We here at RagingGeek are here to provide you with provocative, entertaining rants about a variety of topics that affect the Geek culture as a whole. Today I am going to go off on the topic of big time technology company ideologies. This is going to be at least a 3 part series covering at least two of the big PC contenders, Apple, and Microsoft. So Apple fans, I expect a few of you to email or comment some vitriol, but remember, I'm going to be spreading the hate around a bit. But first I'll break down my hatred of Apple inc. in honest and objective ways for you to understand.
First thing I do have to say to frame this is that in the arena of portable devices, Apple really revolutionized the world with iPhone when they first built it. past the first revolution however it has slowly turned into a 2nd class device, despite everyone going apeshit anytime one lands(on a crazy annual revolving schedule so precise you could set your system time to it.) ipods were nice but not unique originally and they got a tremendous revamp in touch, but really it's not innovative to just remove the phone part of your phone and call it an ipod. it's just taking the same device and changing 1 thing and re-releasing it as something else. iPad also, great device, not totally innovative to just make the iphone bigger, which is all that they did, but it works in its niche. My problems are not with their portable builds but more their philosophy, and their software ethics.
To understand how Apple has managed to change their message over the years we can just take a look at 1984. in the early years of computing machines were as large as whole rooms, and were made by various manufacturers, either Sperry, Unisys, IBM, Cray. These computers required proprietary devices like printers and input devices like punch cards, terminal screens, and other equipment. They also ran a proprietary OS specific to the hardware, this was important as some machines were octal based where others were hex and still others base 10. The problem with this was there was hardly any competition in the market. Once a corporation bought into an infrastructure, they were "all in" because from that day forward they would only be buying equipment, software, and service support from 1 company. The manufacturer or it's licensed entities(read: other channels that still get the primary company its money). This was also happening in the PC world at the time, with things like the Commodore 64, and the Atari Computers running their own versions of BASIC OS, and they also had proprietary hardware.
IBM released it's PC in 1981, and as an attempt to combat that Apple produced it's PC and attempted to shatter IBM's iron grip on the IT world by releasing a famous advertisement. their point? IBM had an image of being the corporate suit in the industry, a symbol of black and white power suits, generic boring computing systems that were not friendly or open. Apple revealed the Macintosh with it's GUI mouse driven interface and took the world by storm. Apple computers would probably never again achieve as much market lift in the industry as at this time. So apple was the revolutionary thing, the different choice. A company that would not propel us to a bleak droning future.
As the PC market and the IT market as a whole became more mature, Bill Gates amongst others began to write Operating systems for the IBM machines, which would tear down the walls of computer-software-hardware-service monopoly that was had in the past. Now IBM users had the freedom to choose amongst the flavors of DOS, granted there wasn't a lot of difference outside of which vendor provided the software, but it was still choice! Now you could choose between an IBM with various flavors of DOS, or Apple Computer with it's MacOS, as well as Commodore and several others.
Eventually the smaller companies that were propped up mostly on video games and hobbyists collapsed in the great gaming crash of the 80's, leaving 2 architectures in their wake, IBM-Compatible, and MacOS. IBM-Compatible as time went on became even more diversified, it began with different computer manufacturers making systems based on similar architectures, and then it became modular components where users or their IT department could then attach a PS/2 compatible keyboard and mouse, or install a ISA or PCI card for modem, network, sound, or video. Suddenly IBM users had the ultimate in choices, they could choose which processor from what company, what components, what motherboard, what ram, and what case to house it in. You could build your own PC in your own house with just parts picked up from the nearest retailer. At this same time several computer manufacturers appeared. Gateway, Dell, Toshiba, HP, Compaq. Sprawling diversity could be had if you were in the IBM camp, granted most people ran Microsofts latest iterations, but their computer configuration was completely unique to them.
All of that IBM customization carries forth even to this day. there are at least 2 vendors for every single component of the computer, and now you can even run Windows, or any of the thousands of variations of Linux. Meanwhile Mac can only run 1 OS, its OS, done its way. Even then Apple has gutted much of it's own innovation, no longer is its OS unique to itself, but is itself just a refit of BSD kernel. Its internal components no longer Motorola 68000 processor based but instead based off the same off the shelf materials that IBM users use. Yet Mac owners still claim superiority. Why this is so is a mystery.
