30% Apple

[Matthew Gillen]

On 02/17/2011 10:13 AM, Dan O'Donovan wrote:
>  It's also worth noting that Apple seldom make choices that result in a loss of experience for ... their customers 

Really?  Does iTunes/iPod support open formats like Ogg or Flac?  No.
Sure, you can replace the firmware on your ipod with rockbox or the
like, but that's not exactly the Apple experience, is it?

I would argue that the very existence of projects like rockbox (at least
it's i-device ports) and the various IPhone jailbreaking efforts point
to the fact that Apple /does/ sacrifice user-experience for the sake of
their own business interests.  I'm not saying Apple is any worse than
any other company, I'm just saying they aren't really any different from
any other company.

> It's also nice to read that Apple are refusing to pass subscriber's personal info on to publishers - those are valuable freebees for the publisher that aren't often used to the advantage of the subscriber. 

Sorry to be cynical again, but Facebook and Google have similar policies
(facebook just sucks at actually enforcing the policy).  Why? Not
because they are being benevolent dictators.  It's because they are
realizing how valuable that information is; all of these companies are
getting into the content-delivery business, and they don't want to share
this valuable info with their competition (i.e. other content
providers).  They just word it in their press-releases as if they are
doing consumers a favor.

It has far more to do with maintaining their walled garden than it does
about consumer rights...

Matt