Apple Silences Hardware Partners

jobs-vader

The Verge sat down with chip manufacturer ARM at Mobile World Congress to discuss strategy. But when confronted with an Apple inquiry, they responded:

We don’t comment on Apple. Full stop.

Of course, these days, this sort of reaction isn’t so unusual. Apple clearly prefers to tell their own story and they’veĀ got the muscle to insist. But it seems a far cry from the era when Apple raged against the machine and encouraged us to think different. Now they make the rules as every one of us eagerly anticipatesĀ their iPad 3. Yet, really, the main purpose of this post was as an opportunity to brush up on my Photoshop skills. Leave your clever captions below.

12 thoughts on “Apple Silences Hardware Partners”

  1. Douche, I’m not at all questioning their business practices and have utmost respect for what Steve Jobs has accomplished. However, despite typing this on my iMac with an iPhone and iPad on the table, I’m not fanboy enough to pass up the amusing photo representation. Sorry I let you down?

    Adam, whatev! You can’t please all the people all the time and he clearly has no sense of humor (or history). But I will give him credit for accurately tagging me as a Photoshop amateur.

  2. 1) Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated. Replacing every single one of my internal organs with those of “voluntary” donors from Foxconn was an insanely great idea.

    2) Doesn’t our new circular HQ look great?

    3) If you just give me your credit card number, I’ll release the choke hold and let you breathe.

  3. “Iā€™m not at all questioning their business practices”

    On the merits of it all, keeping your hardware suppliers mum is fair play, and smart. It’s the stuff they’re doing with 3rd party software and content suppliers that isn’t fair play.

    “But it seems a far cry from the era when Apple raged against the machine and encouraged us to think different.”

    It’s really a pretty sad saga, in my book.

    For around 25 years, they were Luke Skywalker. And somewhere around 2006, they turned into Darth Vader.

    They’re using the tricks from the exact same playbook the evil Microsoft of the late ’90’s used. Try to find a way to extract a take of all 3rd party commerce done on the platform. Ruthlessly try to find a way to destroy any middleware from the platform.

    (I could live with this all if they were just building an iOS empire. But my bitterness at seeing my insanely great NeXT/OS X open, general-purpose computing platform slowly being destroyed in order to add an extra 2% to the company’s annual profits knows no bounds. They should have left that alone as a small charitable donation to humanity.)

  4. I just don’t see how Apple is Darth Vader. They took lessons from smart business people and created the most successful technology company of all time.

    Are you upset with the vertically integrated iPhone market place? Nintendo and Sony did that with their video game systems. Is Apple taking an unfair cut? Absolutely not! Look into any commercial software sales process and you will find that the developers traditionally got a lower cut then Apple is providing them.

    Are you upset by Apple controlling what apps get into the app store? Again, look at the video game console market, or the phone app stores before the iPhone. Apple wouldn’t even be talked about if they hadn’t built an ecosystem that was highly effective and lucrative for everyone involved (except the middlemen).

    And as for OS X becoming locked down – I don’t see that happening. While Apple is certainly trying to do something about the security of the OSX platform with the new Gatekeeper, they are also providing a mechanism for us to disable it, and a mechanism so if you want to distribute outside the Mac app store you can. I applauds their attempts to find novel ways to combat the constant and growing threat environment on the always connected computing devices. (Disclaimer: I work professionally in network security and have to deal with the constant threats and try to safegaurd critical systems every day.) I also applauds Microsofts attempts to increase security with Windows 7 and more with Windows 8.

    Now – I will agree that they have been a bit over zealous on some of the content distribution and licensing issues. Apple needs to lighten up about book distribution and linking to non-Apple sources to pay for subscriptions. I agree that they should only take a cut of the app sales.

    Okay, my caption: You have questioned my design decisions for the last time! If I say there should only be one button – there will only be ONE BUTTON!

  5. “We donā€™t comment on Apple. Full stop.”

    Well, it’s obviously a Star Trek reference.

    Interesting choice of a Star Wars still. It’s not Think Different. It’s Think Site Traffic!

    Use a shot of the Princess from the Return of the Jedi .

    hubba, hubba, hubba…..

  6. And why isn’t it Steve Ballmer choking?

    Or, Rob Enderle .

    One button to rule them all, one button to find them. One button to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

  7. Mark, To significantly boost site traffic I’d have to call Apple a prostitute and request video… er, wait, got my wires crossed there for a sec. ;) If I had posted a longer serious piece calling into question Apple’s business practices, I imagine it’d drive visits. Yet, it’d be pretty hard to build a case given their astronomical success. Not to mention a story like that would have me falling asleep at the keyboard.

    Having said that, Apple is a company not a religion or sports team, and aren’t all perfect all the time. I’m somewhat concerned with the continued the iOS-ification of OS X and they’re clamped down pretty tightly on third party developers. Then again, Apple’s rekindled the software industry and created a lot of opportunity in the mobile and now desktop space. But I do wish I could simply buy Kindle books from a Kindle app. On the hardware front, the iPhone and MacBook Air remain unmatched in my opinion. Although I pine for a larger iPhone screen and wonder if a glass back wasn’t asking for trouble.

    Dang, missed that Star Trek hook. Hm. And Jobs as Jaba with Slave Leia as ARM could work. Maybe we need an image gallery.

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