And of course, you have ZERO bias and are perfectly neutral in this matter?
I am sure we all suffer from bias in such a discussion lest you tell me that no one is defending Apple because they like them and their products
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If you are referring to my prior employment by Microsoft, I left the company at the end of 2007. What would motivate me to defend them this way? I am typing this on Google Chrome, and own the Android phone. As an ex-Microsoft employee, I could have gotten my last phone for free if I bought a Windows phone. Instead, I spent $200 more and got the Android HTC. To the extent I pay to buy a competing product to my ex-employer, should tell you that I am judging this field by what I think of technology and not where I worked five years ago.
Am I without bias? No. I have the bias we are talking about. If Apple and Android products were identical in every respect, I would opt for Android because I don't want to reward Apple to have a stronger hold on us. For years, I wanted to use an iPod but because Apple would refuse to let it work with anything other than itunes, I could not. I would have had to change my media player, which didn't support my massive library of compressed format. Apple insisted on recompressing them or me re-ripping them. This, despite the fact that the format my music was in, was free to use on Windows. Indeed, Apple used that very library and capability to convert my music to another compressed format! But would refuse to play it as is. What about that stance was pro-consumer I ask? Sure, if your experience with digital media started with Apple, iTunes, etc. none of this matters. But since you went after my history and relationship with Apple, then you drag such arguments in
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If I put my business hat on, I get to admire all that Apple has done to keep competition away. So none of this is about why they are doing this. It is about why we don't seem to accept the cost of admiring them as consumers. I get that we didn't or couldn't do this when competing devices were so bad. My first Android phone was unusable. It could not even run email for a day or two without crashing. Bugs were everywhere. An update came and fixed that but broke others. If Verizon had the iPhone I would have gone with it then and I would not be here talking about Android
. But another one of those anti-consumer things, one carrier only exclusively, forced me to wait. Then the next Android release came, the bugs went away and I became an adopter of Android. The phone ran a bit slow but I had so many choices for upgrade. And I upgraded to a larger screen phone and for those of you who wonder why, it is the same as you wondering why we don't love Apple!
It is like having a DVR. Unless you have one, you have no first hand experience of why it is good. 1080p image of this browser is legible without zooming! Go and play with these larger Android phone and then do the same with your iPhone. You will see why Apple will copy the Android lead in every way as they have already. It is goodness and no amount of religion about it will do anything.
So biased? Yes, biased I am. I have been in technology filed for 40 years. I have worked for a company that was named to be a monopolist and anti-competitive. I have heard the government's arguments on that front, and that of ours. All of this gives me a perspective on the matter that hopefully is useful to hear
. Nothing I say is offered with zero bias, much less in capital letters.