devices run. Content companies have to create the media to play on them.

      I guess there's a strange fear that in the far future, all computing, content creation, software development and everything else would be given an easy mode iPad-like interface. But would that really be such a bad thing? People getting things done faster and easier? For all practical purposes, a simplistic interface is better than a complex interface if the end result of the work is of equivalent quality.

    • mark says:

      I think flipping a page is actually easier for reading than scrolling. I don't know of any studies to prove it, but for my personal use, I find it's much easier to keep track of where I am in the book/article - my eyes know exactly where to go when the page is flipped, it's not so easy to track where your eye should go when a page is scrolling. (A full page scroll is identical to a page flip.)

  • Xamuel says:

    Brilliant, I had never thought of Apple in that way: the magnum opus of a single man. If you think about it, *all* the great inventions were always the great works of one man, one man, one man. The mind of one man is the womb of a great idea, and the corporate, bureaucratic committee is its deathbed.

    • jL says:

      Funny:

      ... one man, one man, one man. The mind of one man is the womb...

    • /b says:

      If you think about it, *all* the great inventions were always the great works of one man, one man, one man.

      with some notable exceptions like, oh, I don't know, the internet.

      • Matt says:

        The internet was created by Al Gore.

      • Nathaniel says:

        The Internet is just a dumb network, certainly a great thing, but no better or worse than other networks that came before it or after it. It was no more popular than other networks, either. The great thing that changed the world was not the Internet, but the world wide web -- the invention of one man. There had been hundreds of previous attempts at hypertext systems, but his was the one with the right combination of power and ease of use. The WWW was so powerful that the mere fact it ran on the Internet caused all other networks to be left behind.

    • Aaron Davies says:

      Apple is a monarchy, and shows both the great advantage and disadvantage thereof.

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  • tired of jobs control freakery says:

    "when Jobs dies, Apple will also die". So be it. If that's what it takes.

  • [...] the post “Non-Apple’s Mistake” on Loper [...]

  • Arru says:

    Amen! Smartest piece on Apple and their role
    in the tech field written in...ever. I've been on this track for a while already - you made me realise that it won't matter if Apple's "competitors" figure out the whole innovation thing at last, because they lack the power to change, to do anything useful with this knowledge. Oh, and the single-cell organism analogy is brilliant.

  • Scopie says:

    You left out the third, strongest monopoly: Apple's vertical business model. None of its competitors have this model or any likelihood of developing it. This way of doing business facilitated the creation of the first two monopolies and is Apple's greatest strength.

    When Steve Jobs came back to the then struggling Apple he was asked by an interviewer how he was going to resurrect the company against such seemingly impossible odds. His reply (to closely paraphrase) was, "We're going to take unfair advantage of the fact we control the whole widget." Consider this prophecy if you don't think Steve Jobs strategizes far,far into the future.

    • mark says:

      Many other companies have tried a vertical business model. They just didn't know where to draw the boundaries of their platform.

      For example, Apple somehow knows it shouldn't own a music label/movie studio/publisher or a cellular/broadband network/ISP. But Sony didn't and Comcast/xfinity may find that is shouldn't.

      Microsoft is experimenting with being an OS provider as well as a vertical business in phones/mp3 players.

      As for Apple, we'll see soon if venturing into ads is a good place for the platform or not.

  • Edwin says:

    Faith based development! Genius!

  • The General Public says:

    You are sad, angry little man.

  • Marc says:

    While some developers feel constrained by Apple, the company's most successful products are successful because they make people freer. The Mac freed me from the CLI, computers that required me to figure out what they wanted and IT departments more interested in their work then in helping me do my work (which was the company's work). Only the largest companies could afford the tools that I needed. Now I can do more in my own home.

    The iPod freed me from mindless radio that is still playing the same handful of songs they did 10 years ago. It enabled me to clear out the shelves that once held LPs and listen to music I hadn't been able to play for 30 years. It destroyed Microsoft's vision of an Own Never, Rent Forever world and replaced it with non-DRMed music plus podcasts and university lectures anyone can make and anyone can listen to.

    The iPhone freed people from phones with incomprehensible features. My old phone required 23 key presses to multiply 3 by 4. Only a handful of companies were big enough to be able to create applications or music or films. Now anyone can do it. This is a boon to the hobbyist and the formerly shut-out talented alike.

