Why I don’t like Apple…

…or Google – or Facebook – or…

I have been meaning to post on this subject for quite some time – and since this is clearly the ‘ranting‘ season (don’t worry – it is a short season!) – and as Apple are once again in the news, making their iApologies to the Chinese – as are Google and Facebook with their frankly scary moves into political lobbying… now seems like as good a time as any!

Here is an interesting statistic. A Google search for the exact string “Why I don’t like Apple” returns in excess of a million references. A similar search for the string “Why I love Apple” returns only 146,000. What should we read into this? Well – almost certainly nothing – other than that these corporations might be best advised not to completely ignore their customers.

Now – I really don’t want to upset all the Apple-istas and Googlephiles out there. Apple does make some beautiful products – the iPad is a deeply impressive piece of work and I say that from the IT perspective and not just from the ‘cool design’ angle. Google has created some seriously useful tools – Google Maps and Streetview being a particular godsend when one is trying to purchase a property on a different continent. As for Facebook…? Well…!

These corporations do – however – have at least one thing in common. They all think that they know better than we do how we should use our technology.  Indeed they all seem to be of the opinion that their way is the best – nay, the only way…

There are legion examples for each of them of a high-handed approach to their customers’ desires, wishes and even rights. Apple’s refusal to countenance Flash, Google’s apparent disdain for the individual’s privacy and Facebook’s cavalier attitude to the sanctity of personal data are just a very few examples from the many that spring to mind. The corporations – naturally – make ‘good’ technical and philosophical cases as to why such policies should be enforced or allowed but the question must always be asked – and answered – “Is this really in the best interests of the customer, or is it simply to the advantage of the supplier?“.

What the customer actually wants is to be able to pick and choose from an extensive and varied technological palette. He – or she – expects that the solutions thus chosen will be safe – that they will cause no unimagined personal harm – and that whatever toys are selected they will play nicely together. Now – I am old enough and long enough in the tooth (read – cynical!) to know that – as a totality – this simply ain’t gonna happen. Business is business and none of these enterprises has achieved their current substance by making it easy for the customer to go elsewhere. Their modus operandi is to get us impaled on a sufficiently big hook that there can be no escape however hard we wriggle – and then to extract as much coinage over as long a period as is possible.

The adolescent multinationals also seek similar political and economic advantages to those hard won by the more seasoned representatives of their ilk. They see themselves as being a part of the new supranational elite, bearing allegiance to no nation – indeed to no-one but themselves and their shareholders. Google and Facebook are both spending heavily – for example – on lobbying for changes to US immigration policy to suit their own global ends – regardless of the desirability of such a course of action to the US itself.

Still – none of these are the real reasons that I don’t like Apple – or Google – or Facebook…

The real reason is that in each case these companies have pretended to be something that they are not. To distinguish themselves from old-fashioned, conventional, even staid corporates (‘straights’ as the parlance would once have had it) these eager, dynamic young ‘tech’ firms have all at one time or another painted themselves as being different – as being alternative, being edgy, unconventional.

“Hey!” – they murmured enticingly – “We are not part of ‘The System’ – we are part of the counter-culture. We are not ‘Them’! We are like you. We’re cool!“.

Well – don’t let the chic products and slick marketing fool you. In their own way these guys are as corporate and global as the rest of them – with all that that entails. As Pete Townsend astutely puts it:

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss