Nice appeal to emotion (he has cancer, that makes him immune to criticism) to go with the ad hominem (bitter much?) and the straw man (I never insulted his customers).
I want his company to fail for so many reasons. They lie, they cheat, they steal, and they overcharge to customers who can't afford it (especially college students).
Also, care to tell me exactly what he has accomplished (for the better, even) other than copying things others have made, marketing them like crazy, and selling them at a price point twice as high as is necessary? Their research on usability is perhaps the ONLY new thing to come out of that company. Everything else was copied from elsewhere. Even their "innovative" product designs are copied from
other companies.
I know I'm Godwining here, but it's a valid metaphor. You're exchanging Hitler for Stalin. They're both horrible, I don't want either of them. Modern day Apple is as bad or worse than 90s MS. In the same ways, even! They're going down the exact same path. Stifling competition (see: Samsung), pouring millions into marketing instead of making a product that sells itself, and taking things that already existed and calling them innovative (remember the 2010 Apple conference? "IT'S THE FUTURE GUYS, WE CAN VIDEO CHAT, WE DID IT!", completely ignoring the fact that video conferencing has been around for years).
I also don't appreciate your talking down to me. I work in the technology sector, I'm well aware of the history of both Apple and Microsoft and what effects they had on the industry. Even Apple's earliest "innovation," the graphical user interface, wasn't their own. Most of the elements were already in place and copied from Xerox.
There's no reason to be rude, I'm merely stating my take on the news.
Sorry, didn't notice a reply.
I have no argument involving patent wars. My own view is that they're largely political cat-fighting, and pretty much every large tech company has a hand in it.
But you're missing my point. What I was trying to point out is that, it would not be a better place without Apple because you would have a situation, like the 90s, where Microsoft is in a position so dominant it can do anything it likes. You could argue that Apple is in a similar position with, say, smartphones, but in actual fact there are no such barriers to entry as Microsoft had established in the 90s and even before. Google's Android project has been sky-rocketing. Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 was languishing not because it was artificially stifled, but because it became outdated. Windows Phone 7 is, I'm given to understand, doing moderately well.
Since you've told me not to be "talking down", and then begun doing pretty much the exact same thing yourself, I thought I might add a history lesson.
1) If you knew your computing history well at all, you would know that, in fact, Apple's first innovation was not the GUI, but the all-in-one personal computer. Up until then you were either a hobbyist putting together the pieces yourself, or you were leasing IBM's mainframes.
2) Furthermore, the GUI with its WIMP model was indeed the invention of Xerox's PARC division, but people have this idea that it looked just like the Mac's interface and that Apple ripped them off. In actual fact, Apple paid Xerox with shares in the company in order to see the output of their lab (yes, PARC was a computer science lab, and Xerox had no actual interest in developing products from them as continually proven by their refusal to enter the personal computer market in spite of their overwhelmingly advantageous opportunity to do so). It was a transaction. Furthermore, Apple did not have a finished product to copy. They had the very basics to work from: that you have windows on the screen containing information and controls; that you had icons denoting the different directories and documents on the computer; that you had menus of commands rather than typing them in; and that you had a mouse which you moved to make a corresponding pointer follow the motions.
3) No Apple is not going down the exact same path as Microsoft! What an idea! They have always been going along completely opposite paths! Apple designs an operating system and the computer hardware to run it, optimises the software for its own hardware and downright refuses (while Jobs is around, anyway) to allow its operating system and core software to be licensed to anyone else's hardware, then marketing the thing to high heaven and charging premium rates. They have, in other words, a vertically integrated monolithic business model. Microsoft on the other hand has almost always focussed exclusively on making the system software alone, and getting it onto as many computers as they can possibly manage by selling it to OEMs for, essentially, pennies. Their goal for the 80s and 90s was to have "a computer in every home and on every desk, running Microsoft software", in their own words, and if you dig but a little deeper, to turn Windows into not just an operating system product, but a global standard. They wanted nothing less than the complete monopolisation of Windows, and they were well on their way to doing just that. They were doing whatever they could to push competitors out of favour, by offering massive discounts on Windows to retailers on the basis that they sell computers running Windows and nothing but Windows, they were sabotaging OS/2 while pretending to help IBM to develop it, and when the unthinkable happened and a free alternative to their software turned up in the shape of Linux, they ran endless muck-spreading campaigns to make companies likely to consider switching OS fear for their legal stability. All with that one goal in mind, of standardising Windows as not just the OS of choice, but the only OS you could choose! I can't think of one thing Apple has done (and they have done a lot of questionable things, I will not debate that) that doesn't immediately pale in comparison to just one of the tactics I mentioned. To say that Apple, or indeed any computer company, has ever been "just as bad" as Microsoft, is to be largely ignorant of the industry that you claim to be familiar with.
History lesson over.
As for emotionalism, I'm not going to even argue those points. If you can call me out for an "appeal to emotion" and then throw in a comment that they "lie, steal, and cheat" without actually providing any backup at all, what can I even say, other than that you're using the exact same methods you're claiming to rebuke. That's not argument. That's flamebait.
I'm outta here now, I'm just not able to compete on the same level as some of you seem to be.
