<story><title>Dirty Percent</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/dirty_percent</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lewisham</author><text>I used to be a big fan of Gruber, but I&apos;m getting increasingly tired of his &quot;defend Apple at all costs&quot; mentality.&lt;p&gt;When Apple was the underdog, it all seemed to be about not what was possible, but what was fair, and what was right. Now it&apos;s a &quot;Well, of course Apple would do that, wouldn&apos;t you?&quot;&lt;p&gt;And he then punts on the biggest question of all:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;What if Microsoft did this with Windows, and, say, tried to require Apple to pay them 30 percent for every purchase made through iTunes on Windows? To that, I say: good luck with that.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not &quot;well I&apos;d certainly write a slam piece about it&quot;, not &quot;well, that would definitely require competition regulators&quot;, not &quot;that would be a dick move.&quot; Just &quot;they couldn&apos;t do it anyway, so your hypotheticals mean nothing.&quot;&lt;p&gt;The way I put it (crassly) is &quot;When you&apos;re Top Dog, you don&apos;t need to play like a bitch.&quot; Which is what Apple is doing, and honestly, they&apos;re turning me off from their products. And that&apos;s not about &quot;Oh well, Apple likes to make money, and why shouldn&apos;t they be allowed to?&quot; It&apos;s about looking like you&apos;re above it. Brands like Costco and Amazon make a huge chunk of change, but you don&apos;t see them getting into petty stuff like this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mbrubeck</author><text>What I like about Gruber, even when I disagree with him, is that I think he &lt;i&gt;understands&lt;/i&gt;, better than any other outside commentator, how Apple&apos;s management team thinks and works.  He&apos;s not a leading expert on business, or on technology, but I&apos;d call him a leading expert on Steve Jobs&apos; mind.&lt;p&gt;This understanding is part of why Gruber often seems like an Apple apologist.  Even when &lt;i&gt;he&lt;/i&gt; disagrees with Apple&apos; decisions, he can generally give a good explanation of why the decision was made and why Steve and Tim and company probably think it is the right one.  And of course, when he is writing from the point of view of Apple Inc., the primary question is always &quot;What is best for Apple?&quot;&lt;p&gt;(This also explains why I hate Gruber&apos;s writing about competiting companies like Microsoft and Google.  I don&apos;t think he understands how &lt;i&gt;those&lt;/i&gt; companies think and work at all, so his commentary on them totally lacks that insight and usefulness.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Dirty Percent</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/dirty_percent</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lewisham</author><text>I used to be a big fan of Gruber, but I&apos;m getting increasingly tired of his &quot;defend Apple at all costs&quot; mentality.&lt;p&gt;When Apple was the underdog, it all seemed to be about not what was possible, but what was fair, and what was right. Now it&apos;s a &quot;Well, of course Apple would do that, wouldn&apos;t you?&quot;&lt;p&gt;And he then punts on the biggest question of all:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;What if Microsoft did this with Windows, and, say, tried to require Apple to pay them 30 percent for every purchase made through iTunes on Windows? To that, I say: good luck with that.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not &quot;well I&apos;d certainly write a slam piece about it&quot;, not &quot;well, that would definitely require competition regulators&quot;, not &quot;that would be a dick move.&quot; Just &quot;they couldn&apos;t do it anyway, so your hypotheticals mean nothing.&quot;&lt;p&gt;The way I put it (crassly) is &quot;When you&apos;re Top Dog, you don&apos;t need to play like a bitch.&quot; Which is what Apple is doing, and honestly, they&apos;re turning me off from their products. And that&apos;s not about &quot;Oh well, Apple likes to make money, and why shouldn&apos;t they be allowed to?&quot; It&apos;s about looking like you&apos;re above it. Brands like Costco and Amazon make a huge chunk of change, but you don&apos;t see them getting into petty stuff like this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ra88it</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Brands like Costco and Amazon make a huge chunk of change, but you don&apos;t see them getting into petty stuff like this.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the following statement (from the article) false?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;As for ruthless profiteering, consider that Amazon, with their e-book publishing, originally took the fat end of a 70-30 revenue split with authors.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>