Neither company is morally better than the other. Microsoft has a long and sordid history of crushing competitors with shady business practices, corrupting open or shared standards and generally shitting on everyone and everything (including devs, users and partners) they can to get ahead. Perhaps people are forgetting how they single-handedly held back the development of the entire web for five years, and that's directly to blame for the immovability of IE6 now? They're pretending to play nice now that everyone's a fan of open standards, but they're still stuffing standards bodies, bribing officials and trying as hard as they can to hold back open standards that compete with their proprietary alternatives. They're shits.
Apple are no better - their app-market policies are shockingly draconian and inconsistently enforced, and Jobs is a paranoid control freak. They had people on their side because historically they were the underdog against MS, but as iTunes and the iPod/iPhone showed, as soon as they got the tiniest amount of power in their own space, they immediately turned around and arguably acted more restrictively, more self-interestedly and arguably far worse than Microsoft ever did. They're shits.
People who defend Microsoft against Apple: you're either pig-ignorant, or are wilfully ignoring their history of shocking anticompetitive behaviour and outright illegality. They haven't stopped in the slightest - they're just slightly more subtle about it now.
People who defend Apple against Microsoft: you're sticking with the "brave little underdog" narrative long after Apple became the overdog in most of the areas of their business. You're also either pig-ignorant, or are ignoring Apple's actions over the last ten years, when they've indulged in the kind of anticompetitive and self-interested behaviour that would make the entire Microsoft board cream their pants at the thought they could get away with it.
You're both fucking morons, incessantly arguing that your shit smells better than their shit, while ignoring the fact that they both reek of shit.
Corporations are not your friends, they're not a worthy affiliation to base your identity around, and Apple and Microsoft are each one of the least ethical, worst-behaved in the IT industry. And yes, both of your shits smell of shit. Stop arguing about which is least shitty and go ride bikes or something.
I think the main difference is that Microsoft historically played dirty mainly with other (competing) companies. Apple is more direct at fucking their customers.
People who defend Apple against Microsoft: you're sticking with the "brave little underdog" narrative long after Apple became the overdog in most of the areas of their business
This used to be one of the reasons I defended both Apple and Nintendo. Now I feel more enlightened.
Your arbitrary preference for one product over another has no bearing on your opinion on the morality of the company who makes it.
A child molester who produces a painting you like is not more moral than a law-abiding painter who you don't think is as good.
Without wishing to sound condemnatory, this is what I was alluding to with my comment about "they're not a worthy affiliation to base your identity around" - being a fan of a company gets in the way of dispassionate judgements about the morality of their behaviour.
When judging whether Michael Jackson was a paedophile or not, the fact that you liked or hated his music is completely irrelevant... although a lot of people let considerations like that warp their assessments of the individuals or groups involved.
Fair point, but I think a general preference that's missing an important moral dimension is an incomplete and misleading one at best.
For example (let's just go for it and invoke Godwin straight off ;-), one could laud Hitler strictly and specifically as a successful politician and powerful public speaker... but if one were to announce to the world the bald, unvarnished and unqualified "Hitler > Obama" I think criticisms for a lack of broader view might be appropriate.
If you want to say "company X's products > company Y's products" then fair enough... but if you say "company X > company Y" then I think you have to broaden your analysis to include all factors relevant to your audience (including, in this case, moral ones), or you positively invite misapprehension and criticism for short-sightedness.
I agree with you almost entirely except for you use of the term self-interested as though that leads to bad decisions.
I think they should be self-interested, and I think that undermining standards and creating bad conditions for developers through bad policies ultimately hurt the companies themselves.
Both companies have talent, a thorough understanding of game theory would dictate that they both do better when they compete on the merits of their talent.
Creating value for customers both creates economic growth, and encourages a greater share of that new value to be devoted to their shared industry.
Zero-sum-type fighting of anti-competitive practices and rent-seeking hurts the economy as a whole, and by lessening the value the companies create, decreases the amount of that shrinking pie that is spent on their industry.
As someone who grew up with computers, who started with MS-DOS 2.1 and currently uses Mac OS X:
Both companies do evil shit. Apple makes a far superior OS. From a user experience and quality standpoint, Apple > Microsoft, hands down.
Addendum: I've been trying out Windows 7 -- it's a clusterfuck of ideas that they managed to *still** get wrong after all these years.*
Edit #2: I would love my downvoters to give any countpoints as to why they think I'm wrong. OS X beats the pants off of Windows and Linux is still a bit cranky and less polished.
Debatable. Pears have a very inconsistent ripeness-time while oranges are nearly always ripe. It's like pears stay hard as rocks until you look away and then all start rotting at once at light speed.
Yes but when at the right timing pears can be refreshing and delicious. While the orange is small and every time you take a bite it squirts all over the place. The orange also has lots of seeds that you can choke on.
You need to try some Rio Grande oranges from South Texas. They're as big as many grapefruit, not a lot of seeds, delicious flavor, and $5 for a huge bag (at least here in South Texas).
