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I just saw the announcement by the iFlowReader people about how they're going out of business because of your eBook policy change [full disclosure: my cousin-in-law is one of the developers]. I used to be a die-hard Apple user, but this episode is yet another reason why they lost me as a customer.

When I was a kid I was jealous of my friends who had Apple ][s and //es while I had to "put up" with my Trash-80 and my Commodore 64. My folks got me a Mac SE when I went to college and a PowerBook 160 when I went off to teach English in Japan. Later on I had a series of OS X machines, from the Blue & White G3 to a G3 Pismo and two 12in Aluminum PowerBooks. I endured taunts from my Windows-using friends, and I made a lot of cool music on those machines. I purchased several iPods. The most recent Mac I purchased was a late G4 Mac Mini.

But something happened to you guys. You totally lost your soul.

You started off with a single-board computer at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple ][ had all these expansion boards and it was easy to get inside and hack with it. You guys wanted people to tinker around and find cool things to do with the Apple. Even the Macintosh, with its hermetically sealed case, still had an ecosystem of cool third-party software and hardware that grew up around it.

I think you've forgotten how important that ecosystem was. That cloud of faithful fans and hangers-on kept you guys alive during those dark times in the 90s. Even with your dwindling market share, people would still seriously consider the possibility of building a business next to you guys, because they believed in Apple.

But you guys are killing your ecosystem, pushing away people like my cousin's company who wanted to work with you. I guess it was just business after all.

You'll probably say, "Well, that's just the way it is. We're a company and we have the right to do what we want. They should have known better." To which I say this: I am a consumer and I am not passive. I also have a right -- the right to spend my dollars where I choose. After seeing what you did to my cousin's company, I'm thinking that I will never purchase another Apple product again. And I will advise my friends, acquaintances, and any one else who will listen to do the same.

Apple, it's really sad what you have become, especially given where you started.

I hope you learn from this. I hope that someday Apple will again make cool, hackable products and let businesses grow up around you. You might be able to woo me back. I'll be watching for signs of the old Apple. But somehow I think it's probably too late. The mantle of hacking has passed to Linux, the open hardware movement, and the Makers.

--geoff

 

2010 dec 16 (thu)  :: 

I bought a Western Digital external laptop hard drive the other day. I chose it because I was returning something else and had to use store credit and the other options were worse. The case has that ultra-glossy finish that the iPhone and lots of laptops screens have these days, and which I am not fond of. A day of careful usage later and it's already permanently smudged and scratched. I don't know anyone who prefers these glossy screens and finishes, so why do manufacturers use them?

They look great on the showroom is the obvious reason, but I think the real reason is that it makes it nigh impossible to return once you've used it even minimally.

 

2009 apr 16 (thu)  :: 

I work for a non-profit, so I've always thought of my work as being apart from and unlike the business world. But lately I've been spending free time on Hacker News, a sort of moderated Reddit social bookmarking/news site sponsored by a venture capitalist firm. There are a lot of technical links, but also a bunch of links relating to tech startups.

A non-profit is actually just like a startup, but with a lot of the details changed. Pull back and look at the big picture. Non-profits start with somebody's great idea for changing the world, just like startups. You work within severe budget constraints so you have to be scrappy. My organization is pretty small so there's room to change and switch gears and shake things up. Non-profits aren't chasing VC money, but in a way they do the same thing when they court donors to fund the next year or the next project. And finally, they never have an IPO but with the right mega-donor or enough saving they can sometimes develop an endowment.