    People who are dissatisfied with Apple should certainly go someplace else. But there is a reason that so many others are behind them ready to take their place.

  • Albion Tourgee says:

    Yes some good stuff about Apple, but author goes for the "one great man" garbage. Yes there is such thing as good leadership. But in American of 2010, it's all about the one man show, Jobs at Apple, Welch at GE, Gates, and our sports heroes and movie stars and so forth. Some people are really comforted by this feeling of, follow the Great Man. Actually the innovations come from lots of sources, at most someone like Jobs is a gatekeeper, much as you might like to imagine him in his lab cooking up all the clever ideas out of his uber-mensch brain. Oh please, Great One, tell us what's pretty. I think the author of the piece has read far to much junk like Ayn Rand and taken it to heart. The several thousand creative and intelligent folks at Apple who've actually built some pretty good products should be very insulted.

    • Alonso Perez says:

      No, Albion, Stanislav is right. The survival of Apple, in a meaningful sense, after Jobs is gone is unlikely. Certainly the notion that Tim Cook could run Apple is laughable. Cook is smart and hard-working, but his great defect is that, as his mom has said, he always finishes everything he starts.

      For Apple, this is a terrible trait. Jobs abandons things with abandon. He has canceled as many products as he has approved. He abandoned college. He is tenacious, but not a soldier, not even in obedience of his own ideas; these may change at any time. He has the gift of being able to react to the future because he can abandon his present course.

      If you have not worked in a major corporation, you will have a difficult time grasping how incredibly hard it is to stop a project once it has certain internal momentum. It does not matter how much things change or how misguided the original approach. Most people are afraid to raise serious objections to projects that have been approved, and the executives who approved the money spent are completely unable to write off those funds on a hunch. They see it as a sign of weakness, or as a way of admitting incompetence or defeat.

      But Jobs can do exactly that. He can spend $30 million on a new device and wake up one day and harbor some doubts, and if these persist he will just cancel it. The end. He might pick it up again a couple of years later, or not. Internally, he simply does not care what people think or how much money was spent. If he comes not to like something it just has to go. It even has to go if it is someone else's product, like Adobe Flash. In an industry where product development is largely based on check-boxing to meet the expectations of the punditocracy, this trait is extremely rare.

      And to make these changes, he does not need to write a hundred emails and do 40 PowerPoint presentations. He just does a thumbs down or thumbs up and that's it. This gives Apple speed worthy of a startup.

      Apple is like a huge small business. If you don't believe me look at their tiny product line. The whole thing fits conceptually into one mind and one coherent vision.

      When Jobs dies, Apple will overnight become a corporation. It will still have worthy products for a few years, but that's it. Unless there is a dark horse successor, by year 3 AJ, if that, the magic will be completely gone.

  • Steven says:

    @Dave
    You're right, Gates had to start somewhere. He started by stealing CP/M from Digital Research, making some minor modifications, and offering it to IBM as PC DOS. His habit of underhanded practices began early and never ceased.

  • Julius says:

    Apple isn't a monopoly at anything. Worldwide, 50% of all smartphones sold are Symbian-based -- that's Nokia -- and only 15% are iPhone OS based. The only reason that the iPhone app store seems to be doing better than Symbian app sales is because:

    1. Apple has centralized and streamlined app purchases in a way that Nokia has been late to implement -- I think they have a platform called Ovi now.
    2. Apple customers are idiots who are ready and willing to overspend on anything, including apps.

    • Hm, your list somehow got truncated. Let me finish it off for you:

      3. Symbian, in its various incarnations, is terrible to develop for, and slow to use. Support for modern APIs and modern hardware ranges from the flaky to the nonexistent. (Their "flagship" N97 still uses a resistive touchscreen. In 2010. Really.)
      4. Ovi has been an ongoing disaster from launch onward.
      5. Nokia's mixed signals (We're buying Symbian! No, wait, Maemo/Linux is the future! No wait, maybe we'll buy Palm!) have left their rapidly shrinking development community confused and directionless.
      6. As a result of all of the above, third-party development for Symbian is moribund, and the apps that are available are universally terrible.

      If in 2010 even 5% as many Symbian apps are sold as iPhone or Android apps, I'll happily salt, pepper, grill and eat every hat in my closet.

      (Also: overspend on apps, really? When the average price of an iPhone/Android/WebOS app is somewhere between free and $1, that's a weird charge to level.)