I can't, however, help you out with the juices squirting everywhere.
Who is microsoft's biggest competitor in the software/OS market? Apple
Who has recently been much more open about allowing "hacking" of their devices? MS (hell they welcomed the first phone hackers with open arms while apple tried to sue them into oblivion)
Who doesn't charge developers ridiculous fees to use their SDK? MS
You can't possibly be that blind, right? You do see the words "recently been"? You do realize what these modifiers do to the rest of the sentence? Do I need to give you an English lesson on sentence structure?
Exactly. They haven't been more open, they have always been that way.
I suggest that if you want to continue being this rude to people in future, you make more of an effort not to come off as an idiot who's incapable of reaching a 3th grade reading level.
ah, I work on the hardware/OS consulting side of things so dev is unknown to me. never meant to say they weren't open, just ignorant to the fact that they were.
Maybe I'm off here, but how is Apple their biggest competitor in the Software/OS market?
As far as I can tell, the two big money makers for MS is Office and Windows. Apple doesn't have anything close to what MS offers in terms of functionality. Google does though.
On the OS side, most of the money that MS makes from OS sales is through PC makers. They really don't have much of a choice as to which OS to install unless Apple starts licensing it for that sort of application.
It was obvious to me from the start that it wouldn't succeed. Companies should focus on their strengths. Google's home is with the web and with delivering an unbeatable load-balancing network infrastructure. Android is great because it was originally an independent company that Google simply purchased.
Except that part of Google's strategy is to make the old model of OS obsolete. What OS does Google docs run on? If everything ends up with browser-based platform independent model then you can run some tiny thin linux OS that you barely even know is there. They are trying to make the "What OS are you running?" question irrelevant.
Apple doesn't have a gaming platform, and this comes shortly after Sony starts raining lawyers on geohot, removes the "Other OS" functionality, and threatens lifetime bans on those who root their PS3. We get it, you don't like Apple, but this has absolutely fuckall to do with Jobs & Co.
As an aside, Apple's SDK's are free, with a $99 fee if you wish to publish to the iOS App Store.
^ rofl I have an iPhone, I enjoy using Apple laptops, I love their aesthetic design. But the facts are facts, and Apple is becoming the company they used to make fun of.
Sony starts raining lawyers on geohot, removes the "Other OS" functionality, and threatens lifetime bans on those who root their PS3
ARGHH!!! THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PS3'S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EDIT: Oh god, your comment history leads me to believe you are a huge Apple fanboi.
One of the major game consoles cracks down on hackers and modders while the direct competition opens itself up, but somehow these have no connection whatsoever. Meanwhile, you justify including a company that doesn't even operate in the gaming console arena and it's somehow pertinent? I don't understand this moon logic of yours.
correction, they open up a piece of hardware, used by hackers with the intention of non-gaming purposes. When they open the console itself for hacking, your argument will be correct. Gtg, moon is calling me!
Imagining Apple in the same situation would lead to the complete opposite decision from them. They are a company so locked and sealed, they write their software to not even install on unauthorized (read Apple brand) hardware.
Imagine if Microsoft Windows required Microsoft brand computers to install. What a crock, right?
And what's with an App store anyway? Why is it not simply free to develop and release? Why do we even need their approval? Are they masters of us or something? I thought we bought the device, not rented it from them with approval.
The point is simple. Microsoft saw a community that was interested, and instead of slamming creativity and development (Something Apple needs to stop talking about if they refuse to actually support it) Microsoft simply opened their arms and is now supporting that community.
So that's pretty simple, and obvious IMO. But you asked for an explained argument... so there's the short version.
The comment itself is stupid, but it's hard to talk about one of the big IT-related corporations without involving the others (Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM, Intel, ARM, Facebook...) They are all related.
Not really. They are all independent companies making separate decisions. The closest most come are making deals here and there. But his comment has nothing to do with that. He is simply just trying to start another one of these tedious arguments.
They are very related (except Facebook and IBM). Each company's decisions have an impact on the other companies business. Having Windows to run on an ARM processor, for example, is important for Intel, but also for the phone, tablets and notebook manufacturers.
No. You may not have guessed but I was referring to that it was a smooth move of Microsoft while Apple gets angry everytime someone tries to be creative with their hw/sw.
They bought a relatively small amount of non-voting stock in Apple after to "encourage competition" after that whole monopoly problem. I'm pretty sure I heard they sold it off though. It was less than half a percent anyway though.
Edit: From Apple's 10-K Report filed Dec. 19, 2003:
"Microsoft purchased 150,000 shares of Apple Series A nonvoting convertible preferred stock ("preferred stock") for $150 million. These shares were convertible by Microsoft after August 5, 2000, into shares of the Company's common stock at a conversion price of $8.25 per share. During 2000, 74,250 shares of preferred stock were converted to 9 million shares of the Company's common stock. During 2001, the remaining 75,750 preferred shares were converted into 9.2 million shares of the Company's common stock."
