One of the big stories this weekend, other than the usual political shenanigans and lurid celebrity gossip, was the claim that some iPhones were turned into bricks by the latest firmware update from Apple. Of course, Apple warned iPhone users about the potential consequences of unlocking their phones, which is intended to allow them to work on other phone systems.

In the wake of that update, some of those unlocked iPhones were predictably rendered all or mostly inoperable. Yet, it also appears a few phones that were never hacked also suffered in a similar fashion from the firmware revision. Without knowing what may have happened, on rare occasions, firmware updates do fail, but one would hope Apple will remedy such matters forthwith.

The core question, however, is whether Apple has the right to treat folks who choose to make unsanctioned upgrades to their iPhones in this fashion. Are they playing dirty tricks, or simply acting appropriately?

Consider another example in a different industry.

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

• Newsletter #500 Preview: Is AT&T the Enemy to Continued iPhone Success?
• Newsletter #499 Preview: The Latest iPhone Rollout Shows Apple Hasn’t Lost its Mojo
• Newsletter #454 Preview: Here We Go Again: Revisiting Mac Versus PC Prices
• iPhone 2.0: Direct From New Zealand!
• Newsletter #431 Preview: So Apple is Succeeding or Failing or Something

In the business world, there are many factors that can cause a company to suffer big time and ultimately fail. One is, of course, poor sales, which usually combine with poor profits to destroy the bottom line. Certainly competitors can cause a business lots and lots of grief. But sometimes a company does things that do not work in its own best interests.

Now before I get the typical “Apple fanboy” insult from a few of our readers again, let me tell you that Apple has also done things that, in the long run, seriously damaged their potential to own a much greater portion of the PC market. A lot of that happened years ago, but the impact is still felt. Many of the myths about Macs, that they are too expensive, not serious business machines and that there is very little software available, descended from early missteps made by Apple.

Up till now, Microsoft has been regarded as the 800-thousand-pound gorilla that can do no wrong, and besides it treats its customers well enough that they keep coming back. Or they perceive there are no better alternatives.

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

• So What About a Cheap Mac?
• The Apple Beating the Odds Column
• The iMac Report: Apple Left the Proprietary World a Decade Ago
• Forget the Recession: Mac Sales Soar!
• Newsletter #432 Preview: So Apple Is After the Enterprise After All

As Apple continues to grow a lot faster than most people ever expected, it’s inevitable that there are going to be comparisons with Microsoft. This is particularly true when it comes to the iPod and iTunes, both of which hold serious majorities in market share.

So if you complain that Microsoft is a monopoly, shouldn’t you also make the same complaint about Apple and its standing in the digital music market?

Unfortunately, many of the people who make this claim have failed to learn from the lessons of history, particularly how Microsoft came to occupy a dominant position in PC operating systems and office suites. And, no, it wasn’t because they built the best product and beat their competitors fair and square.

From the very beginning, when Bill Gates played a shell game with IBM to sell them the original MS-DOS operating system before he acquired it from another company, it is clear that Microsoft knew how to play the game of business hardball, ethical or otherwise.

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

• Is Microsoft Afraid of the Turf Wars?
• How Long Does Microsoft Get Away with Almost Good Enough?
• Apple and Six Years to Operating System Parity
• Newsletter #479 Preview: Microsoft Has More to Fear Than Apple These Days
• Of Microsoft and the European Union

Over the years, tech columnists and “industry analysts” have been clamoring for Apple to open up Mac OS X. By in the 1990s, when it seemed the company could do nothing right, they actually complied, with a Mac OS compatibility program that included licensing basic hardware reference designs.

The hope and dream was to expand the Mac marketplace into areas where the company had not succeeded before, including the entry-level arena. Now I don’t know all the specifics of the contracts, but what happened was precisely the reverse. Aggressive startups such as Power Computing actually went after Apple’s core market of content creators with a vengeance that was, in retrospect, incredibly wrong-headed.

True, Power Computing simply wanted to sell boxes, and what they built were essentially Macs packaged in cheap PC form. Because their production quotas were far lower than Apple’s, they were able to install faster chips first, long before production quotas were adequate for the mother ship.

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

• Apple and the Cloners: Round Two
• The Mac Clone Controversy Rears Its Ugly Head
• The End of the Bunker Mentality
• Does the World Really Need Mac Clones?
• Memo to Apple: Ignore the Analysts