Apple gets 30: No reason to celebrate

- Gesellschaft,Software,Tech

Everyone's cheering: Apple gets 30. So, I want to show you why this is no reaseon to celebrate at all.

There are Apple-Fans who see themselves as Underdogs, moving side by side with their leader and idol Steve Jobs against the monopol of Microsoft and the rest of this uncreative world. If you look closely behind the facade of creativity and freedom, the seems-to-be-alternative company from Cupertino is nothing else than a normal company, which includes all those dirty tricks, to satisfy their shareholders.

Protection of privacy

[...]In addition, your personal information helps us keep you posted on the latest product announcements, software updates, special offers, and events that you might like to hear about. [...] For example, we may ask for your personal information when you’re discussing a service issue on the phone with an associate, downloading a software update, registering for a seminar, participating in an online survey, registering your products, or purchasing a product. At such times, we may collect personal information relevant to the situation, such as your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, and contact preferences; your credit card information and information about the Apple products you own, such as their serial numbers, and date of purchase [...] o help us provide superior service, your personal information may be shared with legal entities within the Apple group globally who will safeguard it in accordance with Apple’s privacy policy. There are also times when it may be advantageous for Apple to make certain personal information about you available to companies that Apple has a strategic relationship with or that perform work for Apple to provide products and services to you on our behalf. [...] We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary.
Apple Privacy Policy

This privacy policy is a true smash in your face and fully qualifies Apple for the Big Brother Award. These are the worst passages I could find. Apples iTunes also had a focus recently because it sends data to Apple without user interaction (or even knowledge of it).

Apple's not premure when it comes to collecting data, which then falls under this privacy policy: Data will be collected whenever possible, reasonable or not. For example, you need an Apple-ID - along with adress, telephone number, email adress and credit card number - if you want to use their warranty. There are other cases, more absurd ones. If you want to submit a podcast for the directory of iTunes Music Store, you also need an Apple-ID. If you don't have one but still using all those free available podcasts you get bugged from time to time to get one and the podcast you're currently listening to will be stopped.

Octopus

Whenever possible, Apple wants to push their proprietary standards, eg. iPod, iTunes and Apples proprietary Digital-Rights-Management (DRM)-System: If you buy an iPod, the only way to control it with Windows and Mac OS X in a satisfying way is via iTunes. If you install iTunes, you install QuickTime - a shareware, which annoys you with buying the Pro version. The Quicktime-Logo will also be placed in the tray bar, the option to turn this behavior off is very well hidden. But even if you've found it, that still doesn't mean that the libraries are not loaded every time you boot your Windows PC, consuming memory of course. To prevent this, a manual entry in the registry is needed.

In Apples Music Store is Music crippled with DRM available, which means, the owner of the rights decides what will happen with the legal aquired music, not you. The method is proprietary. The only players that support this DRM are the iPods from Apple. So, every song aquired through the Music Store can only be played on Apple players. The format of the music is patent-bonded AAC, which Apple wants to place against the proprietary competition vrom Microsoft and Real. The establishment of patent-free formats like Ogg Vorbis are to be prevented. Many other MP3 players support Ogg - not the iPod. Even iTunes plays Ogg files only with a plugin. Other popular players for the PC support the format for a very long time already.

With the copyright reform in France comes a law, which states that provider of MP3 files like Apple must ensure, that their files are readable by every player. Apple then declared war to France, supported by the US administration. There were times when Steve Jobs saw the things a little bit different...

Octopus #2

Apple holds many patents, software related and others. Not so long ago, they got a patent for automatic software updates. Other patents are trivial too. Even in the early years, Apple tried to crush the competition by declaring intellectual property.

At this point Apple Computer sued DRI in what would turn into a long dispute over the "look and feel" of the GEM/1 system, which was in fact an almost direct copy of the Macintosh. This eventually led to DRI being forced to change several basic features of the system. While Apple would later go on to sue other companies for similar issues, they lost all such cases in the future.
Wikipedia

Even today, Apple tries to prevent innovation by their competition through the use of patents. As an example, the free graphic environment GNOME couldn't implement the "spring loaded folders" because of an Apple-Patent.

Apple and free software

Apples sometimes declares themselve as a catalyser for free software. Apple indeed uses free software for their own products, but when it comes to give something back to the community, there's almost nothing.

Apple and the technology

For a long time I had to hear about the superior capability of the PowerPC-CPUs over Intel and AMD. Well, with the switch to Intel, this is over. So, how to differentiate Macs and PCs now? Via Mac OS X and the design of course. I don't want to say anything against the design of the hardware, Apple computers indeed look nice. But have look under the hood: Is Mac OS X really a breakthrough for OS's? Face it: They need mantaining as every other system too. Apple's security policy is a disaster, even Microsoft gives them security coaching - and deservedly too. Apple's Safari is qua design not more secure than the Internet Explorer (!). There are ridiculous bugs in Mac OS X, some of them are already fixed in UNIX-Distributions - 15 years ago.

