I find it extremely amusing that Microsoft and Apple are in many senses the very same company, at least in their actions, yet people feel very different about the two. For the average person they aren’t really a fan of Microsoft, and many love Apple. While I’m not really suggesting anyone should love Microsoft, why are people such Apple fanboys. Apple makes the same bad moves as Microsoft, they control their software and limit functionality in order to drive sales in the future.

For example with the iPhone, by disabling video streaming they are simply leaving something to be supported for next year. There’s now doubt that the phone is fully capable, especially with 3g, as qik is already supporting it. However they are having to jump through hoops to do it, when Apple could have simply enabled it in the SDK, and yet they didn’t. It’s unfortunate for AT&T in the process as well, because as people are die hard Apple fans, they feel Apple can do no wrong. This wasn’t quite the case in recent days, first with the launch of the iPhone 3g, there were many many bricked iPhones for that morning. Almost every complaint I saw on twitter drawed attention to AT&T screwing it up. However, from a source very close to the issue, the problem was entirely on Apple’s end, as they had tested for only a fraction of the traffic they got that day, and were not able to scale up new machines nearly fast enough.

Now Apple woes seem to continue as with MobileMe. For all the fan boys out there, and while I agree they make a good product, they should still be help to the same regard of anyone else that makes a product, and be complained to when they screw up. Apple has indeed done a great job with marketing and a reasonable job with products, however they keep a strong reign on applications, which is why I like the applications that are on OSX, but hate that its sucha  smaller number.

I’m not saying love Microsoft, or even hate Apple. But people judge them on their actions, and while they drive the boundaries, theres still no hard in calling them out when they hold back just for more revenue.