[MacDV] Re: iDVD 4 is sloooow

[Steven Rogers]

On Jan 24, 2004, at 9:16 AM, Video International wrote:

>> Absolutely! When the same company makes the hardware, the operating 
>> system, AND the applications, it's very easy to control the upgrade 
>> cycle. It puts Apple in a unique situation.
>
> yes, kinda like a monopoly. At least to those who choose Apple.

This is wrong from multiple angles. Practically speaking, people buy 
new computers when they can afford it, and when it offers something 
they want, not when the computer *makes* them by another one by not 
working well.  Both Windows and Mac worlds show that in the large 
number of people out there using old operating systems on old 
computers. When people don't want to spend money, they don't upgrade 
and the computer continues to do the same thing it always did.

Even more importantly, Apple's releases over the last couple of years 
have actually made things faster, not slower. When you upgrade through 
Jaguar and Panther, your computer gets faster - including iDVD. I'm 
using a G4 867 just upgraded to iLive 04 and Panther, and its 
definitely better with every upgrade.

>> It's a win-win situation for Apple.
>
> But maybe not for the consumer.

This is really the deeper point - does the consumer really have a basis 
for demanding that every aspect of the transaction should serve 
consumer interest at the expense of all other parties involved?  Just 
say, hypothetically speaking, that OS X releases were getting bigger 
and slower like PC releases. Does the consumer have a basis for saying 
that this is wrong (morally wrong, and properly illegal) because it 
doesn't serve *my* interest?  What about the interest of the employees? 
  What about the stockholders?  What about the creative people who want 
to spend a big part of their lives making something that they 
personally believe in?

The basis for business/consumer interaction *should* be voluntary 
association, not the throttling of one party for the benefit of the 
other. The whole point of Apple (and the point of many kinds of 
businesses) is to execute the founder's vision of something different. 
Clearly, 93% or so of the market thinks a Mac is not in their best 
interest, so they don't buy one. But the whole essence of freedom is 
the ability to live by one's own judgment - for Apple to make the 
computer it believes in, regardless of whether anyone agrees - and for 
the 7% of us who agree, to buy them.

If the anti-trust laws were uniformly enforced, Apple would be 
destroyed. It is a vertical monopoly (the company controls everything 
from manufacture to store) as well as a horizontal monopoly (since the 
demise of Power Computing. That ought to be an object lesson in how 
destructive those laws are, and how wrong the ideas are behind them. 
Microsoft's "freedom to innovate" slogan is dead-on; unfortunately, 
they don't have the conviction to stand behind it.

Why aren't there more companies that "Think Different" in other 
industries? Because anti-trust laws won't allow it. It is particularly 
ironic that Apple users would complain about Apple being allowed to 
engage in "monopolistic" practices when its only that because of that 
indulgence that Apple or the Mac is even allowed to exist. If 
anti-trust were enforced uniformly, the girl in the red shorts would 
never have had the opportunity to throw that hammer.

SR