This is a translation of a german article found at FUCKUP weblog

2 Trackbacks

  1. 22.08.2006 - Der Druck der Innovation // Jeriko One
  2. 15.04.2007 - Why I won’t buy an iPod - Homeland Stupidity

Diskussion: 4 Kommentare

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  1. 1 karach (Website)

    Hi jeriko,

    i read your postings quite regulary and in most cases you bring some really good information. But in this case you mixed a few things up. 1. Yes I use Apple computers, Windows computers, linux and have a FreeBSD File Server at home. So I like Apple but I see what is on the left and right side as well. I think you are right in a view points but when it comes to the ipod you made some mistakes.

    1. You get the files as AAC files with DRM but you can burn them to a normal audio cd and use it in a CD Player or on an other computer. You can even convert them to mp3 without any problem

    2. You can use your own CDs and convert them to MP3 and put them on the ipod.

    3. iTunes and his connections to the Itunes store can be stopped very easy and then no information will be sent to Apple.

    My name and Adress is given to Apple for about 8 years now and I never got any spam mail on this mail alias I used, I got no Letter Mailings to my postal adress and so I have the impression the adress was not sold to anyone and realy just used for direct company contact. And thats ok.

    What Apple did when it comes to innovation is a big step every 2-3 years. Apple gave firewire and USB the big entry on the broad market 1997 (USB). The Laptops a great technology for a good price and I think there is nearly nowone on the market making so bright displays for that price. So Apple really is innovative and brings good products to the marked. A lot of companies try to copy that tecnology so its just normal that you need patents to make sure your technolgy and you research and development is paied.

    Ciao Karach

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  2. 2 Jeriko (Website)

    So why do you think the iPod became so sucessful? In order to listen to music bought via iTunes Music Store on another player than the iPod, people need to burn a CD, convert this CD to MP3 and then copy this MP3s to their player. This is absolutely ridiculous, as about 1 out of 2 iTMS users are not willing to do this. But I agree with you that I can disable this connection by disabling the MiniStore.

    The other point, it doesn’t matter what data they want from me. It’s just because they reserve the right to do almost anything they want with it: contact you (even if you don’t want to) or even give this data to other companies, which is even more ridiculous. Imagine Microsoft would have privacy policy like this – people would be mad like hell. When I give someone my personal informations, then I’m also the one who tells what will happen to my data, not the receiver.

    In general, I do not like the one-sided coverage of the company Apple. Wherever I see, it’s bad Microsoft, good Apple. I don’t like Microsoft either (I use Debian GNU/Linux), but I just wanted to point out that Apple is indeed no better than Microsoft when it comes to dirty tricks, pushing proprietary standards and so on.

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  3. 3 karach (Website)

    Right, big companies – big problems with data security
    always a problem!

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  4. 4 wyrllwynd (Website)

    Apple’s security policy differs little from most large companies anymore. Take a look, for example, at the AOL security policy. (http://about.aol.com/aolnetwork/aol_pp) They were one of the first to institute the “disclosure for security reasons” clause. They also constantly track your activity, routinely provide your name to thrid party businesses, and don’t directly inform you of their option to release info for the purposes of “national security” until you are in the act of subscribing to the AOL internet service.

    Also, take a quick look at what happens when you install AOL. It brands your browser, installs various unrelated programs, and joyfully adds little ninja programs and advertisements all over your computer. Uninstalling leaves an ungodly amount of information on your drive. AOL’s “free” music service only works while you keep paying them a monthly fee…unlike iTunes.

    Microsoft polls your pc without specific permission on a regular basis, through the medium of their IM program. It reads your drive content every time you visit their update page.

    Apple does provide an enormous amount of free software on their Developer site. There are also untold numbers of very useful free programs available from various Mac-related sites as well as from Mac users.

    On the subject of propriety and trying to keep others from advancing…you have to be kidding. That is just the new corporate knee-jerk reaction to anything coming out that may in any way resemble something done by them in the past. EBay just got sued for infringement for their “Buy It Now” option on auction pages!

    As for the usability of the Mac OS, it does everything I could ask of it. Granted, it does need to be maintenanced, as would anything used as much as I use my Mac. However, it needs attention far less frequently than my pc’s WinXP.

    Hardware and upgrading aren’t an issue either. You can purchase the same upgrades for Macs as pc’s, either from Apple, or independent dealers. Performance of the Mac models is fantastic. If you have any doubts, take a look at recent benchmark tests (http://www.macworld.com/2006/04/firstlooks/xpbenchmarks/index.php) done between HP, Dell and 2 Mac models. Using Boot Camp and running WinXP, the Macs outdo all but the new HP Compaq nx9420 running XP Pro, and come out on top of that competition looking great.

    i am not sure what your direct issue with Apple might be, but you might want to consider that Apple is doing nothing more than any other large corporation while releasing reliable products with solid support behind them. In many cases, they are the lesser of evils when compared with many other corporate entities.

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