10.25.11
Gemini version available ♊︎Badge of Dishonour for Apple, Even Dilbert Grows Tired of It
Summary: Some of the latest backlash against Apple’s brand zealotry and aggressive pre-emptive wars
THE world’s leading badgewars/badgeware company (Apple) must know that its fate is hanging on a logo and some associated perceptions
Someone who uses a Mac-branded PC told us this morning that “Dilbert takes a shot at Apple” in the daily cartoon. “The company is going to make a mess going down,” he wrote, “but it seems to have no future without Jobs. And even he was losing his touch at the end. I just hope they don’t sell out to Microsoft on the way out. That could keep Microsoft afloat artificially.”
We wrote about Steve's death before we found out he was a central figure in the assault on Linux and one of our readers made us aware of this article which criticised Steve even before those newer revelations. It says:
I had an iPhone but I was relieved to lose it because it swallowed so much of my time in pointless ways. I enjoyed following myself down a street, as a dot on a map, for instance, but all I was really doing was being both CIA operative and target in a tiny movie of my own life. I also think, as others have noted, that the products look like children’s toys. Beautiful simplicity, say the fans, but more simple than beautiful, made for CBBC. The equivalent 40 years ago would have been blind adherence to the ideology of Habitat.
But I am in a minority. Jobs’s death has stopped the clock. As the corpse cooled, all aspects of his life and legacy were detailed by a prostrate media. He is now, just a little too late to enjoy it, the world’s most famous man, one pixel short of saviour. His memorial service last Sunday was covered by the broadsheets, who reported that the golden triumvirate of Bill Clinton, Stephen Fry and Bono appeared to mourn and rend their garments. This made me laugh, I am afraid, because if the question “Which global celebrities are most likely to attend the memorial service of Steve Jobs?” was asked on Family Fortunes the top answers would surely be – Bill Clinton, Stephen Fry and Bono. Who else could it be?
Some of the mourners, appropriately, tweeted their loss, which I am sure Jobs would appreciate, being the world’s chief facilitator of manufactured emotions in 140 characters or less. The more general population, who are practised in responding to the media’s idiocies, obediently responded. They were told they have lost something precious, and so the more credulous grieved. Logos representing Jobs’s death were designed, circulated, fought over and abandoned.
Well, the comments are worth reading too. Some people raise the point about Apple just being badgeware and over at TechDirt there is criticism over the subject we wrote about last night — that Apple goes way too far with its badgeware greed:
Not this again. We were just noting some recent attempts by Apple to pretend its trademark blocked anyone else from using an Apple in their own logo, no matter how obviously different and unrelated to the computer company.
Apple has become extremely unpopular among many people although its own followers are the very opposite. But given this overall notoriety of Apple, the future does not seem too promising. Apple’s brand value is estimated to be about half the company’s market capitalisation. This can change very rapidly. █
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Michael said,
October 25, 2011 at 7:47 pm
FUD:
Technology is now “badgeware” to Roy? What the heck does that even mean: technology = badgeware? I admit I have no idea.
FUD:
Apple may have hard times ahead, but using a *comic* and an anonymous person who uses Macs as your “reasoning”, Roy, is pretty much showing you have *nothing* to support your prediction. You are just making things up.
FUD:
I have seen no quote where Jobs spoke poorly of Linux. Your link shows no support for the claim. I bet you made it up.
Hint: Android is not Linux. The things about Android that Jobs was against are tied to Android copying iOS. Are you claiming *Linux* itself copied iOS? I have not seen that claim made before.
FUD:
And this is your *real* problem with Apple: they are successful. Successful beyond the wildest dreams of any desktop distro or most other things in the same segments they compete.
Yeah, Roy, those grapes are sour.
FUD:
Apple is amazingly popular… not just with its *customers* (what is it with you and “followers”… creepy!) but with many others who admire what they have done. But, yeah, there is likely large overlap between those who use Apple products and those who like Apple products. What an amazing revelation you have found!
FUD:
Yeah… based on some Mac user you cannot even name. *Great* support. LOL!
Another fluff piece from Roy where all he does is demonstrate his focus on hating others and not wanting to better OSS or the OSS ecosystem.
mcinsand said,
October 26, 2011 at 12:04 pm
What will happen with Apple will be interesting to watch, since they are, in any honesty, a marketing company rather than a technology company. To target a less-elastic, higher price point by combining/repackaging suppliers leading edge components is oddly less common in home computing than for other industries, but Apple did carve out a niche. Alienware does that for gamers, but they are not nearly as broadly reaching as Apple. Apple’s popularity, consumer awareness has increased, but, without the head marketer, I wouldn’t bet on them.
Through the 90′s and early 2000′s, the choice between Apple and PC was a choice between compromises. With a Mac, a user would pay a superpremium, have only a handful of hardware choices, but know that the system would work and what interface new software would have. With the PC, a consumer would have a wide-ranging array of hardware choices, a wide range of hardware prices, software from multiple vendors, and compromised reliability. As I viewed it personally, the decision between the two was between the ability to make choices versus rock-solid reliability. I could handle the burps if I was able to enjoy diversity; it’s fun to see what paradigms might be challenged.
As of a decade or so ago, though, Microsoft really began to attack diversity. My brother and I used to regularly comment on how they were becoming more like Apple every day, even though MS weren’t trying to link software with hardware (yet). Now, except for hardware, MS is pretty much Apple without the reliability. That’s pretty much how I ended up ditching Windows for FOSS.
FOSS gives a wider array of hardware options than Windows now, at least in my experience, along with solid reliability, along with a software culture more diverse than the PC world had even before MS had achieved dominance. That is the real threat to both Apple and MS. If consumers ever realize that they can have choice, economy, and reliability, then MS is doomed at least. Apple will probably still have a folllowing in people that would rather sacrifice choice, but the cult atmosphere that they are enjoying now probably won’t survive the loss of it’s leader.
Michael said,
October 26, 2011 at 12:46 pm
FUD:
What does this even mean? Nothing. It is just a way to put down Apple based on jealousy of their success.
Instead of putting down those that succeed, I would love to see those who appreciate desktop Linux work on making desktop Linux better so it can really compete. The sour grapes in the OSS world is really bad.
FUD:
They do a lot more than just “repackage” other’s items – the understand the importance of making tools which please people highly. They get what features are needed and, *just as importantly* what ones to leave out. This is so outside of the thinking of many in the OSS world that they just assume it is marketing or luck or back-room deals or something… completely missing the point that the focus is on excellence and innovative problem solving.
I tend to buy what allows me to get tasks done best. I *wish* OSS would grow to be this on the desktop, as it has for web servers and so many other places.
I would love to see desktop Linux grow to the point where it competes well with the Windows environment and with the OS X environment. It still has a long way to go, but it is growing fast.
Your idea that those who use Apple products are “sacrificing choice” is completely wrong. Apple offers a choice – and when choice is added you cannot be “sacrificing choice”, you are adding to it. Whether you pick Windows, desktop Linux, or OS X you are making tradeoffs. Each has benefits and weaknesses and I am glad each of the choices exist. None of the choices reduce choice – they cannot.
Desktop Linux clearly is not a particularly good choice for *most* people, but it is the best choice for some. Great. I would like to see it improve to the point where it is the best choice for more. As the desktop becomes almost exclusively a window to the web more and more people, desktop Linux has great potential for growth.
Michael said,
October 26, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Why doesn’t Roy note that the FUD image he used for this article is not even his own FUD?
http://www.tineye.com/search/d613e7d1de4637adfd02a464e4dbdf6c38f64f4e/
I just wish Roy could be honest. Yeah, I know, that is too much to ask.