Honestly... Do you think Apple has gone mad?

Hello All,

I've caught the Apple bug a while back (early 2007) and I've been hooked. In 3 years I converted my whole family and most of my friends from Windows to Mac. I like Apple's hardware, whether mobile, labtops, desktops.

All that aside, what the heck is going on with Apple lately??

1- The Whole iPhone fiasco.
I understand they are pretty upset about their precious little secret being let loose. But they are reacting really bad, to something that is arguably a good thing for them (in a way). This little stunt by Gizmodo brought even more interest to the iPhone is that is possible!

But now, with the police involved, search warrants served and Apple personnel going to the door of the guy who found the phone, people are starting to have second thoughts about Apple (I am just telling you what I am seeing, don't hang me for it)

2- Their childish fight with Adobe over Flash:
Apple, or I should his Steveness might not be particularly fond of Adobe Flash (God knows I hate Flash for all the times it crashed both my MacBook and my new Dell Studio XPS) but why screw the developers in the process.

Another reason that people say Apple ***?!!

3 - Ellen gets a spanking by Apple?!
Really, its a TV Show. It was a joke. Maybe someone in Apple PR needs to loosen their ties a bit and breath some air. Really having her apologize after the skit left a worse impact on people.

The annoying thing is I live in Silicon Valley, aka Apple Country! I can only imagine if people here are getting annoyed by what Apple is doing what are people outside are saying.

I see people on the forums and all over the web saying "where are the iPads they say Apple sold a a Million" I see 50% of them here. But people are getting tired of Apple's arrogance.

End of Rant.

Would like to hear your opinions though.

MinaMACMan said:

I've caught the Apple bug a while back (early 2007) and I've been hooked. In 3 years I converted my whole family and most of my friends from Windows to Mac. I like Apple's hardware, whether mobile, labtops, desktops.

All that aside, what the heck is going on with Apple lately??

End of Rant.

Would like to hear your opinions though.

Click to expand...

If these recent Apple events have "soured" your opinion of Apple...you may have a very hard time converting your whole family (and most friends) back to Windows!!!

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

If these recent Apple events have "soured" your opinion of Apple...you may have a very hard time converting your whole family (and most friends) back to Windows!!!

- Nick

Click to expand...

There is always Linux remember.

I am seeing a lot of what MinaMACMan alluded to in his post. I went to Best Buy last night as my friends PC blew a motherboard. They were all sneering at Apple and Macs and the iPad. A lot of it is due to some of what they are seeing Apple doing.

The thing that got to me is Apple scolding Ellen. That was a joke. They did not jump all over David Letterman when he almost mocked the iPad in a joking way.

So yes, I do see some of the recent happenings affecting peoples attitude about Apple in general.

I am not ditching my Apple equipment, but feel they are going a bit far of late especially with the Ellen incident.

The only thing that would make me eventually ditch my Macs is if Apple goes all Mobile and stops supporting the desktop computer.

The Stealing of the iPhone and what Apple and the police did in no way bothered me. They had no right to have a stolen phone and rip it apart.
Its just this latest incident like I said above.

lol...

Naah, not planning on doing that at all. I mean, its annoying to see them going insane, but I am still smart enough to recognize that their products are top notch for what I need them for.

I just needed to rant, figured the best place to do so is the place where it all started for me.

Thats all...
*cranks up the volume on his iTouch*

dtravis7 said:

There is always Linux remember.

I am seeing a lot of what MinaMACMan alluded to in his post. I went to Best Buy last night as my friends PC blew a motherboard. They were all sneering at Apple and Macs and the iPad. A lot of it is due to some of what they are seeing Apple doing.

The thing that got to me is Apple scolding Ellen. That was a joke. They did not jump all over David Letterman when he almost mocked the iPad in a joking way.

I am not ditching my Apple equipment, but feel they are going a bit far of late especially with the Ellen incident.

The only thing that would make me eventually ditch my Macs is if Apple goes all Mobile and stops supporting the desktop computer.

Click to expand...

Funny you mention Linux, I work with Linux all the time, I get more face time with it than my MacBook lately.

And thanks for proving my point. If it isn't all three situations I mentioned originally at least one of them ticked off a portion of their consumer base.

