Apple Corporation. If you're one of those people who has a blind loyalty toward Apple, I suggest you stop reading now.

Apple claims to be the antidote to big, evil Microsoft; they like people to think that they're small, like to foster artistry - in terms a few decades old, they're "sticking it to the man". But they are none of these things. Since the advent of the iPod, they have become as bloated a beauracracy as any other company. They clearly don't have much for integrity, and indeed have very little concern other than making money, because every couple of months they release a new iteration of said product. Now this wouldn't bother me, but they claim to be supporting creativity. In fact, what they're doing is destroying it.

The invention of iTunes has made both the concept of an album as a complete work of art - visual and audio- rather than a collection of songs with no cohesion and the concept of paying for music a thing of the past. If they really wanted to help out artists, they would do something about file sharing, but they seem to think that by letting everyone spread around music to people who didn't pay for it, that they're helping artists. I know this might sound hopelessly capitalist of me, but what good is making a name for yourself as a professional artist if you can't make any money? Also, in the soup of crap available on iTunes, it's even harder for a good musician to get recognized. They claim to be supporting artists, but instead they're creating a world where it's impossible to make a living through art (or music, at least), and where music isn't really valued anymore because you can carry around fifty gigabytes worth in your pocket. Maybe it's true that once they were the anti-Microsoft, but not anymore. In the words of Ben Folds:

"So you wanted revolution -
 but now you're the institution
 how's it feel to be the man?"

Not sure this is a good way to start off a blog, but I just had to get that off my chest.

To think of it actually, the way Apple goes about with their Macs - from their control over its hardware, software and bunch of applications, assuming they did have a strong market control they would actually be capable of having an even greater "vendor lock-in" phenomenon than Microsoft.

Kind of interesting to think that way, because most of the time for now we always considered Apple's monolithic design of the Mac - from the manufacturing to the distribution - to have been a positive point when it comes to compatibility and easily-accessible customer support.

. . .

If I'm not mistaken, really, Microsoft and Apple are pretty much similar threats, just that one has far less market dominance than the other. Their likeness being their proprietary software approach. The outlaws against this would be the Free Software Movement and the Open Source Initiative, which in all essence strive to break such restrictions and controls over users. =)

Nice point Jabbie.

Do you mean that you think file sharing in general is a threat to artists? I personally found a lot of my favorite music through Napster when it was around. (I mean the original Napster, not whatever company is using the name today.) My discoveries have led to many music sales that would not have been made otherwise as I've bought music and recommended it to others.

That said, I don't care one way or the other about Apple. I don't really like iTunes or iPods, but just because they aren't things that interest me and I find it irritating how much they are talked about.

My OS choice is largely determined by Game Maker. Whatever evil corporation Dr. Overmars favors is the one I favor.

Well, if everyone thought the way you do, then file sharing would not be a bad thing. The main problem comes in with the whole mindset that it seems to support, which goes something like, "it's okay to share this music with people because they'd never buy it anyway." Well, of course they won't if they can get it for free. See, the problem is, most people don't look at it as a way to find out about great new music that they'll later buy; they look at it as a way to get music without paying for it, which is bad for the artists. If the former were the case, file sharing wouldn't really be necessary because you've got stuff like internet radio that can introduce people to new music but doesn't give them the opportunity to steal it.

It also annoys me because it kind of supports that mentality that artists aren't doing real work and thus shouldn't make a living off their art. One day I plan to make a living as an artist of some sort, so this bothers me.

I think any company that flat out lies in ads on tv is a waste of time. "Apples cant get a virus". Okay, Jobs must be as ignorant as the people who actually believe this crap.

everyone knows that apples are more likely to get worms than viruses.

As a classical musician I'm used to music not being a audio-visual experience. Music is for listening to, and there's always going to be music since that's an inherent need for it in humans. If we don't pay our musicians, there'll be no new/live music. And I don't think our affluent society would stand for that. We can afford new/live music.

In any case, music is a shared experience. I'd be honoured if people torrented my music. If they really liked it they'd pay to go to my concert, and that's the point of music for a true musician- sharing and performing.

Well, I sort of agree, except that many artists (ones that I like) don't do very much performing at all (example: Sufjan Stevens), and if I were a professional musician, I probably would be mainly a studio artist as well.

That's true, and it worries me, because it seems to be starting to happen already.

it doesn't seem to stop at music - this dilemma applies to all media...

Yes it does. Music is definitely the worst, though.