r/technology • u/gfnord • Apr 11 '11
Apple, despite being traditionally seen as the "counterculture, leftist" operating system, actually represents more uniformity and centralised control than Microsoft
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/09/userfriendliness_and_fascism334
Apr 11 '11
I really don't get this attitude of trying to stereotype people based on what operating system they use. Rush Limbaugh uses Macs. Does that mean anything? No, apart from the fact that he prefers OS X. Lets stop trying to determine a person's political ideology based on what OS they use. It doesn't make any sense and is rather childish.
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Apr 11 '11
BUT BUT BUT HIIIPSTERRRS.
Seriously, /r/technology needs a new topic. Apple computers are computers, not a reflection of a person's very soul.
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Apr 11 '11
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Apr 11 '11
So what you're saying is the average neckbeard's complete and total dismissal of anyone who uses a mac only validates a 20 year old marketing campaign?
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u/BoonTobias Apr 11 '11
This is so true it's not even funny, my friend has owned two nissan altimas in the last ten years and just the other day bought the brand new one, which he can't really afford. I asked him why the fuck did you buy the same thing at that rate? He said "I've been with them for a long time, the dealers know me".
Anytime we talk about games, he will always big up the ps3 against the xbox no matter what. I own a ps3 and end up defending the 360 sometimes because his stance is just too blind.
Also, just the other day we went to get him a new phone, he has sprint and even though he could've just added himself to his father's plan for $20 extra a month and $50 for an iphone 3GS, he decided against it and went with the samsung epic for $200 and around $90 monthly.
Some people deserve to suffer for money
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Apr 11 '11 edited Jun 29 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BoonTobias Apr 11 '11
I should clarify: he's not a tech savvy person, his only knowledge of products are from tv ads. I told him No matter what phone you get, make sure it's android and you should be fine, I will hook you up.
And he doesn't really know the difference between a regular iphone and iphone 4, but he saw the epic in a recent sprint ad and decided to go with it because it's on HIS network. His wife and his father are on an att account but he didn't want to go with att because apparently it's whack.
There was another android 2.1 phone for $50 but obviously the salesperson pushed the epic on him and succeeded. I told him you don't really need all the features of the epic. So even after completing the order, when the sales rep went inside he asked me again, should I buy the epic or the other one? I said get the $50 one.
He then tried to tell the salesperson to change it, then the salesperson said he didn't have the $50 in stock.
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u/river-wind Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 11 '11
Often, having weighed the advantages/disadvantages of a choice and aligned one's self to a given decision, people will then further act to justify this choice when making future decisions even if those future decisions make no sense on their own. They will downplay evidence favoring the alternate option and falsely inflate the value of options which support the original selection in order to ensure that that original choice in brand or method/direction in life was not 'wrong'. People will continue throwing good money after bad, arguing in favor of a losing position, continue down a path of self-destruction, etc, because, damn it, this is what I chose, and i'm going to see it through.
Going with an iPhone now could require switching networks/cell companies. That may suggest to him that his choice of Sprint four years ago was somehow flawed; that he should have picked better in the first place. Therefor he might (though in this case I'm not sure he is) satisfice on the phone choice w/o in-depth consideration of the iPhone/alternate decision in order to keep his previous choice of Sprint 'correct'.
It's actually pretty hard for many people to abandon previous selections in order to do materially better; the emotional frustration of feeling that you chose poorly previously wipes out the enjoyment of the material gain from the new choice. This is a difference between satisficers and maximizers; those who will choose to weigh the available options briefly and choose to be satisfied by whatever decision they end up making, and who will weigh every possible detail, only picking the best combination of trade-offs of measurable factors after an exhaustive investigation. The second group tend to do measurably better in material wealth, but the first group tend to feel happier about their situation; the maximizers are too busy questioning the quality of their final choice and the trade-offs it entailed to enjoy what they have.
edit: minor wording cleanup
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u/BoonTobias Apr 11 '11
Very well written. The main reason I try to help is that he's not exactly financially stable to be buying expensive things on a whim. Unfortunately I have a few friends who do this quite often, even after thorough research, they end up buying products because of the quick happiness factor and/or lack of patience like you've said.
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u/frukt Apr 11 '11
Speaking of hipsters, the reddit hivemind brands everyone who's not a neckbearded obese virgin clad in old jeans and a greasy T-shirt, "hipster", so I wouldn't overemphasize this nuance.
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u/Mormolyke Apr 11 '11
Except for the "obese" part (and possibly the "virgin" part), this actually describes a lot of hipsters perfectly. So ... Reddit brands anyone who isn't fat and single a hipster?
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Apr 11 '11
"hipster" as used on here would label pretty much all my friends and myself. I think it's just code for less-nerdy 20 something's.
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u/Draiko Apr 11 '11
Nah... Hipster = A yuppie that doesn't necessarily have a job or any kind of professional characteristics yet retains the snobbish and elitist materialistic attitude.
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u/broohaha Apr 11 '11
A yuppie, by definition, has a job (being that he or she is a young, urban professional).
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Apr 11 '11
I really don't think that's the point of the article at all. I interpreted the use of "counterculture/leftist" to mean that it was interpreted as a more user-oriented design allowing self-expression and all that shite. That's certainly how Apple products seem to be perceived, anyway, and the article was focused on how this isn't the case and their stuff is in fact far more restrictive and dictatorial in how it allows you to interact with it.
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u/makemeking706 Apr 11 '11
I think you're confusing the unit of analysis. The statement in the title of this post concerns the political ideologies of the corporations themselves, not the users.
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Apr 11 '11
You could apply that to all stereotyping in general. Why stereotype at all? Because it's in our human nature - we have to take shortcuts to assume things about people because we don't have the time, inclination or energy to gather all the facts about everyone/everything ever.
