Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
The iphone is about locking people into Apple services. About having mastered the art of hype while skimping on basics like memory, FM radio, standard bluetooth in favor of a few silly gimmicks. Apple is about giving those who are taken in by the hype a false sense of superiority even though the phone cannot do half what the other phones could do three years ago. And yes, nice looking design.
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This has always been kind of a funny thing. When the first iPod showed up, there were other PMPs that had more space, more features, and cost less. The same was the case when the iPhone came out, the same has almost always been the case with the Macintosh. Critics always cite "Hype" to be the source of interest. My experience has been that Apple has a talent for putting together technologies in ways that make sense.
Apple wasn't the first to come out with a digital media store, but they were the first company to really make it work. That's why iTunes became popular, and why it rules the market today. Now that the DRM is gone from iTunes, the lock-in is out.
Apple didn't invent the GUI, or the MP3 player, or the smart phone, but they built upon those technologies to make something unique. The iPhone wasn't the first phone with a web browser, but in my opinion it was the first phone with a reasonable one (and I've owned a few). The iPod likewise wasn't the first MP3 player, but the interface made sense, and the package made sense. I think the big competitor at the time was a 20gb mp3 player, and it was bulky and kind of awkward. Apple's product was $100+ more expensive, and people predicted it's failure. But the iPod succeeded because it made sense to people. (Even if it didn't make sense to their pocketbooks)
You might say that Apple's practice is to lock people into their products... but isn't that generally the case with most companies? Microsoft certainly developed a strong ecosystem with Office. Windows and IE put them into a tough position about a decade ago. Red Hat is hoping you'll run your servers with them and as a result, you're reliant on Red Hat to provide support if you need it, and it's bound to be more cost effective to stick with them, than move to something else. (Even just over to CentOS.) Most people can't shell out $300-$500 for an unsubsidized phone, so they buy the subsidized version and are locked in with their provider. Lock-in is a pretty common thing, and Apple is no more locking-in their customers than any other company.
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