It simply sucks.

yes, they're getting a bit fascist, let us not forget where apple was only 10 years ago—still in OS 9.

i've been a mac user all my life, my parents were graphic designers, i really don't want to see apple develop a bad reputation for becoming authoritative. lets face it, they don't like adobe for the flash debacle, but it's hard to overlook what they've done with itunes and their apps. it was only a short while ago that apple was trying to break the chains that windows had on the industry, and now apple is seemingly just flipping the situation. remember, we don't want any monopolies. as a graphic designers who relies on the adobe/mac combo for their livelihood the apple/adobe situation makes me a bit squeamish.

You know, I think they need to look at their Big Brother Commercial and be ashamed of what they are becoming now.

MinaMACMan said:

Hello All,

I've caught the Apple bug a while back (early 2007) and I've been hooked. In 3 years I converted my whole family and most of my friends from Windows to Mac. I like Apple's hardware, whether mobile, labtops, desktops.

All that aside, what the heck is going on with Apple lately??

Click to expand...

Hi Mina, glad to see you back on the forums, so I hope you don't take offense, but I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on some of your thoughts here....

1- The Whole iPhone fiasco.
I understand they are pretty upset about their precious little secret being let loose. But they are reacting really bad, to something that is arguably a good thing for them (in a way). This little stunt by Gizmodo brought even more interest to the iPhone is that is possible!

Click to expand...

If you had something stolen - something that was of incredible value - how would you react?

I mean, we appreciate it when a good samaritan takes it to the lost and found, but how ticked would you be if they snatched it up and sold it to the highest bidder?

But now, with the police involved, search warrants served and Apple personnel going to the door of the guy who found the phone, people are starting to have second thoughts about Apple (I am just telling you what I am seeing, don't hang me for it)

Click to expand...

When we're talking about theft of trade secrets, it's a pretty big deal. I'm not in the least surprised that the DA got involved. Remember, this is high-stakes stuff. Getting a few months lead on one of the top smartphone makers is HUGE stuff.

2- Their childish fight with Adobe over Flash:
Apple, or I should his Steveness might not be particularly fond of Adobe Flash (God knows I hate Flash for all the times it crashed both my MacBook and my new Dell Studio XPS) but why screw the developers in the process.

Another reason that people say Apple ***?!!

Click to expand...

How is it screwing the developers?

Let's put it this way - if you buy a new program, would you prefer something written in Java that can't take advantage of your computer's various strengths, or one that was written natively for your OS? Allowing developers to write Flash-based apps for the iPhone would be a catastrophe leading to software developed for the least common denominator platform?

I don't think developers are really crying on this one. If they were, they'd all be jumping ship. But somehow, I doubt many will leave this cash cow.

3 - Ellen gets a spanking by Apple?!
Really, its a TV Show. It was a joke. Maybe someone in Apple PR needs to loosen their ties a bit and breath some air. Really having her apologize after the skit left a worse impact on people.

Click to expand...

I'll agree with you on that one to an extent, but having watched the "commercial", I have to say that it's not exactly good satire. Satire exaggerates the flaws of the thing/person/place it's parodying. In this case, the satire was really playing off of Ellen's ineptitude and not necessarily the phone itself. But the take away that I think most people got from the video is "this thing is difficult to use".

Perception is reality, and if you're Apple, public perception is everything.

The annoying thing is I live in Silicon Valley, aka Apple Country! I can only imagine if people here are getting annoyed by what Apple is doing what are people outside are saying.

I see people on the forums and all over the web saying "where are the iPads they say Apple sold a a Million" I see 50% of them here. But people are getting tired of Apple's arrogance.

End of Rant.

Would like to hear your opinions though.

Click to expand...

Those are the same people that just don't like Apple in general. I was amongst those ranks for many years. But quite frankly all of my Apple gear has more than lived up to its expectations. I'm just glad I was willing to give them a chance. Most hard core geeks are not quite that open minded - and those are the people who are really lacing into Apple (and have always been).

Also, moving this over to 'Anything Goes', because it's really not in keeping with the intent of the rumors/reports forum.

cwa107 said:

Hi Mina, glad to see you back on the forums, so I hope you don't take offense, but I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on some of your thoughts here....

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Hey man, thanks for the welcome. Its good to be back

And before I counter your points, I expect no less than some disagreement. Thats what I love about coming here to these forums, we can have open civilized discussions with constructive criticism and disagreements.

cwa107 said:

If you had something stolen - something that was of incredible value - how would you react?

I mean, we appreciate it when a good samaritan takes it to the lost and found, but how ticked would you be if they snatched it up and sold it to the highest bidder?