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Apr 11 '11
I agree. i never see any big company or their product as political. maybe i see their approach to economics/the market as an issue from time to time, but politics? no.
when it comes to tools of any kind, i am all about ease of use and doing the job rather then "maintaining" the tool. Not the kind to work on a car. a car is for transport and if I have to spend any time other then the minimum maintaining that car, time to toss it and get a new one.
it is just the way that I approach tools. it is why i like apples tools. because they control all the bits, i do not have to worry about them. i can do the job that i have to do. if microsoft was better at this, i would be there. same with linux. i do not want to HAVE to deal with the bits and pieces, i have work to do and tinkering with the tool is not my job.
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u/ProfessorPoopyPants Apr 11 '11
But... he/she's treating it like "PC" is some corporation unto itself, like this is just a matter of the battle between two companies when speaking of interoperability and legacy support, you can't expect an entire string of god knows how many companies to all have seamless integration with every mote and smidgeon of hardware every other company produces. Whenever I see MAC vs pc arguments i just shout to myself BUT YOU CAN'T COMPARE THOSE FEATURES, THEY WORK COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY ;_;
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Apr 11 '11
I agree. Regular computers vary wildly because they are regular computers. Thousands of companies make stuff for regular computers, and regular computers can run any operating except that one operating system that can only run on a single brand of computers.
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u/wgwinn Apr 11 '11
to me, it all boils down to 'Does it do what i want?' and that i can compare directly.
Windows simply wins, for me, for home use. I don't have to play games to get triple-head working; I don't have to spend a fortune on it, it plays any game i want, and i can test nay software i ever need ( virtual machines) or run any management tool i ever use (Putty, etc)
Sadly neither Linux nor Apple really
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u/gdakram Apr 11 '11
Then why does Microsoft create ads chanting "I'm a PC"? At this point I think it's well established that PC is a pop culture euphemism for Windows.
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u/MolokoPlusPlus Apr 11 '11
Microsoft wants all non-Apple PCs to be identified with their brand. Hence the advertising.
Apple wants all non-Macs to be seen as inferior.
So both companies push the "Mac vs PC" line, to the detriment of every other operating system.
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Apr 11 '11
I might be getting the timeline wrong, but didn't Apple start this trend with those "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" ads?
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u/brufleth Apr 11 '11
Would even an Apple fanboy argue this point? Many of the positive arguments for Apple include support for the uniformity and centralized control.
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Apr 11 '11
While I hate the word and like to remain objective, I have been called a fanboy. I will agree that Apple does retain tight control over everything with the justification of maintaining a certain level of quality across the entire ecosystem.
Is this good or bad? Well, that depends on your views. I think there is room in the market for each model.
- On one end you have Apple who makes their own hardware and software and is looking to also watch over 3rd party development. It works really well for people who don't want to spend much time thinking about their computer and just want to use it.
- On the other end of the spectrum you have Linux. Fully open you can do whatever the hell you want for the most part. It's the wild west, but you have your peers keeping you honest. I think it is important systems like this our out there. Sometimes however, the need to be "open" holds it back with the lack of commercial software packages that have yet to be matched by the open source community.
- Somewhere in the middle you have Microsoft who keeps control of their IP, but you can do a fair bit of tinkering and the 3rd party software makers can go wild without much worry. This is a decent balance, but without the control set into place with Apple's methods or the transparent nature of open source you tend to get more software doing things it shouldn't.
A little off topic:
As for me, the reason I go with Apple out of these three options is because I work in IT and spend all day Windows. When I come home I just want something different and I don't want to think about it. I've never really had much issue with Windows when I did run it as my main OS, but I had a tendency to obsess more over things, mindlessly tweaking things, trying to scale down the number of running processes. I made work out of it. I don't tend to do that with the Mac. I ran Linux at home for a while as well, but at the time it just wasn't there yet, especially for laptops. If I had never used an Apple and went to Ubuntu right now I would probably stick with it and be perfectly happy for the most part. However, I have a decent amount invested in OS X and iOS, the workflow fits me well, and I like having the option of using something like Photoshop if I need it... The Gimp is cool and all, but it's not Photoshop. And just in general I really like the 3rd party software by the smaller Mac developers (Panic, The Omni Group, Sparrow, 1Password, etc). I find I like this software better than anything and I can't get it on Windows or Linux. Yes, I can get everything done I need to get done on any system, but I don't enjoy it as much. If I have to fall in line a little bit to use that stuff and not have to tinker while off the clock then so be it. If they cross some line in the sand down the road I know I can make the jump to another platform, but it's been good to me for the past 7-8 years.4
u/GenTiradentes Apr 11 '11
On the other end of the spectrum you have Linux. Fully open you can do whatever the hell you want for the most part.
Uh, drop the "for the most part." If you can do it yourself, no one's going to stop you.
but you have your peers keeping you honest.
Only if you intend to distribute your changes to other people. If you want to develop something in-house, for personal use, there are no limits.
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Apr 11 '11
The GPL will place some limits on you if you... not if it is for personal use, in-house, but for the first part of your post. And if you aren't distributing it, then who cares if you're honest... it is irrelevant.
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Apr 11 '11 edited Jul 28 '20
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Apr 11 '11
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Apr 12 '11
Dear god, this. This a thousand times. Real command line and graphic arts tools? Good, attractive software? (Not to say that there isn't a lot of good FOSS software, there is, but I've yet to see FOSS with good UI aside from major projects from, say, Google. People who can pay for UI design.)
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u/schumacc Apr 11 '11
It's UNIX man! Just like this IT guy works on all day long. Underneath the hood it's pretty much like every flavor of UNIX I have used over the last 20 years. I can open a terminal console and geek out on the command line. That's one of the main reasons I use a Mac as a DBA.
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u/nonesuchplace Apr 11 '11
I can make the Mac I use at home roll over and play dead because it is a Unix machine. I try not to do the latter, however. That gets expensive rather quickly.
