With growing regularity people are expressing their dislike of Apple’s implementation of equipment and policies. It’s the “Apple backlash” as noted in a recent story at TechCrunch.

I’m astonished that anyone thinks Apple has become more “open” and that their overbearing control tactics are new.

Then

Apple is not operating any differently today than decades ago. Price premiums are nothing new: the original Mac cost $2,495. Peripheral expansion used proprietary or specialty ports like ADB, AppleTalk, and the DB-15 video port (pic | more). Mac OS updates (say from 7 to 8.0) forced developers to upgrade their code – backward compatibility was never a concern of Apple’s.

Despite this, Macintosh owners endured the expense and inconvenience of a computer system that was vastly different than the IBM, Atari, Amiga, or Commodore of the day.

Now: Same Ol’ Apple

Fast forward to the 21st century. Disgruntled Windows users are moving to the Macintosh platform and as that demographic grows, so does Apple’s market share. Apple continues to innovate or redefine existing markets like the portable music player and the mobile phone. Although Microsoft and countless others were “in the game” long before, it took Apple’s vision to break out of the mediocrity.

These Switchers are unconsciously a victim to what has made the Macintosh platform successful: Apple’s tight control.

Also consider that Switchers have swallowed (for years) the “backward compatibility” and “have it your way” pill from Microsoft. Suddenly they discover it ain’t so on the Mac. They complain about being locked into hardware and software, almost demanding that Apple bend to their wishes or that Apple will somehow “pay the price.”

Apple didn’t care then and they don’t care now. I heard the same complaints in the 80s.

iPhone App Store Complaints

Apple’s subjective review process needs improvement but this is new territory for them – dare I say – the mobile market as a whole.

Let them work out the kinks and learn from their mistakes.

iTunes and iPhone

A new complaint is iTunes not allowing certain iPhone firmware downgrades. It’s probably a conspiracy to stop the jailbreaking but Apple is entitled to do so according to the iPhone license agreement. It’s also their way of ensuring (at least in theory) a consistent user experience. Nothing new here.

iTunes and AAC

Apple should have made MP3 the default ripping codec in iTunes but using AAC is no worse than Windows Media Player defaulting to WMA and turning on the copy-protection flag. You can imagine my surprise (years ago) when I ripped dozens of compact discs in Windows Media Player and couldn’t play the files when I reinstalled Windows.

iTunes Music Store

No one likes Digital Rights Management but after a few years Apple abandoned DRM completely. Previous DRM-enabled purchases still worked and could be upgraded to DRM-free for a reasonable fee.

In contrast, Microsoft and other companies have launched and closed online music stores: MSN Music. Yahoo Music, and Wal-Mart just to name a few. These closures left customers scrambling to burn CDs or lose their purchases entirely.

Closing Thoughts

The current “Apple backlash” demonstrates nothing more than a fundamental misunderstanding of Apple’s way of doing business. Possibly excusable for a consumer but not for the Internet media or a tech expert.

Everyone will smile and roll their eyes when Microsoft continues their history of blunders but Apple is being held to expectations that are based on hopeful fabrications instead of historical precedence.

The reality is a past where it was “Apple’s way or the highway” which continues today and will do so in the future.

Why? Because it worked.

I thought my world was going to fall apart without my MacBook Pro. Not quite. Maybe it was the rapid turn-around of Apple’s repair depot, my iPhone being well connected, or simply because computers and an Internet connection are never far away.

Staying in touch with Facebook, Twitter, and email was easy with the iPhone. I had no trouble accessing documents in the cloud via Google Apps. What, then, was inaccessible to me during my Mac’s repair? My most sensitive and critical documents which should not be in the cloud or simply too large for it: finance, photos, music, project files.

Another catch… These files need their parent applications to operate properly: Quicken, iTunes, DEVONthink. Am I really tethered to those apps?

Perhaps it’s time to look at migrating from Quicken to bank and investment web services or leverage DEVONthink’s off-line database archives. But what about the iTunes library? Like iTunes, there are many apps which do not have web-based or proxy replacements. How then to ensure everything is always available? That’s a future post.

What did I miss the most during the downtime? iPhoto and Final Cut Pro.

The motherboard in my MacBook Pro (two years old) ascended into bit heaven yesterday. It’s off for warranty repair but, unfortunately, with my current schedule I hadn’t kept current on my Time Machine backup – it’s about 14 days behind. For safety’s sake Apple is making a backup of my Users folder (for a fee) should the drive be wiped at the repair facility.

Meanwhile, I’m left to ponder a few things while I am sans computer.

• Stealing cycles on my wife’s MacBook.
• Pushing my iPhone as a primary, not secondary, platform.
• Leveraging data I have stored “in the cloud” such as Carbonite and Google Docs.
• Pulling data from older Time Machine backups and Carbon Copy Cloner clones.

I’m curious how the iPhone will work as a laptop replacement and if my clones would be useful running from a MacBook.

Even more curious is if the pile of papers on my desk will diminish in size or the stack of books on my nightstand will shrink during my MBP’s refurb.

It’s hard to believe Stan Winston has left us for the great VFX studio in the sky. What I always loved about his work was the practical element. He created models, masks, and animatronics you could touch, not merely pixels glowing brightly on an LCD display.

If you’ve seen Aliens you know what I mean about models creating the reality. Compare that with the final scene in Species when pure VFX doesn’t really work. ILM may have perfected the elimination of models in Pirates but for me foam latex will always trump the pixel.

Lala has done for CD swapping what NetFlix has done for DVD rentals. It’s a great service: post what you have, what you want, someone sends it to you using a pre-paid mailer, pay just $1.75 per CD.

The idea behind LaLa: get rid of your old music for something new. What exactly defines “old music?” It’s relative to your tastes. For me, old music is that which I regret ever having bought. It wasn’t hard parting with Joy Division’s “Still” which I bought and never listened to. I won’t be afraid to give up Nazareth’s Greatest Hits either.

There are feelings LaLa facilitates piracy. How? I can buy/sell/trade a second-hand CD on Amazon.com, eBay, or down the street. It’s a question of retaining MP3 rips or duplicate CDs.

I’ll never trade my favorite artists so it’s a non-issue. But the rest of my collection, probably 300 out of 400 discs, is crap. I own so many crappy discs because iTunes and CD singles didn’t exist at the time. Even worse is the “no return” policy for music. I can return almost anything if I don’t like it, but not so with Samantha Fox’s Greatest Hits.

I’ve probably overpaid the musc industry over the years and LaLa offers me the means to make it right: goodbye crappy discs but I’ll keep your MP3s around just in case I want to hear your hit single between now and eternity.

Alternatively, the recording industry can juice up my iTunes account as credit for the hundreds of craptastic discs in my CD collection. I’ll be happy to delete the MP3 rips if I can buy the hit singles instead.