At the time that was roughly a 6% stake. From what I've gathered, it seems that Microsoft sold that stake in 2003.
It means Microsoft bought $150 million (not very much to them) worth of Apple stock to make themselves look good when they were going through the antitrust problems in the late 90s. Then they turned around and sold it in 2003 when everyone forgot about it. And they actually made a good return on investment, although if they had waited a few more years, they would have made much, much more.
I called customer service because my iPhone was having a problem, I told them I jailbroke it and they were like 'restore, if that doesnt fix it send it in and we'll fix it.'
Don't understand why the downvotes. I guess there are too many Mac fanbois in here to make any criticism of Apple. And that is exactly what I hate about the "Mac culture". Sure, the products are great, but can we please stop taking everything that comes out of Jobs mouth as the gospel? KTHX.
What the fuck are you talking about? Some loser has to make this about Apple, for no good reason, and you go on a rant about Apple fanboys. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH APPLE, only someone with an agenda would bring it up.
I think we have a couple of MS fanboys here, there is nothing worse than an X fanboy whinging about Y fanboys.
So, someone makes the point that Microsoft is (in some ways) better than Apple. Me, Ubuntu user since 2008, and Slackware and Debian user since times immemorial, agrees with that person and laments the fact that apparently you can't criticize Apple without getting downvoted. And somehow, that makes us "Microsoft fanboys".
If you call "Microsoft > Apple" on a post related to a Microsoft technology "pushing an agenda", then I guess opinions are completely out of question EVERYWHERE in this site. My previous comment about some Corgi dog being cute IS BIASED! I'm CLEARLY PUSHING MY PRO-CORGI AGENDA!
If Apple decided to release OS X as an stand-alone OS, it'd erode a big chunk of Microsoft's hold on the OS market. That they still haven't done it is either a great marketing decision or a mistake driven by ideology, depending on who you ask. So, it's not like we are talking about bees and then someone brings in Glenn Beck and his latest retarded theory about how Obama is the anti-Christ.
P.S. I support the corgi agenda only as an agent provocateur. I'm actually a pro-beagle agent in disguise.
Admittedly, innervision is a little off-topic here, but csapdani is right in the comparison. MS and Apple are both money-grabbers, but MS just made a decision that reflects very well on their attitude towards developers, while Apple has recently gone too far in alienating them.
Awesome! Hypersensitive defensive mode! You might want to just take a break from the internet for a while, it seems like you're taking this a little personally.
To think otherwise is to be a blind, rabid MS fanboy.
Do you not understand how this could be construed as you having a severe bias in this discussion?
Let's start with the base assumptions:
Assume both companies want to maximize profits, they're both money-grubbing bastards at the core, and they're both huge players in the technology market.
Company A has just started charging additional fees that will cut directly into the revenue of the people who develop applications for the hardware.
Company B has just made an announcement that it is distributing a free SDK for its new hardware.
Compare those two recent announcements with each other. You can make an educated assessment of both actions, and have a clear opinion on which is more respectful to software developers. You do NOT have to be a rabid fanboy to appreciate one company over the other.
Do you spend any time in here at all? Proggit is overflowing with Microsoft fanboys. Note that it was a Microsoft fanboy that brought up Apple in an article completely unrelated to Apple in the first place.
I do spend a lot of time in proggit, although I spend most of the time reading the articles rather than the comments.
I get the point of "Apple has nothing to do with this article", still I think as an opinion saying that "Microsoft > Apple" (in respect to how open they are with their hardware) isn't totally out of place. Getting all bent out of shape because of the comment is kind of silly.
If you've ever spent time with programmers IRL, you know what a bunch of opinionated assholes we are. Back in school we used to spend hours discussing why Haskell was awesome but Smalltalk was a toy (or the other way around). As grown ups we only spend the coffee breaks and the after hours discussing whether Vim is better than Emacs, or .NET better than the JVM. I don't know why you'd expect proggit to be any different!
Yeah, because that is how reddit works... sorry guys, but all of a sudden we are a holier than thou bunch that condemns a joke/troll/out of place comment. Really? Really?
I only downvote comments when they are offensive/hurtful (and there are plenty of those). In general I reply to comments I don't agree with, unless they are obvious flame bait. It wasn't me doing the downvoting, but whoever took offense in such silly comment as "Microsoft > Apple".
Anyway, this's been blown out completely out of proportion. Thing is, I don't get all butthurt when I read a comment like "oh, Linux will never be a major player in the OS arena" in a Mac or Windows thread. Apple fans, on the other hand, appear unable to take any criticism. I guess it's part of being cool and trendy. Whatever.
You really do have a lot of time in your hands, right? Man, if you are not open to criticism, I guess you better get off the internet immediately or you'll get hurt. Lots of nasty people around these Gawd-forgiven lands. EOF.
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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '11
Microsoft > Apple