Decaflon

Only time will tell.

yes they are!

;o)

If by "evil" you mean "successfull" then yes.

I don't see what's so "evil" about wanting to keep third party apps off your devices. Products perform the best with the right software, it's that simple.

I don't see how you guys see this as NEW for Apple.

They've killed the clone market so only Apple products run Apple applications... and now they do it with their peripherals and it's shocking?

Old news to me.

Is this "evilness" related with the possible iPhone "brickage" announcement that they recently made?

Every company runs in cycles, it's part of the rules of life. Same with empires and everything else. I have no doubt that one day Apple won't be as popular/trendy/hip/cool/awesome/evil/whatever as they are now.

I mean evil as in seeming to shaft their customers. I've been seeing a lot of press asking this question and answering the question yes they are. I wanted to get the 9rules communities take on it.

Well, Apple's dropping the price of the iPhone by $200 is a shaft to those who paid $600. Yes, they received a certificate to buy other products, but not the cold hard $200 in cash as a rebate.

No. not yet. They have brought out some amazing technology to the market. :) Go apple. I agree that some of their products may be overpriced.

Products are only overpriced when people stop buying them because of it.

Well, Apple's dropping the price of the iPhone by $200 is a shaft to those who paid $600. Yes, they received a certificate to buy other products, but not the cold hard $200 in cash as a rebate.

I'm sorry but that one gets a big fat one of these...

As Steve said himself... if you waited around for price drops or feature upgrades before buying a product, you'd do a hell of a lot of waiting and not a lot of buying.

Such is the life of technology. I bought my iPod 20GB literally a WEEK before they went color with the screens. Did I go back and demand that they refund my purchase so I could buy the next best thing? Nope.

Those of you who got the in store credit for your iPhones... at least you GOT something and can even get MORE Apple stuff. I was actually QUITE shocked to see them do the rebate deal at all.

How many of the people who went and got iPhones on the day they were released were total Apple fanboys anyway? A lot, I'm betting. A lot who will gladly take that $200 and more than likely use it to purchase Leopard, which they were going to do anyways.

Those of you who got the in store credit for your iPhones... at least you GOT something and can even get MORE Apple stuff. I was actually QUITE shocked to see them do the rebate deal at all.

Ditto, ditto, ditto. And ditto to the image, as well.

Please, technology prices always drop. The Dell computer you buy in June for $800 costs $650 in July, the non-iPod you buy now will cost half as much when the next version comes out, the webcam you paid $20 for last week is now -$0.01 after rebate on Amazon (they're paying you to buy it!)... that's just how it goes.

If you have $600 to slam down on a phone, you have $129 to slam down on an OS a few months later.

It certainly looks like they're cruising into similar waters as Microsoft... Probably deeper water with their latest spate of lock-in fever.

I bought my iPod 20GB literally a WEEK before they went color with the screens. Did I go back and demand that they refund my purchase so I could buy the next best thing? Nope.

I didn't get it from Apple directly... had I it would have been upgraded automatically.

Apple is VERY good about halting pending orders and upgrading them at no cost if they pull close to a release for a new product.

In the interest of full disclosure.
I did purchase a iPhone the first weekend they were out and I love it as much now as I did then. I was surprised by the 200.00 Price Drop. Not by the fact there was a price drop, but the fact it was cut by a third. Cell Phones are always subject to price reductions. I mean those free phones have to come from somewhere right? But I wasn't mad or calling it a early adopters tax. I was still happy with my purchase. I was glad to get the 100.00 credit. But if I had not that would not have kept me from suggesting the iPhone to friends.

To go with my previous comment: I don't find there being anything evil about the mammoth price cuts or the way they release their products...

Their evil lies in their lust to completely monopolise every part of your life if you own their products. For example the iPod has you using iTunes to update music and people have had to hack their own way in to provide third party apps. iTunes is bundled with QuickTime which rapes Windows computers. iPhones are locked down tight with threats to brick hacked ones... It's a total power trip.

I respect the integration thing they're going for but doing everything in their power to stop the user being able to chose is evil.

And yes, I'm aware that other companies do exactly the same sorts of things but that doesn't make Apple any less guilty or evil.

RightOn...such a cute face you have.

Apple is controlling, it's true.

It's easy to read that as evil. I still think it has more to do with the fact they can control, and address, issues when their software isn't working with their hardware. They can't do that with third parties. Of course, it's not their responsibility to do so with third parties--but it doesn't matter. The more they allow it, the more problems crop up, and the more it makes them look bad. It doesn't make sense, but it's true.

That's windows' chief weakness. There's so much third party shit--and yeah I mean that near-literally--that it's no wonder the average person's windows box is a slow crash-prone nightmare. Most aspects of the MS operating systems aren't inherently bad, but they get that way quickly with shoddy add ons, bad drivers, incompatible software and hardware, etc etc. There's plenty things I've never liked about the various windows, but at the core they can run a computer just fine.

I liken it to having a mechanic that's worked on fords all his life rebuild a bmw engine. Sure he knows how it works basically, but he could just as easily ruin it as make it work better.

Bah. You can't use the "too much choice is bad" argument. Linux thrives off choice.

There is crap software out there but it exists on all platforms. Open platforms allow you to replace it with better software. It's not the ideal's fault that MS hasn't killed the registry yet.

If Apple gave you the choice of one crappy browser, I'm sure you wouldn't be so forgiving.

I don't think that Apple's harming customers more than other companies. You have to realize that most Apple users are very sensitive regarding the price they pay for their hardware and it's reliability. If even a hint of those two aspects fail, all hell breaks lose.

Let's compare it to another big company: Acer. Out of the 10 friends I have with Acers (or around that number anyway) only one of them has never had any problems with the machine.

The worst case out of those is my neighbour who is on his third replaced Acer and spent most of the first year of warranty without even touching his laptop. But the point is, you won't see him arguing about there here on the internet because he already knows that the reaction would be under the lines of "Oh, you bought an Acer. What did you expect?"

But if it were an Apple computer, he could cry and whine as much as he wanted and people would give him all the attention in the world. Because any topic regarding an Apple product failure is bound to get more attention than a topic about one of their competitors. Even if that failure only affects a very small minority of the users.

If Apple sells 2 million Macbooks, and 5 bloggers report the same flaw on the internet, people start to assume that it affects almost all models.

iTunes is bundled with QuickTime which rapes Windows computers.

How so? I'm running XP with iTunes and Quicktime and I haven't noticed anything attacking my system.

To answer the original question, yes, by virtue of the fact that if Microsoft was doing the same thing everyone would be screaming that it be tried again for monopolistic practices. Only difference is that Apple is a smaller company than Microsoft. In other words, it's a cute monkey, not an 800lb gorilla. The principles are the same.

Apple has some great products, and I love their stuff, but frankly their disdain for cooperation is nothing short of sickening.