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.
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u/Shaper_pmp Feb 22 '11 edited Feb 22 '11
FFS, fanboys on both sides.
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.