That is the very reason I have refused to ever use Apple products.

I have been into microcomputers since the 80's and saw back then their business model was to hold customers hostage once you joined the Apple cult.

One of the creepiest part of Apple is how they donated so many free Apple II machines to high schools who gladly accepted them turning children into Apple users.

The more I have read about Steve Jobs, the less I liked about him personally in addition to his manipulative business model of shutting out clones and tight control over hardware.

I liked the Microsoft open model of allowing other hardware manufacturers to run their OS and build addon hardware components for Microsoft machines.

Microsoft wasn't all that great either.

Any purchased addon software enhancements for DOS were quickly imitated by MS and became "part of the OS" killing other software innovators left and right.

Back to Apple.

I dislike them more than I dislike Microsoft.

Gon,

I heard there are issues with Apple phones not working with Android phones or downgrading quality of multimedia transfers.

Ich,

"MS are the ones with all the office licenses"

A decent free alternative to Office is LibreOffice.

One,

Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple and Pixar at the same time.

For people into desktop publishing, the Macintosh was the machine of choice for advanced graphics.

IBMs and IBM clones running DOS were more popular for business applications.

Microsoft is far more developed in server OS products than Apple.

Personally, I've always seen Apple as having a cult following.

A little known fact is that a Radio Shack computer Model 4 running TRS-80 was a popular business computer at one time.

My first microcomputer was TI-99/4A on cassette. I spend hours on it writing database programs. Of course being on cassette there were major limitations but it's all relative. At the time it was awesome and I would work for hours on it.

My 2nd microcomputer was a Color Computer from Radio Shack with a one sided 5.25 inch floppy drive. That was a major step up for writing database programs having record random access instead of sequential.

When I got the Color Computer, I thought it would be running TRSDOS and was very disappointed when the built in BASIC ROM booted up to something I had never seen before...what is this "MICROSOFT"...what a dumb looking name...I wanted TRSDOS.

The Color Computer running a Microsoft BASIC interpreter predated IBM's PC release.

Turned out to be a major advantage because the Color Computer BASIC was very similar to BASIC A and GW-BASIC developed by Microsoft you would use on IBM DOS machines.

I got into PC repair and worked in shops along with getting an accounting degree. Eventually got my BS in accounting with a minor in Computer Science and later MCSE certification.

Got into installing integrated accounting systems.

Enough of that....

Left out a major player. The first servers I worked with were Novell.

It was a 2 day process setting up a Novell server if you followed the instructions. The hard drives were around 10 to 40 meg drives. Absurd by today's standards.

I have seen a LOT of changes along the way.

Donner,

"That was when the future was so bright we had to wear shades."

But wasn't it fun at the time!!

All the new technology. You were establishing the foundation of digital technology and communication.

Now 99% of what you learned is obsolete.

Right,

"I use several systems windoze, appoo, linux"

Why do you make fun of them?

All of it was great stuff at the time. Doesn't sound like you really enjoyed using computers like I did.

I loved it all.

My problem with Apple wasn't their computers. It was their marketing tragedy and how they manipulated people.

Like I said, I wasn't thrilled with how Microsoft operated either using their strength in the market place to muscle out other software companies but something about Apple really seemed creepy to me how they treated their own customers.

And apparently they've maintained the same strategy and something is blowing up in their face with how they haven't designed their phones to play well with others according to what I'm hearing.

Donner,

"So my shop was one of the first to switch to Microsoft."

NT?

Donner,

I worked with NT. I enjoyed using it and setup was easy.

I've always been amazed how something so complex as computers were made user friendly where anyone can use them.

Most people don't entirely appreciate how things evolved.

In the world of accounting where only large corporations could once afford automated accounting systems, Quickbooks was a major boon for small businesses along with relatively inexpensive microcomputers.

Donner,

"I doubt anyone even knows how to do Bolean logic anymore"

If you work with the network protocol TCP/IP, you still use it.

Donner,

"Wild West days was always finding drivers that were compatible with the hardware"

And you didn't have the internet to download them at one time.

Computers were a labor of love (or money...).

Yav,

If the whole issue is just being a monopoly, why isn't the DOJ going after Anazon.?

Galax,

It's the feds saying Apple is a monopoly.

I just think they're a cult.

I never hear anyone talk with such emotion over Windows.

Galax,

"Second, they were the ones that developed Windows, which was stolen by MS..."

At what point does Xerox developing the GUI come into your soliloquy.

I know Microsoft has ripped off other companies.

My whole issue with Apple has always been their proprietary product design, marketing and consumer manipulation.

Personally, I think it's a much greater achievement to design an OS with standards capable of communicating with a vast number of hardware manufacturers and software developers.

Galax,

You did hit on something in your last post.

Just imagine if Word Perfect and Lotus 123 had been marketed together in a suite.

Would Microsoft Office had been so readily adopted?

Galax,

Lotus did one particular thing different than Excel it took me awhile to get used to.

If you go into Excel Options/Advanced and scroll to the very bottom, you see Lotus compatibility.

Lotus gave me the option in formulas to put a value or a string into a cell and would treat a string as the value of zero but excel won't do math on a string. Lotus would and treat a string as zero.

The advanced options box you can tell Excel to evaluate formulas like Lotus.

I still use that feature from time to time.

I always wished you could buy Word Perfect bundled with Lotus.

I mean...Word has always been a pain for me to use and Word Perfect was so easy to make documents look like you wanted.

People will never know what they lost when WP died out.

Yav,

Your article is saying the Apple engineers, some of which came from PARC, brought the mouse GUI concept with them.

The engineers took Jobs to PARC on their second visit to show Jobs "the significance of the technologies it was incorporating".

Is that correct?

Sit,

Lotus didn't upgrade to windows very well either.

I know it was inevitable.

Once Microsoft got their teeth into it, you didn't stand a chance.

Dbase III+ was the bomb at one time.

You know the original name of DBase was Vulcan?