    • His Shadow says:

      I'd like to read one blog post comment section on Apple that didn't have the mind numbingly stupid comments about Apple supporters or buyers being idiots that throw money at everything for no reason whatsoever and that this is why Apple is a success. The App Store? Really, asshole? A collection of mostly 99 cent applications that can be downloaded quickly and easily form where ever you happen to be at 1/10 to 1/30 of the crapware prices developers charged for their shitty shareware apps? Give your head a shake.

  • Stanley says:

    To the writer of the article,
    if you loathe Apple for its control, do you loathe Microsoft for its control too?
    If you do, how do you use computer these days?
    If you don't, then care to share how do you ignore Microsoft monopoly, which is a real monopoly with no "".

  • Scott says:

    The gist of your argument, is that Apple makes the best stuff, far better than the competition. Thus it deserves to win.

    The 80 million iPhone and iPod owners have no right to be unhappy, and the thousands of app developers have no right to complain, because they are there willingly.

    That is a reasonable argument when stated so simply, but ignores most of the facts.

    Apple combines all the best elements of product design, some of the best marketing in the business world, and mixes that with some of the worst monopolistic business practices ever seen.

    Apple is not a monopoly in the strictest sense of the word, but yet they kind of are. They stil have 5% or so of the PC market, but they have 80% of the smart phone market. They have 90% of the mp3 player market. They are going to gobble up the tablet market. They have a significant share of the online music and video buying market. Yes, they are innovative and attain #1 spot through innovation, yet they use the market leadership to cut out competitors ruthlessly.

    They get #1 through their products, and keep it through their anti-competitive business practices.

    We can't simply sit by and allow companies to act like bullies. Look at the way people complain about Walmart, and how tough they once were to local businesses, employees, and suppliers. Apple is the Walmart of the digital world. And that is not a good thing. Walmart listened, but will Apple?

    • JayWilmont says:

      What anti-competitive practice has Apple used with the iPod? You could always buy non-Apple music and play it on your iPod, and now that they are DRM-free, you can play all of your Apple music on your non-Apple devices.

      Again, with the iPhone: application development is limited, but apps such as Kindle, Skype, Pandora & Bing, all of which arguably compete with Apple, are in the App store. Nothing anti-competitive there either.

      Btw, while as an AAPL stockholder I would love for Apple to have an 80% smartphone marketshare, its really only 16%, behind both Nokia & Rim. They are also now up to 8-9% of the US computer market.

    • mark says:

      Facts seem to be missing from your post. Almost every one of your percentages are wrong. In addition to what Jay said, Apple only has 70% of the mp3 player market.

      Capitalism is fairly ruthless. Apple is building a platform. In some areas of the platform, anyone can build on it (like music/movie content). In other areas, companies carefully select who else can build on the platform. That's not anti-competitive, but it is ruthless.

      Also, who has Apple been bullying? If you're thinking Adobe, then realize that for the past 10 years or more, Adobe has been bullying Apple over software. The only difference is that Apple didn't whine to the press.

  • Jan Rychter says:

    Great article. I fully agree — in fact I regularly tell people that I am not an Apple fanboy, I just think that Apple products suck less than others. At present. And I still hope competition will catch up.

  • port agile says:

    Apples Constraint Based Product Politics leads to money going to small guys...

    n fact the much debated effective distribution channel over the iTunes AppStore has led to a very strange effect that effectively those who are making real money with iPhone apps are only very few large corporations but mostly individual developers and...

  • [...] a great essay, Stanislav Datskovskiy correctly identifies the “monopoly” positions held by Apple. [...]

  • The several thousand creative and intelligent folks at Apple who've actually built some pretty good products also come up with absolute crap too...which is filtered through the "one great man". Gatekeeper? Sure. That's the whole point of this article.

    Congrats on grasping the ideas, then not quite actually getting it.

  • [...] [From Non-Apple’s Mistake] [...]

  • [...] Loper OS » Non-Apple’s Mistake You want a non-tyrannical Apple?  Rather than striving to weaken Apple so that it can be devoured by its brawny-yet-mindless competitors, do something constructive.  Experiment with GUIs which don’t trace their descent to Xerox PARC.  Forever renounce the idiotic practice of copying Microsoft, that cheap imitation of a cheap imitation.  If you are creative, create.  Otherwise, strive to find a strong-willed Jobs figure gifted with good taste, and become his loyal servant.  This is how we get quality products, everywhere from architecture to operating systems.  There is no other way.  Creativity requires a mind, and a herd has none. via loper-os.org [...]

