Why is the digital marketplace so corrupt?

[Outdated]

I think we need to add another qualification to a business license - no gouging. Healthy competition is supposed to minimize that, but that has become very rare.

Many years ago a friend of mine started up his own business as a parts supplier for industrial and earth moving equipment. Being new to running his own business he did things pretty much by the book, including only applying a 110% markup to his prices.

Several other businesses started complaining that he was undercutting them by too much and putting them out of business. My friends business was very successful but over the next few years he was broken in to and vandalised several times including an unsuccessful attempt at starting a fire in the premises, and he received death threats and threats of harm against his children. There's a lot of people in the business world that just aren't very nice.

 

[Slime_Punk]

Many years ago a friend of mine started up his own business as a parts supplier for industrial and earth moving equipment. Being new to running his own business he did things pretty much by the book, including only applying a 110% markup to his prices.

Several other businesses started complaining that he was undercutting them by too much and putting them out of business. My friends business was very successful but over the next few years he was broken in to and vandalised several times including an unsuccessful attempt at starting a fire in the premises, and he received death threats and threats of harm against his children. There's a lot of people in the business world that just aren't very nice.

It's crazy to me what bigger businesses can get away with. This reminds me a lot of the eBay stalking scandal (which wasn't caused by undercutting eBay, simply reporting that the CEO made way more money than the employees)

 

[Slime_Punk]

Just give me shareware, l am happy. Actually l just want to run my very old software titles of games (EA). And l want my older computers back too. Second thought, l want to ditch my android and go back to my old school land phone. Better yet, l want to go back to the seventies. Lol

Even though it's a gray area, as @Outdated mentioned the concept of abandonware (+ some really great emulators) exist, and pretty much everything old enough (right now at least) is legally allowed to be preserved and used on places like archive.org (until the world inevitably becomes more corrupt and even that stops being allowed).

(Thankfully, the only entity who seems to care that much about old software/games at this point in time is Nintendo, but everybody else could start bandwagoning any day.)

The good news is that old shareware will always remain perfectly legal and ethical though, so emulating those is something I could actually recommend at this point in time!

 

[Slime_Punk]

Apple being the biggest culprit here, outdating machines so, instead of being able to use an old computer you have to buy a new one because the OSx is near impossible to install. Only real apple product I own (I only have 3 products) is my ipod classic that still works like a charm lol

I've actually never understood why they do this, but it seems like Apple just plans the obsolescence of their hardware on the day they create it. I've had so many people try to get me to fix their Macs (when technically-speaking, there was absolutely nothing wrong despite them being super old) simply because the new OS was intentionally made bloaty, prompting everybody to upgrade, and those who fell behind couldn't even surf the internet without crazy lag.

They obviously make good hardware that lasts, but I don't see the point in it if there's really no way to go in and tweak everything to your liking so you can actually continue to use it!

 

[Shevek]

I've actually never understood why they do this, but it seems like Apple just plans the obsolescence of their hardware on the day they create it. I've had so many people try to get me to fix their Macs (when technically-speaking, there was absolutely nothing wrong despite them being super old) simply because the new OS was intentionally made bloaty, prompting everybody to upgrade, and those who fell behind couldn't even surf the internet without crazy lag.

They obviously make good hardware that lasts, but I don't see the point in it if there's really no way to go in and tweak everything to your liking so you can actually continue to use it!

I had always wanted a Mac, but I'd been on the road for two months before I finally bought a new iMac, and didn't know that they'd switched to Intel chips. I was bitterly disappointed. The Apple IIc had had a switch on the keyboard for DSK. The iMac needed a re-boot to switch key layouts. The Apple Care advice on setting up my music cost me six hours of re-building, and the "genius" was relieved I still had my files at all. I never called back, or sent them another buck. The DVD drive failed after light use. The hard drive went in about three years, and was extremely fiddly to replace. Then there were several years when I had to ride herd on the UPS because it was taking over a dozen tries to re-boot. Then it just wouldn't.

 

[elgat0verde]

I've actually never understood why they do this, but it seems like Apple just plans the obsolescence of their hardware on the day they create it. I've had so many people try to get me to fix their Macs (when technically-speaking, there was absolutely nothing wrong despite them being super old) simply because the new OS was intentionally made bloaty, prompting everybody to upgrade, and those who fell behind couldn't even surf the internet without crazy lag.

They obviously make good hardware that lasts, but I don't see the point in it if there's really no way to go in and tweak everything to your liking so you can actually continue to use it!

Exactly

Macs are pretty good for creative people, but seems like they are money hungry, that's why I stick with android and Windows machines (now with Linux)

 

[Outdated]

Macs are pretty good for creative people

A Mac is only a PC in drag. Has been since about 1997 - the i in iMac stands for Intel. Intel IA32 and then IA64 architecture using purely intel chipsets with allowances for some third party graphics and sound cards.

You can easily test this by installing Windows or Linux on a Mac computer, don't use macintosh's stupid Boot Camp program, unplug the drive with OSX on it and install normally to a fresh clean drive.

Or you can go the other way and install OSX on a normal PC. The extra tools you need to install third party repositories and third party device drivers are in the Extras folder on your OSX disk.

Alternatively, you can download the Linux that is the base for Mac OSX for free, you just don't get the pretty macintosh artwork with it. It's called BSD Linux. Yes, Steve Jobs stole it from Berkley Systems Development.

https://www.freebsd.org/

 

[elgat0verde]

You can easily test this by installing Windows or Linux on a Mac computer

I was thinking of doing so, but my old Mac is a 2008 model (aluminum MacBook pro) and don't know if it'll be able to run any good distros

I updated the ram to 5gb to play Diablo III so it may be a good little laptop to use instead of my aspire 3 which for some reason doesn't let me install more ram into it