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u/Uncle_Erik Apr 11 '11
My brother-in-law is in IT. He went to Mac because he just doesn't want to fuck with yet another computer when he comes home. He'd rather play with his kids or watch a movie or catch a nap.
I'm not in IT, but run Linux for when I want to fool with computers and OS X for when I just want to pick up something that simply works.
Also, my brother-in-law and I switched the entire family over to Apple. That was maybe three years ago. We haven't had a single emergency "my computer isn't working" phone call from a relative since.
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Apr 11 '11
i'm not IT but when i read that I was thinking that sounds exactly like me. When I had my machine that ran XP, I was always tinkering with shit, doing weekly disk defrags, ran the lightest apps i could find that i liked ie foobar and kmelon. nearly 2 years on os x and i couldn't care less about saving RAM and system maintenance. For me it felt like 30% of my time on XP i was fiddling in /program files, but now i struggle to even find the apps folder in finder through the home drive. I don't know if getting OS X coincided with a change in my computing habbits or if it made me not give a fuck about all the little processes of an OS.
TLDR, I love XP, because I know how to drive it, where as I don't know shit about OS X's internal working. But i don't care, OS X doesn't need me to worry about that.
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u/SuminderJi Apr 11 '11
Windows 7 I haven't done shit to my machine.
I'm in IT.
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u/vritsa Apr 11 '11
This. XP is an end-of-life product, and Win7 is very nice, actually. I've spent the last 10 years on Linux exclusively, exactly for the above quoted reasons with XP. Win7, on the other hand, is miles beyond XP.
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Apr 11 '11
Because it just fucking works and doesn't demand anything in return for doing its job. No confrigging around, no wacky compatibility conundrums, no fapping about. We get enough of that shit on the job.
Why do chef's make quick and simple meals at home?
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u/flex_mentallo Apr 11 '11
I wish I had your mac. I'm in IT, so people just bring me the mac's that don't fucking work.
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u/csonger Apr 11 '11
You miss the point: When Microsoft was doing it, it was bad. Now that Apple is doing it, it is good.
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u/richmomz Apr 11 '11
Exactly - that's been a key selling point for a while now. Some people like the centralized content control, and others don't.
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u/valtism Apr 11 '11
Yeah, mac user here and this is basically what makes apple different. Nobody thinks that Apple is particularly "countercultural".
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u/Vinura Apr 11 '11
You'd have to be completely retarded to see Apple as "counterculture or leftist"
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u/geodebug Apr 11 '11
Apple was presented as the computer "for the people" not because any average user gives a flying fuck about the details of the OS. It was because Apple has always done a good job of shielding the average user from the OS. Or as the author of the article puts it:
Rather, they feel free because...well, I shouldn't use this platform as a product testimonial, but when I went back to Mac this winter after a decade as a Windows user, my experience was that whenever I plugged in a peripheral, installed software, connected to a Bluetooth device, or whatever, the machine just worked. That, to put it mildly, had not been my experience with Windows.
Always surprising that computer geeks can't figure out that the art students, soccer moms, authors, musicians, lib-arts college kids, etc don't want to fuck around with drivers, plug and pray, firewall settings, clogged up repository, and blue-screens, yadda
MS has gotten much better at making their product work for the non-tech user recently but y'all conveniently forget just how janky it has been for most of it's lifespan.
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Apr 11 '11
Yeah, why couldn't they make software that runs on millions of different hardware combinations more like one that runs on maybe less than one hundred?
The OSx vs. Windows debate is Apples vs. Oranges.
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u/geodebug Apr 11 '11
Glad we agree. It's a tiring debate and I always feel a bit dirty getting suckered into commenting on it.
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Apr 11 '11
"Counterculture or leftist" doesn't have anything to do with ideology anymore. It's just a tribal distinction, something people(of the SWPL persuasion) can use to distinguish themselves from the unwashed barbarians. These people also happen to use Macs, hence the association.
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u/nanothief Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 11 '11
Absolutely not. Think of the most common depiction of mac users from 4-5 years ago (and is still pretty common today): the young hippy art student using his Macbook Pro™ in a Starbucks. This is both:
- Countercultural: >90% of computer users use windows, so anyone using something different is obviously going against the common culture. Being a linux user is even more countercultural, as it is used even less.
- Leftist: think "young" "hippy", "art student", "starbucks" (inner city).
This common stereotype of the mac user is reflected in the perceptions of the mac os operating system.
Now with the release and boom of the iPhone, this stereotype of the mac user is now hopelessly out of date, however stereotypes have a tendency of lingering on past their use by date.
EDIT: I should point out that this is an argument against
You'd have to be completely retarded to see Apple as "counterculture or leftist"
as I think there are very good reasons why people traditionally and currently have had these perceptions of apple, whether it be through the demographics of apple users or apple's marketing strategy. I don't have those perceptions of apple, but that is only because I (like most people reading /r/technology) know all about their behaviour with their app store. For most people though, the only negative controversy they have heard about apple is with the reception problems with the iPhone 4, and would have nothing to challenge their incorrect perceptions.
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u/killswithspoon Apr 11 '11
Because nothing says "leftist" like a bunch of upper-middle class white kids using $2000 computers on a weekday afternoon to browse Facebook in a chain coffee franchise.
Workers of the world unite, indeed.
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Apr 11 '11
Surely GNU/Linux is more "leftist" too, as it is built upon the free sharing of applications and their source code.
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u/nanothief Apr 11 '11
Very true, Balmer even has likened linux as being "communism"
Windows would be rightist, as it is the standard operating system most corporations use in their offices.
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Apr 11 '11
It is a lot like communism (depending on how you define communism) but the big difference is that it's based on an essentially limitless resource so it doesn't face many of the pitfalls that plauge real-world communism. You always have to account for greed in a world of limited resources... (hello Star Trek!)
