Week in review: the strong arm of Apple (cNet)

[jsw]

Here's a review of some of Apple's tactics over the past few months. I know we've seen them all, but somehow seeing them all in one place is a bit disconcerting.

I understand the need to preserve corporate identity, eliminate the leaks of trade secrets, etc. It just seems like Apple is being so blatantly "corporate" that their public image will soon begin to suffer. I think of them differently than I did six months ago. They might act exactly the same way as then, but they apparently aren't paying attention to/care about public perception.

 

[Bear]

The questions that come up are:

1. Is Apple (on average) the same as other corporations? Or are they not as bad, but since they started doing a lot all at once it looks worse?
2. In terms of going after the rumors sites, if Asteroid had not been leaked I wonder if Apple would be bothering with any of it right now? Especially that combined with a couple or near 100% hits that Think Secret had with some unexpected product announcements.
3. Small leaks are one thing, but Apple is apparently trying to repair a broken dam and I don't blame them for that. Remeber they are doing legal action to get names and not get money (afaik) out of the rumor sites.
4. I will agree that Apple seems to be muscling out some of their resellers.
5. There is no number 5.

Rememebr pretty much every [large] company seems to do bad things along the way. The real question is how much overall are they doing these things and how bad are they really, especially compared to their competitors?

 

[sigamy]

Well, it does suck that the small Apple resellers are being squeezed out due to the new retail stores. But, times change. The world changes. Our parents bought TVs from the local TV shop, not BB or CC. Apple Resellers had years and years to grow their (and Apple's) business and it just didn't happen--at least to the levels that Apple wanted. And Apple loves to control every aspect of design and manufacturing so why not also control the customer's experience at the point of sale? I've only been in a few small reseller shops and while not bad, they offered nothing close to the experience you get in an Apple store. And we all know how the CompUSA experience is...

As for the iPod logo campaign and tax...seems like a good business idea to me. They should have come out with this at the same time as the first Belkin accessories came out. Steve could have sold it then to the public and accessory makers. Coming out late like this makes it seem like they want to cash in. Nothing wrong with that either...Remember when he announced iPod Socks? He made a joke that some people make more on iPod cases than they do on the iPods. In every joke there is a bit of truth and I bet Steve has been pissed that they missed all this cash from the beginning. Microsoft has done this label thing for a while. "Designed for Windows 95", "Designed for Windows XP", "Plays for sure".

I really don't understand Apple suing the rumor sites. It has to be just so that they can find out the indenties of the insider(s). Just a few years ago Apple gave the rumor sites the biggest acknowledgment ever when getting ready to show the iMac G4. They had "beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond" right on the homepage at Apple.com. Now they hate the rumor sites? Can't be. They just want to find the source and kill the source, not the messenger.