[Droid Incredible General] loonatik78:
I'm glad you posted that. It's great material to make an example of.

First off, let me explain about Apple. Apple made a name for itself selling machines for cut-throat prices and developing a library of simplistic, yet useful software, either directly or indirectly. Apple was able to make those machines for the cut-throat cost they did due to the genius of Steve Wazniak who's talent for multiplexing digital circuitry is to still be lusted after today. That was Apple hay-day. But it didn't last.

Through the 80's, Jobs embarked on more ambitious projects. This led to the unveiling of the Mac. Then Jobs began to acquire the he needed to begin to go right off the rails. I'd like to remind the audience of a little project known as Lisa. This was Jobs going off the rails. This eventually led to the board kicking his ass out of his own company. In short, they felt that his totalitarian, adversarial, and often destructive management of Apple needed to be stopped.

But Jobs wasn't done. Lisa led to NeXT. NeXT was a company that developed uberMacs. Ridiculously expensive, lavishly equipped machines that Jobs seemed to feel the market would lap up like free government cheese. They didn't. Instead, government and educational institutions, as well as paltry number production companies, bought them. NeXT was not regarded as a great success.

Apple ended up buying NeXT. Jobs returns to the Fatherland. And then we get a great selection of obscenely priced and equipped machines. In short order, Apple is going bust. Let's examine exactly why these machines drove Apple into the ground.

First, they were proprietary at every turn. Though the standard disk controller was SCSI, Apple insisted on using obscure connection interfaces. An in a world that was clearly going towards USB, Apple undertook adapting SCSI as a serial interface known as Firewire. In fact, most of their interconnects were proprietary.

As IBM learned, as taught by Compaq Corporation, attempting to maintain a sealed, proprietary system is a good recipe for failure. Firewire didn't take off like Apple hoped it would and became an obscure interconnect relegated to media devices largely because Apple wanted a royalty for licensing the interconnect name. Today, many devices carry it, such as Sony camcorder, but now they call it i400 or i800, depending on speed. There's no such thing as a cheap SCSI implementation. But because SCSI was present, so it was the connection for printers, plotters, scanners, and any other parallel device you'd connect to it. These are NOT cheap products, and those are NOT cheap cables. Not to mention that SCSI requires technical considerations that most users know nothing about. Like active and passive bus termination.

The culmination of Apple failure was the G4; a marvelously impressive machine so obscure in it's nature, applications and price that nobody bought them. Apple didn't go Intel x86 for it's raw beauty. They did it fall into a realm of computing normality. They ditched SCSI and adopted USB for similar reasons. They hardly had any choice about PCI, thanks to Compaq.

And Steve Jobs fought that the whole way....

His solution, since Apple COMPUTERS were clearly a market failure, was to venture into other waters... Enter the iPod.

Again, another device with proprietary connectors and software. It did what the Apple I and Apple II did; create a market. Now they have a phone and a tablet. Same situation. They're currently trying to merge that antiquated OSX with iOS to better pave the path of their walled garden. They are attempting to isolate themselves even more, and their computers are a part of that plan.

There are certain merits to the walled garden approach, but the market has repeatedly shown that is a model doomed to fail. Apple computers led, then competed, then followed, then failed. I believe people are mistaken to believe that innovation in Android is driven by a market leader known as Apple. You MUST be mistaken because they aren't the market leader! Android is. Just like the PC/Apple debate, PC's and Microsoft didn't win the day chasing Apple. They innovated Apple nearly out of business. I see no reason to believe Google with Android, HTC, Samsung, and others can't just as easily innovate Apple out of business again. I think anyone that discounts the merits of the open platform is a fool. People survived, and thrived, outside Apple's walled computing garden. I see every indication that they will do just as well with portable devices as well.

As far as socialism goes, name for me one socialist country where your definition of socialism fits. Germany most definitely was socialist in WWII, a brand called fascism. That's just another word for socialism-by-proxy.