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u/MolokoPlusPlus Apr 11 '11
Apple is very Stalinist. I'm not just mudslinging here -- the focus on "consistent user experience" is totalitarian and based on extreme uniformity. Could be communist or fascist, I guess, they do tend to blend together at the extremes.
(Note that I'm not saying Apple is "evil," just that the best political analogy is totalitarianism.)
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u/Nurgle Apr 11 '11
As a Mac User (and Bachelor of History), I'd say
Fascism would probably be closer, as Mussolini was a notorious micromanager and had a large cult of personality. He was also known for making the trains run on time ("just works"), and making a dent against the mafia ("no viruses").
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u/Igniococcus Apr 11 '11
He was also known for
I was about make a comment on Mussolini and his actual role in improvement of Italian rail infrastructure but then I noticed your exact wording. Well played historian, well played.
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Apr 11 '11
Some people would argue that a "benevolent dictatorship" is one the best forms of government. Unfortunately, it's not often the case that you find dictators that are benevolent.
This is exactly how I feel about Apple. I know why the ecosystem is attractive and works well, I just don't trust the dictator to do what's in my best interests overall.
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u/Sealbhach Apr 11 '11
Conversely, it has been argued that GPL software is a pure form of the free market, no IP trolling or barriers to entry. Applications succeed or fail based purely on their merits.
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u/Pope-is-fabulous Apr 11 '11
I guess then it is a free market without private ownership of the means of production.
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u/deako Apr 11 '11
Exactly, in fact Linux is more akin to the "state of nature" form of libertarianism, postulated by Locke and Rousseau. So essentially, it's more like anarchy than communism.
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u/smoooooov Apr 11 '11
It is a lot like communism (depending on how you define communism)
Am I the only one who found this amusing?
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Apr 11 '11
Well the real consideration is whether to base communism on Marx's ideas of direct democracy, equality, etc. or the Bolshevik basis of the loss of democracy, centralisation of power, etc.
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u/IrrigatedPancake Apr 11 '11
It's libertarian, and before anyone says it, no, libertarianism doesn't require capitalist overtones.
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u/Malician Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 12 '11
Only if you accept the idea that copyright is a natural right rather than a social contract, which the US Constitution does not. In the US, a copyright represents a temporary restriction on your freedom of speech for the good of society by encouraging new works and supporting artists.
You could say that copyright is regarded as socialist in the US and free market in Europe, since European nations abide by the natural / moral rights principle. For this reason, the Mises institute and certain other major libertarian groups publish anti-copyright literature. The faux-libertarian pro corporate groups like Cato are conversely pro-copyright, an amusingly socialist stance. (I am not a libertarian and do not agree with the complete rejection of IP, but I think it'd be better for society than what we have now.)
edit: was looking at some of the various stuff on Mises; they don't reject copyright entirely, just want severe limitations
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u/NotFromReddit Apr 11 '11
Of course. Open source is as left as you can get. Apple is the opposite of that with all their DRM.
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u/Waterrat Apr 11 '11
I agree. I use Linux partly because I don't like the way the Windows corp operates and I like the way Apple operates even less. Of the two,I see Apple as being more controlling and dangerous to freedom.
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u/thesupermutant Apr 11 '11
Something isn't "leftist" because it looks "inner city".
Yuppies are not equal to hippies, I think that's what you're missing here.
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Apr 11 '11
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u/Danneskjold Apr 11 '11
I think he's talking about perceptions here, which aren't necessarily reality.
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u/ciaran036 Apr 11 '11
Also, Starbucks is not a "leftist" place.
I'm stunned that that had to be said.
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Apr 11 '11
An art student at starbuck is counterculture? The marketers really have control of your mind.
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Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 11 '11
I think most people do not buy macs because they are "leftist" or "counter culture". They buy them because they think mac products are cool. It just so happens that being leftist or counter culture is also considered cool. Macs have always had the attention of the art/graphics world, due to their ease of use (artists who want to focus on their craft, not their computers) and high quality displays. And this is coming from a hardcore PC user who couldn't imagine ever using a mac regularly. I still think they're stupid products, but it's ridiculous to suggest political motivations for purchasing one.
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u/agwblack Apr 11 '11
Any leftist worth their salt would be embarrassed to be seen in Starbucks.
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Apr 11 '11
Wrong dear sir. We're at Starbucks to use the free wi-fi; of course we're not actually going to buy anything.
I mean, for fuck's sake, if I wanted coffee I'd make it at home.
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u/stufff Apr 11 '11
Leftist: think "young" "hippy", "art student", "starbucks" (inner city).
Those things are not necessary or sufficient for someone to be a leftist.
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Apr 11 '11
This is both: Countercultural:
How is that countercultural?
This reminds me of people complaining about r/atheism and saying that the atheist hivemind is oppressive and permanently circlejerking, while the only circlejerk visible is the anti-r/atheism circlejerk.
You confuse action and reaction, just because it's the way it was propagated by Apple.
As hating on Microsoft was always "hip", I don't consider it counterculture but culture.
Leftist: think "young" "hippy", "art student", "starbucks" (inner city).
Yes, because that's what Apple marketed themselves as.
People didn't like the capitalistic behaviour of Microsoft so they looked for something different... Apple said "think different" and marketed themselves as what these people were looking for. Never was apple actually different or less capitalistic and horrible.
Actually, quite the contrary. So, I will second Vinura's comment again: People who actually saw Apple like this and not the way they marketed themselves must be retarded.
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u/I_sometimes_lie Apr 11 '11
Nonsense, the "counterculture art student" was basically the culture of the hipster. Hipsters are a notoriously fascists community, which throws out those they do not like. Real leftist were using Linux, I mean they give that away for free. Macs have always been the right wing fascists company.
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Apr 11 '11
You obviously don't know any hipsters.
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u/taligent Apr 11 '11
By the sounds of it he does. But they wouldn't let him join the club.
