The “Break it Down” Blog

The article more or less asks if the new big-business (read: Microsoft-esque) tactics by Apple starting to cause Apple to go sour, atleast to customers?

Here I’ll summarize this for you: yes.

Apple has been going down the path of becoming the next Microsoft when they got:

• Egotistical “king” that runs his shop with a screaming, iron fist.
• Family of “sexy” and “must have” products that makes everyone declare Apple the king of everything.
• As soon as everyone bought into Steve Jobs being Jesus and Apple being God, things are bound to go south
• The “everything breaks with each new release AND you get to pay for it in full” antics that were “awesome” before and kept things “clean” is now starting to drive users nuts (accessories no longer working for longer than a generation)
• Restocking fees and other nickle-and-diming of users begins to try and discourage returning devices
• Crappy quality first-cuts at hardware revisions

Not to say that Apple isn’t great in it’s own way, but I still hold strong to my conviction that in 5 years Apple will be Microsoft from mid-90s, and in 10 years Apple will be in exactly the same position as Microsoft now.

Update #1: Another article about how the EU is considering putting Apple under the same microscope they have put Microsoft under. I love the part about “If Apple was serious about creating a fertile digital-music environment, they should open up their hardware and process”. Yea right, Apple cares about 1 thing, that’s money… and nothing grows money like vendor lock-in.