Jobs and Apple are airborne . . . and looking down at a shark. Waging endless war with . . . everyone. Again.
The Stiftung grows tired of Apple’s Cheney-esque monomaniacial bellicosity. Infinite Loop’s once quasi-benign hegemonic control of its software and hardware ecosystem offered a safe harbor in a world under Redmond’s boot. Now, Apple, like Cheney, launches war for the preposterous ‘1% solution.’ Its software development kits (SDKs) and products in 2010 are increasingly locked if not suffocating. Publicly the company surges onward. Don’t we all see the sheep-like herds obediently buying what vacant ‘hipsters’ tell them in the now ubiquitous suburban temples? (There are *9* Apple Stores alone in the D.C. metro area. A sure sign of middle brow decadence).
The Bunker is largely an Apple shop today. Mainly by slow accretion. (You may remember we got 2 original Macs in early 1984 before they hit the streets via an institution of higher learning). Microsoft’s stuff left by retirement. Including an Xbox with yes, the Red Rings of Death. We’ve often written that from the COO and VP levels on down, Microsoft is the single most malevolent, dishonest and incompetent corporate culture we’ve encountered. Still, Windows 7 tempts one to overlook Vista’s obscenity. One can grab some Core i7 power for a song. For the first time since Sculley and Spindler ran Apple, we’d smile at the cashier doing it. An infinitesimally miniscule psychic jab to Infinite Loop. How geopolitical. Unexpected, too.
Readers know the Stiftung at times enjoys deploying animations for our merry band. Apple doesn’t approve. Jobs and Apple in a fit of pique declared war on this technique and all developers using those tools. Adobe creates bloatware, no question. Apple claims Adobe is inefficient and crashes Apple stuff. But Apple itself denies Adobe and others access to Apple’s operating systems’ application interfaces (APIs). Graphics hardware such as cards are also blocked (ever wonder why the selection of Apple-approved graphics cards for Mac Pros were so scant?) Microsoft by contrast allows API and hardware access. Jobs claims Adobe must be crushed/banned in favor of ‘open standards’. Adobe sees its future profitability at risk. The Stiftung? We see unprecedented hypocrisy, Cheney-like control freakishness and an attack on the developer community. The reality distortion field is now a black hole.
Then there’s Jobs’ war on Google to protect the iPhone. (Add the patent lawsuits filed against HTC, the Taiwanese OEM. HTC makes alot of Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s phones using Google’s Android OS). Jobs wants regime change. His anger is stoked by some real perfidy and his zeal for scorched earth. Google, he claims, went to school on Apple and learned how to enter the mobile phone market. Yet Jobs and co. did the exact thing to Motorola during the ill-fated Rokr music phone years ago. Using Motorola, Apple turned around and created the iPhone. (Not to defend the moribund Motorola culture or Ed Zander, but still).
If we all together were Google, consider our future. (Jobs was right about one thing, Google’s motto ‘Don’t be evil’ is bs). Google sells data. If the future is mobile access via devices, what sane person would want a control-obsessed company like Apple via iPhone (and now iPad) with a chokehold on our windpipe? Look at what they’re doing to Adobe today.
Some of Apple’s software still remains compelling. Brit designer Ive’s hardware? Beautiful. Something significant is changing. To us Apple crossed imperceptible but important lines. We doubt the sheep flocking to the suburban temples notice or care. And hi-tech corporate warfare is a commonplace. This feels different after years of working in, for and with technology companies. We’re reminded when the Warlord’s White House first resurrected and unfurled Wolfie’s spindled DPG as a ‘new’ national security strategy . Few understood then it meant let loose the dogs of war. For those watching the tech industry, Dominique de Villepin would be perfect as a Greek chorus to Jobs. Stylishly and with taste, of course.
Or Steve’ll lay his soul to waste. Pleased to meet you.