Mac OS is quite simply the most limiting, the entire corporate culture is designed at this point in mind, simply, streamline, unify. They want to make it easy for the consumer, and that is a lofty goal, but an honest and good one. The part I disagree with most strongly is their attempts to maintain a "walled garden" approach to computing. This ethos is slowly becoming more firm as the years pass. Essentially Apple wants you to only use their equipment with their OS the way they want you to. You have the fewest options out of the box compared to the other OS's on the market, others you have to pay for, you can only run Apple OS proprietary applications, unless you guiltily run a sandboxed version of windows, which really means you just paid too much for a windows machine anyway. and there is no way for you to install your own components, you have absolutely no control outside of initial purchase as to what equipment you want, you have to pay someone to do it all for you.
When Apple Computer first launched you could build an apple computer in your garage with their supplied schematics, ultimately giving you control of where the parts came from. Now, the internals are off limits, and soon even software development for the machines will be limited as well. They have already taken a stand enforcing programmers for IOS to use Objective-C as their programming language, that is the only way you are going to get your application on an IOS device, and this limitation I am sure is going to come swiftly to the desktop as well.
Apple is not about choice or thought anymore, they give you everything, they say, wanna do this? use this, this is the only way to do it, and why would you want another? How about the other way is more efficient? the other way when it breaks gives more meaningful errors(apple products seldom give an error to the user that means anything but "take me to the genius bar because you are a dumb user")?
This is now a situation where "first they came for flash, but that's okay because Adobe is horrible, then they came for Java" etc. It's a situation that will only continue to snowball. Apple likes its walled garden. Also of note is the stance with IOS devices only being allowed to buy apps from the app store, and the only apps allowed are ones that are censored, filtered, and do not duplicate functionality. One thing I love about my android is that if I don't like the dialer, or the sms tool, or the wallpaper, or the way a certain function works, I can download an app to change it. I'm not limited to doing how the manufacturer demands. Open computing can be a positive thing. if the App Store was as open as Android market sure there may be a handful of users that might get burned by an app, but they will rate it down and a responsible company willing to have an app store should have an arbitration system in place so burned users can be reimbursed and bad app makers are punished in some manner.
So ultimately it is apple that is plunging us into a utterly vanilla vacuum formed plastic lifestyle doing things the way an authoritarian figure tells us we should do. replace the face on the screen in 1984 commercial with Steve Jobs and you have essentially shown truth in advertising.
Apples positive points: First to build a GUI OS, first to build an App driven Phone, solid portable device product list.
Apples negative points: using the same hardware as a IBM Compatible but their OS does not work on other IBM compatibles, selling the same hardware at significant markup for no reason other than brand identification. a censored blockaded app store that will ban your product even if you innovation improves upon existing functionality(because it duplicates the functionality) later these innovations will be rolled in via apple engineers in the next IOS build(a notable outcry from devs about this fact is out there if you google for it), limiting development to a specific programming language for no reason other than to keep everything sheltered and internalized to the maximum.
My biggest gripe with Apple is that last part, limitations imposed on the developer to using a singular programming language to produce your product. For those non-programming types spergy enough to stick with me to the end of this rant, programming languages come in a variety of flavors and layers. You have your baseline 1st generation languages like Assembler, which are simplified macros of actual command binary instructions, it is super hard to code for but grants you 100% access to any resource on the machine, direct control. Programs produced in this way tend to be very fast, and memory conservative(if the programmer is a real pro). Then you have higher order languages like Fortran, Cobol, C/C++, .net framework languages, Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, Perl. the list goes on and on. These languages all have some key things that seperate them from the others, and it's not usually platform specific. Languages like Fortran tend to process mathematical functions and scientific items faster, C/C++ are mostly macros to assembler with object oriented stacked on top, creating very robust powerful code that is also fast and manageable. Java, is a controlled platform independent language that can run on top of any device that has a JVM built for it. portability, or purpose are the keys to languages. having to be restricted to 1 language and only 1 language is dreadfully limiting to the programming community and is just yet another reason that a majority of programmers will not be able to do a lot of coding for the platform.
Enjoy your walled garden Apple-fans, I just can't abide by an IT dictatorship of any kind.