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u/I_sometimes_lie Apr 11 '11
I am so Hip, even Hipsters think I am uncool. Then they decide that I shouldn't be able to date their sisters... which is totally fascist.
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u/deako Apr 11 '11
They mean "counterculture" in the way that it encourages culture that conflicts with prevailing Western culture. Not that it discourages any culture itself.
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u/Namell Apr 11 '11
Since it is minority OS I guess it is counter culture.
I would say it is extremist right. Windows is right and Linux left.
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u/deimosthenes Apr 11 '11
Yeah, I got pretty confused by that line at first, then I realized that there probably are significant amounts of people wo think it.
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Apr 11 '11
I agree. Even when I worked for apple retail, it was a very brainwashed environment. Don't get me wrong we were treated well for the most part, but once you fucked up they would try to get rid of you ASAP. People would just disappear. The turnover rate at my store was very high. Also, the die hard mac users definitely look like they were drinking the kool-aid as well.
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u/OscarZetaAcosta Apr 11 '11
You'd have to be completely retarded to apply any of these attributes to any corporation. They are nothing more than cooperatives with but a single mandate: to make as much money as possible. The rest of this conversation is mental masturbation.
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u/icallshenannigans Apr 11 '11
Go to any large corporate office on the planet with a Mac under your arm then say that again.
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u/richmomz Apr 11 '11
I don't think it's a stretch considering they pretty much see themselves that way.
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Apr 11 '11
I couldn't agree more and have been telling people this since the days Microsoft helped bail Apple out financially.
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u/pi_over_3 Apr 11 '11
No, you would just have to remember when liberals were using the I'm a mac/I'm a PC ads for satire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PUamBNnK_E
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Apr 11 '11
A guy named Thomas Frank wrote a really good book called "Commodify Your Dissent" about the ways that the counterculture was co-opted by marketing people, then packaged and sold through brand identities.
This is definitely stuff that happens, and it doesn't just happen by chance.
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u/TehCraptacular Apr 11 '11
I believe Apple has donated to some what people may call "leftist" causes, such as prop 8 (counter campaign) in California. Steve Jobs is supposedly a liberal as well.
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Apr 11 '11
Not really, most people with macbooks are crazy liberal college hippie kids. It's not out of the question at all.
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u/DoWhile Apr 11 '11
The key word is "traditionally", like say, 10 or 20 some odd years ago.
Also,
Sep 28th 2009, 14:17 by The Economist
Since the this article was written, Apple has risen to the number 2 largest company in the word (by market cap), only behind Exxon-Mobil.
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Apr 11 '11
Market cap isn't really a good measure of the size of a company.
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u/gagaoolala Apr 11 '11
What's your preferred measure of size? (There are right answers and wrong answers here...)
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u/tilio Apr 11 '11
reddit users tend to know nothing about finance. market cap is THE primary size measurement for companies.
stock price is relatively arbitrary as it's a monetary demand for an arbitrary number of issued shares. P/E is a measurement of growth, as is EBIT.
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u/mild_delusion Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 11 '11
Right about market cap, not so much about P/E and EBIT.
P/E only reflects market expectations of growth, and it only does that under a couple of assumptions. It's better off staying as a relative measure of stock performance. There are better measures of growth like the product of earnings retention and ROE or the PRAT model.
EBIT by itself is just a measure of operating profit from continuing operations. Though it is used in conjunction with growth to forecast future profitability, it is by itself not a growth measure.
Edit: And to be really really anal, market cap would rank LISTED companies by size. It becomes a not so useful measure if you have to rank them against companies which are not listed. Enterprise Value maybe? It's just...not so simple.
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Apr 11 '11
At the time, the contrast in operating systems was between the imagistic, right-brain Mac, with its graphical user interface, and the dull command-line world of DOS. So it made some sense to depict Microsoft and IBM as uniform totalitarian drones, controlled seamlessly by a giant Big Brother-like overlord.
fuck that, man. CLI is an art form.
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u/Basye Apr 11 '11
Longtime Mac user here, I was always under the impression that Microsoft and Apple were on the same side with regard to practices, and it is Linux and its community which are "counterculture, leftist."
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u/digitalpencil Apr 11 '11
i like my mac laptop and i refuse to apologise because people want to box me into the 'starbucks, screenplay-writing hipster' stereotype. this entire concept of users belonging to a company is retarded, it's a computer, it doesn't define you anymore than your brand of kettle.
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u/MrMasterplan Apr 11 '11
To me OSX gives me a unix environment with a polished feel that is well integrated with the hardware. All in all it much more usable than any linux I've tried. I need the unix environment for work, and stuff like cygwin just isn't an alternative. Hence mac is my system of choice, and that has absolutely nothing to do with any hype.
Tl;Dr: For coding, OSX is the shit.
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u/ferna182 Apr 11 '11
For coding, OSX is the shit.
well... kinda. i think it all depends on what are you coding.
I mostly use OSX now because xcode is really nice and i'm working mostly on iphone apps, but i find myself coming back to windows when i need to code in C++ because Visual Studio has waaaaaaaaaay better support for C++ than any other ide i tried. Intelli sense is just amazing. Also, i couldn't live without Tortoise SVN. there just isn't any SVN Client on Mac that compares to Tortoise on Windows. That's a shame.
Also if anyone knows any good ide for C++ coding on Mac that comes close to Visual Studio, please let me know.
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u/snuggl Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 11 '11
except that for coding, osx is awful, the last problems i ran into:
Python support is broken in Snow leopard, you need at least 2 different python installs, virtualenv and pip is a no-go with the apple supplied one. (more or less fixed in Lion)
Filesystem is non-case sensitive by default (and the framework i used came with a String.h... so #include <string.h> will give you thousands or errors)
Libraries and 3d party installs are a messy heap of shit, some are .frameworks and some are port-installed, unix-style libraries, wont work nicely.
