Android is any better? And what about the late, short lived, heavily advertised and promoted, but not at all lamented, Windows Phone? And is Widows a better and more open desktop/laptop OS than Mac?
And since when did Apple decide to become a not for profit or non profit company?
I have no issue with Apple making a profit. I do have an issue with Apple positioning itself as a prestige label and adopting closed system architecture to maximize its profits and often providing little choice than purchasing optional products from Apple at their inflated prices and eliminating aftermarket upgrades. The most egregious behavior is soldering in RAM on computers so that users who feel they need to increase computer memory or have a memory chip fail cannot replace or add to it but have to either live with what they have, or buy a new computer.
Remember the horrific disaster back in the day when Apple allowed other hardware manufacturers to sell Mac clones? The very first thing Steve Jobs did when he returned to Apple was to instantly put the kabosh on all the clones. Apple would never have survived if Steve had not returned Macs to a closed system that requires all Apple’s products and services, including apps in the App Store to be very carefully vetted and closed.
Apple has consistently ranked at the very top of the lists of Fortune 500 companies for decades. Its success has been very dependent on a laser focus on security, reliability and safety, including carefully vetting quality of every app, service and product they allow in the App Store.
Macs, iPhones, iPads, Watch, etc., etc. are sold across the globe via the Apple Store, as well as through hundreds of thousands of authorized retailers across the globe. There’s Music, Books, Fitness, TV and TV+, Arcade, Air Pods and Ear Pods, Car Play, Home Pods, Movies and TV shows, etc. There’s even a recent deal with Major League Baseball, and it’s expected that other sports leagues will follow. And of course the not so secret Apple Car project.
Apple’s products and have remained closed since the return of Steve Jobs, who returned Apple to health and led it to its longstanding annual positions at the top of the pops. If Apple’s closed system really bothers you or weighs on your conscience, you can stop buying Apple products and save a very significant amount of money as well.
I respectfully disagree with you. Allowing various manufactures to produce Windows hardware most certainly has not hurt Microsoft’s profitability. And give that the majority of business computers are running Windows it would have likely not have resulted in the scenario you described as if that were the case, the majority of businesses would be using Mac’s. In Microsoft’s hardware paradigm, poor quality hardware providers simply go out of business.
I believe that one of the key decision makers is the fact that Microsoft charges for Windows and MacOS is free. I suspect that Steve was unwilling to provide a free OS to his competitors as that does not make business sense. Should have Apple started charging for MacOS the existing users would have likely screamed bloody murder. While it is a well know fact that in any electronics connectors tend to be the weakest link. However since RAM connectors and sockets are gold plated and rarely get unplugged after installation unless defective it is rarely an issue. But eliminating plug-in RAM does coerce users to buy new machines on a more frequent basis and increases profitability as connectors add extra expense to the product.
That said there are plenty users using non-Apple hardware computers running MacOS. They are aptly named Hackintoshes and many users are very pleased with their performance and reliability. Additionally MacOS can be run virtually on a Windows or Linux machine. While both are not ‘plug and play’ there is plenty of information on the Web as to how to set up and configure them.
Allowing various manufactures to produce Windows hardware most certainly has not hurt Microsoft’s profitability
True…but there’s nothing inherently wrong with either the open MS model or the closed Apple one…each has their pluses and minuses from hardware options to software options to stability and security.
And while your statement about Hackintoshes is technically correct…and I have no idea how many of them exist…my guess is the numbers are really small and I would be surprised if they topped 10,000…and just about every one is a computer geek as building one of them is non trivial.
There are many of us that prize the closed system because it arguably makes for a more stable and secure system…and while Windows has gotten a lot better in the past 5-7 or so years…as a long time Windows sysadmin macOS has a pretty solid record of better stability and security.
This is what happened the years when Microsoft did manufacture Windows hardware:
And MS’ Xbox hardware has never earned a penny, though they do make money on app sales:
And the unprofitable Surface headphones are also dying a slow and painful death:
Well, yes, that happens. My decade old computer also doesn’t support the latest features of Apple’s OS. Technology ages out; it’s not some evil plot by Apple.
That’s literally been their business plan since the very beginning, so you can hardly say you weren’t warned.*
*There’s a larger discussion about the motivation but that takes us down a well-trodden rabbit hole.
Taking their customers with them. One of the reasons I buy Apple is to avoid that particular business strategy. I’d rather not be on the “creative destruction” end of capitalism if I can avoid it.
Someone associated with Apple for so long should be aware that MS got shares for it’s $150 m, so not a loan (those shares would be worth approximately $332 billion today, if MS had held onto them).*
Your following commentary just goes back to two cardinal points about technology: it rarely works perfectly, and it moves on. You’re complaining about river water running downstream (and splashing you in the process), with just about as much likelihood of success.
*math approximate, but it’s a lot.
I’m cutting all this out of the topic about GM dropping CarPlay, and I’m closing this new topic because there’s nothing new here and I prefer that TidBITS Talk hosts constructive discussions. Apple is what Apple is.