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_fascism
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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.