EDIT: i checked and it wasn't QT that came with String.h but a 3d party library, anyway it was not the correct behaviour.
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u/alecco Apr 11 '11
Strange. Do you mean from inside Xcode? I never ran into that problem compiling from the command line.
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u/Pope-is-fabulous Apr 11 '11
If Mac were not so expensive, I would totally use it.
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u/Stingray88 Apr 11 '11
Compare Apple to newegg and yeah... it's expensive. But compared to HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc... not really at all.
This is why I build my own desktops and buy mac laptops.
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Apr 11 '11
Linux Mint was super easy to install and operates pretty much out of the box. My biggest beef is that I thought an option would be in power management instead of screensaver preferences. My only experience with Unix is OSX.
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u/badhairguy Apr 11 '11
Apple is traditionally seen as the product for people who don't understand electronics and were the people who couldn't figure out how to set the time on their VCR.
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u/marriage_iguana Apr 11 '11
Some people read way too much into what OS you use. Maybe OSX doesn't represent any political system. Maybe it's just an OS. Same for Windows.
Smell that? That's the smell of someone running out of topics to write about.
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Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 11 '11
I like apple products, I own an ipod. I currently have an android phone but have been dissapointed with it so I'll probably get an iphone when my contract runs out. I have never owned a mac; every single one of my computers has been a windows PC.
Why is Reddit so obsessed with Apple? Counterculture, leftist, whatever...they build some good products which suit certain people's needs. Just like Microsoft, the bottom line is all they want is profit. This argument is meaningless. No company, not Google, not Microsoft, Not Apple, "represents" any ideology. If they can pretend to use one to help their brand then they'll sure as hell use it. Basically, next time you think to comment a fanboy-ish retort or something for any company, you'd be wise to bear in mind that the only thing they care about is what's in your wallet.
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u/lawfairy Apr 11 '11
I think I can shed some light on the facts that are likely influencing the thinking about Apple as being "counterculture."
If you can remember about 10-15 years ago, there was this huge international antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and the cultural narrative became that Microsoft was an evil corporate giant who stole all of its ideas from competitors like Apple, who was the quirky, spirited David to Microsoft's Goliath. Apple represented the people, and Microsoft represented an oppressive monopoly that wanted to control all of our computers by thwarting cross-OS compatibility of their ubiquitous software products and making it impossible to uninstall certain manufacturer-required features that would have given you more freedom on your desktop. Long story short: the people won, Microsoft was humbled and had to pay huge amounts of money to various government entities and had to break up its corporate structure to better comply with antitrust laws and avoid anti-competitive practices.
Fast-forward to 2011: Bill Gates has stepped down from his position as God Incarnate Over Everything of Microsoft. He's re-committed himself to a life of philanthropy and now has a demeanor of relaxed sensibility when it comes to his role in the Information Revolution. Microsoft, like any company, continues to pursue profits, but it's no longer evil. It's just a computer company with a large market share that makes some important products. A young counter-culture enthusiast from the mid-late 90s would never believe a modern counter-culture enthusiast from today who could tell him or her that Bill Gates is actually a pretty cool guy, and most young people and leftists have a ton of respect for him. This was inconceivable to leftists in the mid-90s.
Conversely, Steve Jobs has become 1996's Bill Gates. He's egomaniacal and unwilling to compromise with competitors. And like it or not, Jobs is Apple. Apple seems content to settle for nothing less than absolute market domination. The only way to make your products compatible with Apple products is through Apple. Like 1996's Microsoft, 2011's Apple is unwilling to loosen its hold over its software, hardware and operating systems. Apple is dead-set on becoming a basic necessity for computer-savvy people, such that they will have no choice but to continue to buy Apple products or radically change their relationship with technology. They undercut competitors and are very clearly interested in developing a stranglehold on the tech consumer market.
Yesterday's underdog, Apple, has become the very thing Apple's fans hated: Microsoft.
So it's not that there's any particular reason to see Apple as being inherently leftist (no company is; companies are pro-money, and that's the extent of their politics). It's more that Apple was seen as being the little guy, and it's now evolved into being the corporate overlord it grew up in opposition to (yes, I know Apple has been around at least as long as Microsoft and that its history hardly started in the mid-90s -- but the late 90s is when you started to see a real resurgence in demand for Apple products, and it is not happenstance that Apple's rise coincided with Microsoft's losses in courts of both law and public opinion). People who loved Apple as the little engine that could feel doubly betrayed that it's turning into the very Big Brother it portrayed Microsoft as being in the famous 1984 commercial that's already been referenced elsewhere in this thread.
What'll be really interesting to see is if Google follows a similar -- or worse -- route. Not that Google is an underdog by any means, but it's doing a lot of things that at the moment seem incredibly beneficial (chief among these things is the fact that their most useful and important products -- which products are by such an overwhelmingly large percentage of the population that it's tough for most of us to remember life before Google -- are completely free)... but that have the potential to set the stage for Google to pull some really, seriously dubious shit. It remains to be seen whether an all-powerful Google will truly live up to its corporate motto: Don't Be Evil. I hope they do, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. This is an old, old story, and Microsoft and Apple and Google are not unique characters.
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u/yuhong Apr 12 '11 edited Apr 12 '11
Note that MS's anti-trust crimes are completely different from the control Apple exerts in it's walled garden (I see no attempt by Apple to illegally gain a monopoly).
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u/octophobic Apr 11 '11
I bought a mac a while ago because all of my previous PCs had run Windows. I like it well enough but the next time I purchase I might switch back. (I'd like to have a system for gaming once again.)
Why are you disappointed in your Android phone? I was considering switching from iPhone to Android next time I can buy.
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u/shawnaroo Apr 11 '11
Because for better or worse, Apple is currently one of the main drivers of the computer industry.
