1. Apple was not a monopoly at that time. 2. How do you rigorously tell, which company is big and which is small? 3. This is a competitive market and ethics is not something that should be regulated. If people have a problem with a company's ethics, they should just stop using their products.
Was Apple ever a monopoly? And just being a monopoly is not illegal.
No, I don't think they ever were. I just wanted to be precise in my previous comment and reference the time the article is set in.
Yes, there are legal monopolies, of course. But not if it's a retail product.
This is why large companies should be more regulated. They should not be able to put pressure on labels or producers and get all the benefits. What Apple did by killing this startup is not ethical. Plus, by killing it, they tried to get a monopole. Microsoft got so many fines at the time because they had the monopole on PCs. If a large company tries to destroy startups just because they feel threatened, they should b…
Did Apple 'make' Warner sue anyone? Remember, the labels held most of the cards.. They controlled the content. If Apple had all of this great power over the labels, why did it take so long to get the Beatles? As far as 'more regulation' -- I don't like the idea of the government picking winners and losers. The government uses regulation as a hammer with which to crush companies that don't tie a certain line. Excessive regulation also adds tremendous costs to a company and therefore the consumers. Do you know how big of a legal department is needed just to comply with government regulations? It's a non-trivial cost. I am not saying regulation is bad; I am saying that beyond Sherman, the government ought not be too heavily involved in regulating competition because then only the politically connected or heavy contributors get permission to thrive. Carlos Slim, for example didn't get rich because of a lack of regulation in Mexican telecoms, he became a billionaire because of regulation: Mexico gave him essentially a multi-year head start over potential competitors using regulatory power. The result, Mexican telecom service is highly expensive and of marginal quality. With less regulation other companies could have started offering services sooner and competition would have driven market innovation.
This is why large companies should be more regulated. They should not be able to put pressure on labels or producers and get all the benefits. What Apple did by killing this startup is not ethical. Plus, by killing it, they tried to get a monopole. Microsoft got so many fines at the time because they had the monopole on PCs. If a large company tries to destroy startups just because they feel threatened, they should b…
Did Apple 'make' Warner sue anyone? Remember, the labels held most of the cards.. They controlled the content. If Apple had all of this great power over the labels, why did it take so long to get the Beatles? As far as 'more regulation' -- I don't like the idea of the government picking winners and losers. The government uses regulation as a hammer with which to crush companies that don't tie a certain line. Excessiv…
> If Apple had all of this great power over the labels, why did it take so long to get the Beatles?
That was a trademark dispute, see Apple vs. Apple.
1. Apple was not a monopoly at that time. 2. How do you rigorously tell, which company is big and which is small? 3. This is a competitive market and ethics is not something that should be regulated. If people have a problem with a company's ethics, they should just stop using their products.
Ethics and moral is regulated in some countries, because it's part of the law. USA are so retarded on that point, that's all. And people who buys Apple products doesn't care what could do that company just because they are inspired by all the ads and hype around their products.
You mean like, who is allowed to marry, who has the right to vote, and so on? Yeah, those countries are the pinnacle of human progress.
1. Apple was not a monopoly at that time. 2. How do you rigorously tell, which company is big and which is small? 3. This is a competitive market and ethics is not something that should be regulated. If people have a problem with a company's ethics, they should just stop using their products.
Ethics and moral is regulated in some countries, because it's part of the law. USA are so retarded on that point, that's all. And people who buys Apple products doesn't care what could do that company just because they are inspired by all the ads and hype around their products.
And furthermore, how people who are too retarded to see through the ads and hype are competent enough to enact moral-based laws?
Did Apple 'make' Warner sue anyone? Remember, the labels held most of the cards.. They controlled the content. If Apple had all of this great power over the labels, why did it take so long to get the Beatles? As far as 'more regulation' -- I don't like the idea of the government picking winners and losers. The government uses regulation as a hammer with which to crush companies that don't tie a certain line. Excessiv…
> If Apple had all of this great power over the labels, why did it take so long to get the Beatles? That was a trademark dispute, see Apple vs. Apple.
Actually it was a dispute between EMI and Apple Corps (not invoking Apple Computer Inc) over royalties that held up the Beatles music licensing.
I read this half asleep and a little inebriated but it seemed to evolve into some kind of bizarre self-aggrandizing pitch on how this Kasian Franks is a super-human with deep hard-to-duplicate knowledge and insights spanning multiple important and lucrative industries. Almost some kind of cred piece bolstered by his proxy encounter with Steve Jobs. Weird.
I agree, although I think he sort of predisposed me to this attitude right off the bat with the desperate-seeming link to google results that are supposed to prove people called them an "itunes killer" (note: I could not find a single instance of anyone referring to them as an "itunes killer" in any of those results).
Being called "{Apple product there} killer" never turned out to be good for the "killer" involved.
I read this half asleep and a little inebriated but it seemed to evolve into some kind of bizarre self-aggrandizing pitch on how this Kasian Franks is a super-human with deep hard-to-duplicate knowledge and insights spanning multiple important and lucrative industries. Almost some kind of cred piece bolstered by his proxy encounter with Steve Jobs. Weird.
So much this!
Haven't read self glorification like this in a long time.
Hint: when you start a service solving a very generic problem, you have a big chance of being outmaneuvered by a competitor.
He touches on that when he goes into his background. He worked on a project in the mid 90s that was duplicated by a competitor and sold to Yahoo.
"I then moved to Sun Micro-Electronics (SME) and that’s where I learned one of my most valuable lessons. I began to build and ship the first HTTP-based (yes, this was a thing back then) stock ticker and called it DigitalTrader in 1996 (http://goo.gl/dQzPTC) It was built in Tcl/Tk and Java/Tk. It auto-updated itself and crawled Quote.com and Yahoo for data. Six months later a competitor duplicated it and Yahoo bought them and put us out of business overnight. Lesson learned: realize when you are doing something that is easily duplicated. "
Was Apple ever a monopoly? And just being a monopoly is not illegal.
No, I don't think they ever were. I just wanted to be precise in my previous comment and reference the time the article is set in. Yes, there are legal monopolies, of course. But not if it's a retail product.
Of course you can have a monopoly on a retail product, how else could anyone ever introduce a new type of product to the market?