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A comment on I really want to like Apple (but they don't like us). Parent comment

Re:I really want to like Apple (but they don't like us) by Kadin on Monday July 27, 2009 @11:41PM (#727378)
I don't think that's Apple being evil, that's Apple being ahead of the curve. They've always done that and I've thought it was generally admirable, although sometimes it puts you as a customer further out on the bleeding edge than you'd like. (E.g., I was very much unready to give up PCI when Apple decided to ditch PCI-X for PCI Express. However, it was clearly where the world was headed.)

They've done the "lead, don't follow" thing consistently since Jobs came back. Ditching ADB and serial for USB; ditching SCSI for FireWire---I groaned at each one of those calls, but they turned out to generally be the right ones, just a year or two in some cases before the market was quite ready.

However, all that is quite different from the bullshit with the iPod video cable discussed in the article. That's just outright consumer-hostile behavior, and it's not traditional Apple ... it seems to be something new, which has only started to happen in the last few years, and mostly in the markets where they are dominant.

I still like a lot of Apple's products (I'm writing this on a 15" MacBook), but it's as much evidence as I need to not want to ever have Apple dominate the PC market. They're a wonderful company when they're the underdog, but a harsh mistress when they're in charge.

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Re:I really want to like Apple (but they don't like us) by jacobolus on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @09:51AM (#727872)
They did the "lead don't follow" thing before Jobs came back too when it came to hardware (indeed all the way from the beginning of the company to the present, from mice and "plug-and-play" ADB connectors to 3.5" disks to the first real consumer laptops (remember the Duo Dock anyone?) to really embracing SCSI, laser printers, and then in the recent Jobs age, USB and firewire and ethernet and DVD writers etc. etc.), it’s just that their software stagnated for quite a few years and none of the next-gen software research projects they dumped loads of cash into in the early-to-mid 90s really panned out.
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Re:I really want to like Apple (but they don't like us) by tome on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @08:27AM (#727774)
They ditched floppy drives years before anyone in the PC world too, and it did us a lot of good. There were far more useful replacements at the time (Zip drive, CD-R etc.) and the floppy really was something that needed to be abandoned.
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