Comment says
ROFL re Jobs
Dr Leo Strauss says
Taiwanese animated take on Jobs and iPhone controversy. Brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-YesqzvNk&feature=player_embedded
Dr Leo Strauss says
The Onion reveals the ‘Apple Friends Bar’ :
http://www.theonion.com/video/new-apple-friend-bar-gives-customers-someone-to-ta,17693/
Dr Leo Strauss says
Jobs tells Adobe to Talk To The iPad. His open letter on Flash is here. Jobs mixed facts and some delusion. Perhaps Apple will kick Adobe’s door in ala Gizmodo. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
Dr Leo Strauss says
@anxiousmodernman
Great stuff. Like high school kids changing cliques or revenge dating. One day Apple will ban users from actually turning on their Apple machines because Apple determines users will cause errors. One imagines Apple share price and sales will then go up.
anxiousmodernman says
Adobe hearts Google? via Daring Fireball
http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/04/adobe_air_on_the_android_platf.html
Dr Leo Strauss says
Yeah, Jobs claims cross-platform development is bad. He forgets about oh, say, Firefox, Chrome and possibly 50% of the top selling apps Apple approved (games developed for multiple platforms). And so on.
I eagerly await his Nemesis and fall, in some Cupertino underground bunker, randomly dialing the local zoo to see if Google or Open Source have broken through. For all the parodies of the Corporal on YouTube from the movie ‘Downfall’, Jobs’ rage and self-pitying laments would be even more hilarious.
Comment says
Explorer seems somewhat evil as far as web programs go.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Well said, especially about PDF. Apple’s 10Ks sure make clear how much consumers like Apple and its ‘workiness’ even in today’s climate.
Just the other week, we were with a former Reagan Administration official. He was enraged at his Windows computers and ranted at some length how his daughter’s Apple didn’t crash, get malware or as you say say require an IT staff just to work. Very entertaining.
re Flash, it doesn’t crash, mostly. *People* write buggy Flash applications. Even some we put up here require several tweaks for coding reasons. People can write buggy iPhone apps, too. But Apple can block their approval.
Apple’s real issue is it can’t control what a Flash application does. Flash on a Droid phone today works and could take us to Amazon to buy music, books or songs. Or serve up ads from third parties. A nightmare for Apple.
It’s more than just protecting iTunes. This summer the new iPhone OS4 will start pushing Apple approved ads. Although Apple erased the word ‘Google’ from the search bar, consider that Google pays Apple $100 million a year just for the user data it collects from the iPhone. It’s billions at stake.
‘Workiness’ is a good thing. It’s never pretty to see grown adults weep and beg for help erasing Vista and re-installing XP on their computers. (And XP’s kernel was a security nightmare to begin with).
A shame Jobs is so determined to crash on the rocks.
anxiousmodernman says
But I do love the animations, Doc!
anxiousmodernman says
I won’t defend the closed-platform approach of Apple, but as for the Adobe issue specifically, I’m all for the shot across the bow. Adobe creates terrible, sluggish bloatware, and the .pdf document “standard” that they’re pushing (and how hard they’re pushing it in DC! They had a bigger metro ad campaign than any defense contractor.) is, at its core, backward-looking, electronic paper. Which is better than nothing if I’m going to do research or what-not, but damn I want my data in html or xml or .csv or something besides paper.
And flash crashes.
I’m not a software developer, and so I don’t appreciate the implications of a truly closed platform, but haven’t we seen this movie before with iMac, macbook, and iPhone? Apple computers fucking work. They work so well, in fact, that even the dumb middlebrow masses can figure them out, and have trouble breaking them even with their thirst for porno sites. Most people aren’t upgrading their graphics cards, they just want ROI for the $2-$3k they’re going to drop on a computer. Apple “delivers the goods”. Windows machines, for the past 20 years, have not. Unless of course you have a full time IT staff.
Again, this is not to say that Apple’s strategy works long term. But the control they maintain seems to be key to the coherence/stability/functionality of their product line.
My next phone will be an HTC android device, though.