The only difference between the two is that Microsoft was far more successful. Apple would have done everything people complain about Microsoft doing and more. They basically have in the couple product areas where they've had similar success.
I think you may be too young to remember what Microsoft was like in the 1980s, but this isn't true. The companies had very different personalities. Apple was always about making great things, whereas Microsoft's path was to ruthlessly exploit the monopoly that IBM dropped in their lap.
That path made Microsoft more successful in the short term (particularly after Jobs was exiled) but in the long term making good things seems to be the winning strategy.
Do you really think that Apple wouldn't have ruthlessly exploited the monopoly if they had come about it? Their actions with iPod/iPhone make me think they would have. Jobs is just as much the ruthless dictator as Gates. In fact from what I've read/heard from people that know them, they seem to share a lot of the same personality traits.
Not as ruthlessly, I don't think. Not because Jobs is a nicer guy than Gates, but because he has taste. He could not bring himself to ship a crappy product. And so wherever shipping something great didn't coincide with exploiting the monopoly, he would not have been able to go so far down the latter vector.
Also, shipping great stuff requires you to have great hackers to build it, and great hackers have principles. They limit how evil a company can be. You can see this most clearly at Google. If they tried to do anything too evil, they'd face an internal rebellion. Apple employees seem a bit more intimidated by Jobs, but they are pretty idealistic too. A lot would quit if Apple went too far, and Jobs is smart enough about people to know that.
"He could not bring himself to ship a crappy product."
Interesting to see this quote from Jobs during today's Apple earnings call:
"We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve. And there's a lot of them."
Almost like he knew we were having this conversation. :)
I'm not particularly convinced of Apple's good will.
Speaking of the 80ies, Apple is the one that wanted to control both the OS and the hardware (still true today, from phones to computers), and Apple is the one that sued MS over 'look & feel' issues.
Back in the 80s it would have seemed bizarre to do otherwise. You used whatever OS the manufacturer supplied. It was part of the computer. That was as true with Microsoft OSes.
Apple choosing to make their own OSes instead of buy them from an outsider supplier was in those days no different from e.g. building displays or keyboards rather than buying them from suppliers.
You mean "great" from a design/usability perspective. Gates shipped products that were great in terms of fitting market need and expanding the utility of Windows. IE may have sucked to use, but it sure beat the hell out of paying for Netscape.
I actually made this point once while working for Apple, saying it was like thinking about whether the other side had won World War II.
But I think the point still stands that Microsoft has managed to cause far more harm during their reign than Apple, precisely because they have been more successful. I also think that Apple is somewhat constrained in the damage they can do, because Steve Jobs wants to be a Tyrant of Taste, more so than Ruler of All He Surveys. He has little interest, for example, in the mass business market or the clunky boxes at the bottom of the market. To have Apple branded boxes at that price range, with all the compromises that entails, seems to horrify Jobs.
As for other product areas, probably the most tyrannical is iTunes. But even there, the damage is constrained by the fact that the majority of people still just pirate their music, anyway.
iTunes/iPod are the most tyrannical because they're the only place Apple is in charge. It's not right to excuse their DRM practices just because most music isn't purchased from it. It's still the number 1 music retailer. They've sold over 5 billion songs, most with DRM. They use a proprietary system to create vendor lock in.
Their NDA for the iPhone, and the tyranny over the application store, are worse than anything Microsoft has done to the consumer. They're just limited in scope by the fact that they own such a small % of the overall phone market, but if they ever get the kind of market share there that Windows has, everyone will hate them far more.
But with iTunes, Jobs moved quickly to make iTunes Plus a possibility. And it's got more DRM-free music than its next-largest competitor, Amazon, does.
The record companies are ceding ground very slowly. But Apple's been pushing for a long time. I mean, honestly, what do they have to GAIN from DRM? It's all a matter of the people they deal with.
They gain vendor lock-in. Everyone who buys songs from iTunes with DRM is forced to either buy iPods forever, or lose the ability to play them on their player of choice.
Without the DRM, we'd see a much more fragmented player market. iPods might still be the leaders, but they'd almost certainly have a lower market share.
I agree that that would have lost Apple some ground, but I think they'd still be vastly ahead of other people. The DRM doesn't stick people. The incredible branding does.
People think iPod sounds reliable, and MP3 player sounds unstable. They go for the iPod because they think it's the only one there is.
Just to reiterate, what you say is true, and I pointed out I conceded pretty much your major points to coworkers at Apple when I worked there (it was just a couple coworkers, and just a one time comment, but it did get a laugh of agreement).
My only argument is that Apple has caused much less damage than Microsoft because they have been less successful, and in that sense Microsoft maintains the greater negative karma balance. Difference between attempted murder and committed murder, I suppose.
To be honest, I have no negative feelings about either. They're both just doing what they feel is in their own best interests. That's the responsibility of a corporation.
I find the grudge most people in the community have against MS a little juvenile and not very well-reasoned.
Since Netscape was taken down, we've seen a world where hackers can execute an idea and become successful based on their execution, sometimes abundantly so. I do not think it's accidental that this period largely coincides with Microsoft losing their anti-trust case.
Before then, Microsoft would just wait until a market formed, then take it over or destroy it by bundling something with one of their monopoly products. People who had a dream of creating a successful software business knew Microsoft's business practices made that extremely unlikely.
So, yes, many developers who were around during Microsoft's heyday likely are carrying a grudge that must seem juvenile to anyone familiar with the much less threatening Microsoft of today. Whether it's juvenile to have bad feelings towards an organization that snuffed out a lot of optimism and ambition, I'll leave to you to decide.