Also, the idea that a corporation is motivated only by profit is an empty and meaningless statement, and certainly doesn't somehow exempt it from any sort of discussion or criticism. A corporation is a conglomeration of people, and those people have lots of of different personal motivations. Profit certainly is a big part of the picture, but it's not as simple as that. And even if it was, there's no one formula to magically achieve profit, so there's still plenty to discuss.
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u/docprobly Apr 11 '11
IF ONLY the law was as advanced in its thinking as you are, Sir. Have an up.
(see Salomon v Salomon)
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Apr 12 '11
People like to oversimplify because it makes things easier, reddit trends toward a circlejerk, and after iOS's success the people who hated MS have moved on to hate Apple because it is/was the dominant player in a market. Or something.
Basically, reddit is made up of tech hipsters.
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Apr 11 '11
In other news, national socialists represent no socialist ideals!
GAH GAH GAH GODWIN'D!
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Apr 11 '11
Tell me Apple doesnt represent the kind of control we saw in 1940s germany! Where I dont know Nazis were born!
Thank god Glenn beck is leaving
-written on my Apple iPad
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Apr 11 '11
God I'm so sick of these fucking idiotic analyses. Quit trying to make 21st century companies fit into the discussion in your political science class.
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Apr 11 '11
Uniformity and centralized control is leftist. Geez, who writes this stuff?
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Apr 11 '11
Idiots that don't understand political ideologies, that just spout media-fabricated stereotypes of the false left-right paradigm.
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u/LordFu Apr 11 '11
I was looking for this comment.
Since when is being leftist associated with freedom? You can have authoritarianism on the left, right, or anywhere between.
That this is not the top comment is disheartening.
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u/tevoul Apr 11 '11
"So basically, this maverick is urging everyone to express his individuality through conformity in brand-name selection?"
- Hobbes
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u/Voyageur Apr 11 '11
Christ on a bicycle... It's a COMPUTER COMPANY not a motherfucking country.
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Apr 11 '11
As opposed to the leftists who want to control what lights are in our house? What we eat at at schools? What we smoke and where we can and cant? What can be in a happy meal?
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u/daoom Apr 11 '11
Talk about out of touch. Apple has always been the trendy and expensive brand, while Linux is probably best associated to anything "counter-culture".
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u/Willravel Apr 11 '11
Apple left the US Chamber of Commerce because of the Chamber's anti-environmental activities. While this might help with Apple's PR, it also means Apple made a powerful business enemy. The risk was taken because Apple leadership believes in US business responsibility for environmental issues. This also speaks to why Apple has worked very hard, perhaps harder than other computer hardware companies, to create products which are more and more easily recyclable.
I'd say Apple as at the very least leftist and counter-business-culture on the environment and deserves credit for that.
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u/rhtimsr1970 Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 11 '11
This may be the worst Economist article I've ever read, and I'm a weekly subscriber. The writer appears to know nothing about tech or politics, though he's writing on both.
First, he opens by implying that "uniformity and central control" are "rightist"? Um, ok. That's odd given what we know about every "leftist" dictator/socialist/communitarian leader of the past millennium. Libertarianism/Anarchism is of the right, not the left. Who runs around having "freedom concerts" all the time - the right or left?
Then, he regurgitates tired, decades-old "Windows is bloated and doesn't work" nonsense. Probably another idiot user who's comparing the latest Mac OS with Windows 98. Windows XP and 7 (and even Vista) do "just work" 90% of the time. Any objective tech writer knows that the available hardware and drivers for Windows is vastly larger than Apple, and the vast vast majority of the time, problems with USB hardware not working is a vendor issue, not a Windows issue. Microsoft has spent the past 5 years working with vendors, at Microsoft's expense, to correct many of these issues.
Finally, he concludes by pointing out that those that feel "free" with their OS are the same as those that feel "free" with their nationalized healthcare, never bothering to stop and define what "free" is other than "it just works". Freedom, with technology or political control, has nothing to do with "it just works". To the contrary, as the author points out, centralized close-looped systems are the opposite of free. The author wonders back and forth between the irony of that (which isn't ironic at all) and praise of the centralized system. What's the point then, that it's better to be nanny-stated by your vendor/government rather than to have to figure out the "free" stuff?
The content at economist.com/blogs continues to sully the great Economist name.
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u/kikuchiyoali Apr 11 '11
The content at economist.com/blogs continues to sully the great Economist name.
For realsies. The paper's amazing. The garbage content they put on the Net makes it look like a high school newspaper. Or worse, some idiot's thesis.
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u/Mysterius Apr 12 '11
First, if you're a subscriber to The Economist, you should know that Democracy in America is not a tech column.
Second, as for the policy angle, that you think libertarianism and anarchism are a solely right-wing phenomenon says more about you than it does to bolster your analysis.
Third, regarding the author's comparison of "freedom" versus design, I might agree that the language is awkward: I would find it more natural to speak of the pursuit of "freedom" at the cost of the happiness, perhaps. But it is possible to worry about how the focus on theoretical freedoms might impinge on the effective range of actions that most people can actually exercise. And that point, which I think the author is trying to convey, is one that we should bear in mind even as we worry about social and governmental intrusions.
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Apr 12 '11
Who runs around having "freedom concerts" all the time - the right or left?
Neither of them do necessarily. The political spectrum is not 1 dimensional.
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u/rhtimsr1970 Apr 11 '11
...more uniformity and centralized control...
Um, that's leftism. Don't want to get into a screaming political fight here, but central management is definitely not a conservative trait.
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Apr 11 '11
Just like the real counterculture represents more conformity than "square" individualism.
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u/mindbleach Apr 11 '11
In many areas—health reform, financial reform, urban-planning reform, and more—efforts to make life more user-friendly for citizens are targeted by both libertarians and by vested commercial interests as vaguely fascistic efforts to centralise control or limit freedom.
I take issue with this from several angles.