  • [...] Tweets about this great post on TwittLink.com [...]

  • Larry Fritzlan says:

    I have loved Apple and Jobs since 1984. Brilliant article. And I'm writing this on my new, amazing iPad. It is not perfect but there is nothing else nearly as cool. Every where I go it causes ordinary adults to become joyful - at least those capable of joy. Steve jobs rocks.

  • jdb says:

    Steve Jobs also cured cancer.

    Steve Jobs solved global warming in 2 minutes using an app on an iPad.

    Steve Jobs once fed every hungry child in the world in THREE MINUTES.

    Steve Jobs sent an iPad back in time, which allowed the Allies to win WWII.

    Steve Jobs bought you a new bicycle when all you really wanted was a $25 gift certificate to Chilis.

    Steve Jobs used his time machine to go to the future and personally get you something nice from a gift shop.

    Steve Jobs will give you a backrub if you would only ask.

    Steve Jobs is better than you.

    STEVE JOBS IS A PERFECT GOD WHO CANNOT BE CRITICIZED. SO SAYETH STEVE JOBS AND HIS SYCOPHANTIC FANBOYS.

  • [...] a Windows or a Linux box. How is that? Because I feel like I don’t have the choice. Here are some very good points made by Stanislav Datskovskiy (Via Daring [...]

  • [...] a comment » From Loper OS: Of course, Apple’s competitors cannot actually copy the secret of its greatness, because Apple [...]

  • Joseph says:

    You are one conflicted dude.

  • [...] and try to give you, our readers, content creators, a bigger and better view of the tech landscape. This post from Loper OS is worth a read. The author is clearly on Apple’s side of things, not because he loves Apple [...]

  • Filbert says:

    The real question is whether or not someone who compares all non-Apple corps to slime mold with no hope of evolving is actually mocking Mac-bigots and not BG.

    But, should the real-world be permitted to intrude, my touch "copy" of the iPhone shipped from manufacturing 6 months before any iPones were in customer hands. And my touch "copy" of the iPad has been in continuous use by myself for six years now...

    Oh, and listening to Thoreau's Walden on my Smartphone recently has made it clear that even the arrogance of Mac-bigots is only a pathetic copy of "real" youthful chuztpa. (Remember, I'm convinced that Loper OS is actually taking the iPanderers to the cleaners and just waiting til they notice.)

  • Bullet Proof says:

    This Apple monopoly would be a perfect example of what Austrian School economists call free-market monopoly. A monopoly achieved not by favorable government legislation, but by the quality of products created.

  • [...] Loper OS: “Non-Apple’s Mistake” by Stanislav Datskovskiy: 16 April [...]

  • Jesus Christ says:

    You "loathe" Apple products, but it's better than the rest? Apple will die when Jobs does? While I do find you make a lot of valid observations in this piece, you are passing off a snarky attitude that comes across as self-serving vs. highly intelligent. You appear to be incredibly impressed by your own thoughts and words. So be it. But your writing would hold much more weight if it stink of this air of self importance.

    By the way, Apple makes a great OS, loads better than Windows. And Apple will not die when Jobs does. I do hope another major player throws their hat in the ring to give Microsoft & Apple a run for their money in the future.

  • [...] Loper OS » Non-Apple’s Mistake. [...]

  • [...] Loper OS » Non-Apple’s Mistake. [...]

  • Jason says:

    My Lenovo X61 sure passes the creak test. This is after surving a full beer, and more than a few bottles of water poured on the keyboard. As well as being jumped on by a 3 year old. Granted, my Black MacBook has also survived such atrocities, including water, and being tossed from about 5 feet for a distance of about 5 feet onto cement - a feat I'm sure my Thinkpad would also survive. But it hasn't had the chance to taste a beer yet.

  • drachenchen says:

    Ahh, strict dualism... Now, repeat your mantra: There is no Linux. There is no BSD. There is no Haiku, or DexOS. Nothing may be coming down the pike in the way of interface design, quantum computing, or hardware design that will render these petty squabbles meaningless.

    Our tribe is better than all the evil others. Our leader is the only saint, and all other leaders are as slime mold beside them. Time to go to the edge of our territory, and screech at the neighbors.

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