When we're talking about theft of trade secrets, it's a pretty big deal. I'm not in the least surprised that the DA got involved. Remember, this is high-stakes stuff. Getting a few months lead on one of the top smartphone makers is HUGE stuff.

Click to expand...

To say the least I would be extremely upset. But, I'd handle it differently. Working in the corporate world taught me how to get back what is mine in the most politically correct way possible. In that way people would actually support me not be against me.

I wouldn't be sending people (not cops) to the guy's door! Thats straight up bullying. Was the guy wrong... Absolutely so and he deserves some spanking, but bullying in that way is just not acceptable from such well established company that has a lot of people looking up to it.

Also, what they did with the Gizmodo blogger is mind boggling!

Look, the guy was also completely wrong and he should have know better. Him and his boss deserve punishment equally. And what he did, screws things up for all the bloggers. So he did screw up royally. But Apple Sits on the board for REACT ( the Special division in the Silicon Valley PD) and they had them rush a search warrant that gained Gizmodo more public sympathy. And they shot themselves in the foot since they can't touch all the computers that were taken from Jason Chen's home until the DA revises everything and goes to court with it.

Should they have pursued the manner legally, no doubt. Could they've handled it better... Probably a million times than what they are pulling off right now.

cwa107 said:

How is it screwing the developers?

Let's put it this way - if you buy a new program, would you prefer something written in Java that can't take advantage of your computer's various strengths, or one that was written natively for your OS? Allowing developers to write Flash-based apps for the iPhone would be a catastrophe leading to software developed for the least common denominator platform?

I don't think developers are really crying on this one. If they were, they'd all be jumping ship. But somehow, I doubt many will leave this cash cow.

Click to expand...

I am by no mean a software engineer. My own personal bread and butter is Hardware design. But I do right my own code every now and again and it is such a relief that the code I write in Python on my MacBook at home, can work on Windows Laptop at work as well as the $2 Million MRI Scanner with very minor changes.

Unfortunately I can't find this article right now, but it showed that there is a pretty decent percentage of Apps in the App Store that were built for Flash and using some sort of Adobe Compiler it converts it into a format that compatible with the iPhone OS.

So in essence the developers write for one platform and don't have to write their code from the ground up for 2 or more different platforms.

You are right, they will probably not leave the CASH COW that is the iPhone market. But if Apple keeps going on the Path of Closing the EcoSystem like it is doing right now, they just might start losing some of the good devs to more FART Apps developers. Not what I'd like to see.

cwa107 said:

I'll agree with you on that one to an extent, but having watched the "commercial", I have to say that it's not exactly good satire. Satire exaggerates the flaws of the thing/person/place it's parodying. In this case, the satire was really playing off of Ellen's ineptitude and not necessarily the phone itself. But the take away that I think most people got from the video is "this thing is difficult to use".

Perception is reality, and if you're Apple, public perception is everything.

Click to expand...

You know you do present a good point here, yes in a way you could remotely understand Ellen's silly, to be honest I failed to find it funny, misleading about the iPhone's ease of use, that argument would hold water if the iPhone had just spawned yesterday. But we are talking about a product that has been on the market for over 3 years now.

Sold MILLIONS. people know how to use iPhones. Also, Apple needs to give its consumer base some credit. They watch Ellen, a comedian, expecting JOKES they are not taking her word on tech really.

But again, they could've just ignored it and nothing would've happened and not one would've paid attention to it.

Case in point, I didn't even know about the commercial until I started seeing it on all the tech news websites all over!

They actually shot themselves int he foot yet one more time.

cwa107 said:

Those are the same people that just don't like Apple in general. I was amongst those ranks for many years. But quite frankly all of my Apple gear has more than lived up to its expectations. I'm just glad I was willing to give them a chance. Most hard core geeks are not quite that open minded - and those are the people who are really lacing into Apple (and have always been).

Click to expand...

I'd beg to differ with you there. I work on the Stanford University campus. Everyone, well maybe 99.9999% have iPhones. The small majority that don't they have dumbphones but they have at least 2-3 Macs. Also, you can't walk down the street without stumbling on iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads you name it.

Those people feel like Jon Stewart.... a bit betrayed. They looked at Apple as the cool kid, the underdog and now they are slowly turning into a monster.

Does that mean people are gonna start leaving Apple.... highly doubt it. Its just annoying, it might cause a kink in their sales if they get worse but they'll recover.

The customer base has a short memory span, they'll forget... only if Apple goes back to their old way!


And wow, this must be my personal record as the longest post I've ever posted here!!