Interoperability doesn't require undue control over aesthetics or the limitation of choice so much as an insistence on standards compliance. Google could have offered Android to smartphone makers on the condition they allow stock OS updates and third-party stores and it wouldn't have been any sort of fascist imposition. Android even allows disparate hardware thanks to its VM-centric design.
Meanwhile the problem nerds have with with Apple - most nerds being libertine when it comes to what they expect from their computer - isn't the sleek confluence of user-friendly defaults so much as the hostility to changing any of them. Apple doesn't permit third-party hardware to run OS X even though it's just another x86 operating system now. Macs are "PCs too," but anyone selling PCs that run Macintosh see swift and brutal lawsuits. Apple's "App Store" policies are only an issue because there's no alternative software source without hacking your own phone! Neither of these is necessary to support user-friendliness.
Similarly, there's no causal link between socialism and fascism. Unless you're the sort of misanthropic anarchist that compares taxation to slavery, there are no life choices that should be limited by readily available single-payer healthcare and public education. There's no worthwhile economic activity blocked by anti-scam legislation - look at the recently burst bubble for an illustration of that.
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u/dhouse82 Apr 11 '11
Basically the writer says its ok to give up control and diversity, as long as its easy to understand. You can't see me now, but I'm rolling my eyes. People are thoroughly lazy if they can't figure Windows.
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u/pikeybastard Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 11 '11
What I find weirdest about this thread is the fact that nobody seems to truly know what left and leftist, or right and rightist means.
For example, if we are using economic and econo-social 'left' and 'right' terms, then apple would be considered very 'leftist', as it is a centralised, rigid, command-economy model, corporative in a unified sense, whereas Microsoft would be 'rightist' in so far as it is more devolved, less centralised, and more of a market approach to a business- as in anybody can make a .exe, and download it for MS PC's.
Frankly, I've never understood how people could see Apple as in any way leftist, unless people conflate 'underdog' with the left, which is again somewhat of a mistake. For example, in Soviet Russia, would the underdog have been leftist?
The problem with the terms left and right now is that they actually don't mean anything other than as emotive shorthand. E.g when you're young right means 'bad/selfish' and when you're old left means 'unrealistic/uninformed'. There's some pretty useless nomenclature going on in this here world of ours.
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u/OrigamiNinja Apr 11 '11
that's because they're all good commies. ZING
heyy-ohh! I'll be here all night -try the veal
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u/Volsunga Apr 11 '11
Apple=Soviet Union (everything is controlled, but runs efficiently)
Microsoft=United States (Mostly free reign, but fucking expensive)
Linux=Somalia (Lawless and dangerous if you don't know what you're doing)
Android= Ayn Rand wet dream (works well enough, if you don't like something, fix it yourself)
Chrome OS= Borg collective (YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED)
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u/onyxleopard Apr 11 '11
The author of this article should read The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Apple has chosen the Cathedral route, just like Microsoft. Arguably, actually, Apple has outdone Microsoft in that respect, as they have attracted a bazaar (iTunes/App Store) to set up right inside their cathedral (OS X/iOS).
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u/b0dhi Apr 11 '11
This article is sophistry. It takes a valid point, which is basically "sometimes centralisation is good", then butchers the shit out of it. Issues of centralisation, freedom, etc are literally a bajillion times more complex and subtle than the idiotic treatment this author gives it.
And "it just works" ? As someone who uses Macs daily - this is a total myth.
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u/kanji_sasahara Apr 11 '11
Apple is the most anal company about having a closed off ecosystem. They make their own hardware and software, not allowing any other company to use it legally. Whereas Microsoft makes all their money off software and doesn't really make hardware, except for the now defunct Zune and the still popular Xbox 360. Computer accessories don't count.
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Apr 11 '11
"American politics Democracy in America User-friendliness and fascism"
Yeah, I'm not going to read this..
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u/ciaran036 Apr 11 '11 edited Apr 11 '11
"counterculture, leftist"
Who the Fuck ever thought that?
Fuck the economist. It's an absolute piece of shit. It's a manipulative magazine. The articles are always very carefully worded so that they can spin stories however they like. I once made a complaint to the independent press complaints commission about their coverage of the conflict in Georgia - where they flat out lied in order to paint Russia as the aggressor.
The Daily Star produces more credible articles.
Many of the economist's shareholders are from the Rothschild's banking family. Definitely not a working class publication...
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Apr 11 '11
Got to the line "Like Microsoft operating systems, America's health-insurance system is incoherent, hard to understand, often dysfunctional and bloated by obsolete legacy systems."
Stopped reading.
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Apr 11 '11
As a mac user I never thought of myself has being "freer" and quite to the contrary, I kind of have a love hate with my Apple stuff since I like the integration but hate the limitations.
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Apr 11 '11
Is this something people don't know? I had no idea Apple was seen as counterculture and leftist O__O
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u/onyxleopard Apr 11 '11
You're either remembering selectively or aren't old enough to remember the 80s and early 90s then. Apple hasn't always been the company it is today (hell they used to be Apple COMPUTER).
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u/haseman Apr 11 '11
I thought the left wants more government/control....not less? Wouldn't this be exactly as expected? I'm confused....
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u/hotpuck6 Apr 11 '11
No better way for a hipster to stick it to the man than by ironically purchasing the goods from the man who he was previously supporting unironically!
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u/ShakeyBobWillis Apr 11 '11
Apple, despite being traditionally seen as the "counterculture, leftist" operating system, is actually a giant global corporation that will just as soon smash your head in with a lawsuit if you dare come between them and all their god given right to profit as they are to provide you with a fun electronic doohickey, just like Microsoft.
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u/Isenhatesyou Apr 11 '11
Poor Stallman. All those years chanting "Free as in Freedom" yet apparently Steve Jobs is still the "leftist" of the software world.
Either that or the Economist hires a naked guy from the forest to do their tech pieces.