There are a lot of valid criticisms that can be thrown at Apple these days, and maybe they're not "our" friend.
But I find myself thinking more and more that when a company becomes the most valuable private entity in the history of humanity off the back of luxury goods the vast majority of the world can't afford - and in a highly competitive arena too - you really have to assume they know what they're doing when it comes to doing right by themselves. And who can blame them for that?
Apple have won: in business terms, they define success. Standing in judgement of them makes me feel foolish.
I'm not sure it's the same you know. Lands are conquered and retained with politics (i.e. charismatic bullshit) and the application of brute force. It's about suppressing the wills of others whereas winning at commerce in a competitive environment is about understanding and fulfilling them. That, I would argue, is a significantly more challenging task. Many large companies are defined by their size and the advantages it brings, but not so for Apple: lots of companies have the resources to do what they do and yet only Apple ever pulls it off. They really are a different beast.
>Lands are conquered and retained with politics (i.e. charismatic bullshit) and the application of brute force.
How is this different to how Apple (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle etc.) play the game?
>It's about suppressing the wills of others whereas winning at commerce in a competitive environment is about understanding and fulfilling them.
This is a wonderful sentiment to approach commerce with, but it's all too easily forgotten when you're already at the top of the game.
To stretch my already two-dimensional metaphor, it's at this point that empires start to stagnate, and eventually fall.
Note: None of this is prediction, or even strong criticism of Apple (They are thriving in an environment they didn't create), merely thoughts :-) I agree that Apple have, in the present climate, defined a new paradigm for commercial success. I just don't agree with the finer points of the paradigm...
> How is this different to how Apple (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle etc.) play the game?
At what point has coercion come in to putting a iDevice in your hand? Sure we could have that argument about advertising but Apple doesn't do a whole lot of that and the advertisements they do create are hardly designed to manipulate you - not to mention we are comparing them to the Romans here...
> This is a wonderful sentiment to approach commerce with, but it's all too easily forgotten when you're already at the top of the game. To stretch my already two-dimensional metaphor, it's at this point that empires start to stagnate, and eventually fall.
It's not a sentiment, it's the very essence of commerce. If you remove that incentive (and decline to implement an authoritarian regime to organise by force, like communism) then you have nothing but a bunch of former bureaucrats twiddling their thumbs (and likely starving to death.)
Commerce is about trading things you have for things you want: no more and no less. The problems of today are not the fault of freely organised trading by independent actors - that, instead, is the thing that brought us out of the stone age - but by the truly pain-in-the-arse implementation details of making this "system" moral and fair (define those terms however you will.) The reason I've air-quoted "system", btw, is because it is no such thing. If the apocalypse comes and the political/financial system falls, and you find yourself holed up in some basement with a stash of weaponry but no food you'll see that commerce is as natural as breathing. We have literally studied magpies and chimps making what we would call business decisions. Commerce is not evil, the system we've built around it is - I think this is the paradigm you have issue with, and it's something you ultimately need to take up with the political system.
Apple's success is owed to being good at this fundamental notion of trade, instead of gaming the system to their advantage (how many Fortune 500's would fall with a fraction of the competition Apple faces?) In order to fall one of four things would have to happen: 1) the entire system turns against them; 2) they stop being good at being Apple; 3) someone else learns how to do as they do or; 4) their actions ancillary to the product they provide me (like OPs points) become so offensive that they outweigh the benefits of being an Apple customer for a significant proportion of the consumer base. Personally, I see none of these as being particularly realistic or becoming so anytime soon.
But I find myself thinking more and more that when a company becomes the most valuable private entity in the history of humanity off the back of luxury goods the vast majority of the world can't afford - and in a highly competitive arena too - you really have to assume they know what they're doing when it comes to doing right by themselves. And who can blame them for that?
Apple have won: in business terms, they define success. Standing in judgement of them makes me feel foolish.