Apple's Dark Side: Five Reasons to Dislike the Iconic Brand

When Umberto Eco wrote his famous 1994 essay describing Apple (AAPL) as the Catholic Church of computer operating systems and Microsoft (MSFT) as Protestant, he was striking at a profound truth not just about the nature of the two companies' competing software in that MS-DOS era, but at something deep-seated in the nature of Apple itself. For all its branding as the rebellious, creative alternative to a world full of conformist PCs, Apple and their products have always been hierarchical, closed off and subject to oracular pronouncements from high priests.

The company was recently voted most admired by US CEOs for the sixth year in a row by a Fortune magazine survey , and expands its obsessively cultish fan-base every day with innovative products like the iPad and iPhone. But as Apple continues its transformation into a globe-straddling, master-of-paid-content "post-PC" company with a heaven-scraping market capitalization of $331 billion, those Vatican-esque tendencies are starting to rankle critics, and show, perhaps, the seeds of a future downfall. Herewith, some of the less than wonderful things associated with everybody's favorite tech company that may curtail its time at the top:

1. A Design Monoculture

If there's one consistent, defining feature about Apple as it has moved from desktop PCs to laptops to mobile devices, it's the centrality of design to everything they make. Design gets in at the ground floor with every one of the its initiatives, rather than being slapped on as a final coat of paint near the end of the product's development process. There's a reason that Apple designer Jonathan Ive is the second best-known Apple bigwig after Steve Jobs.

But here's the rub: all that tastefully rounded, minimal Dieter Rams-inspired work is starting to have a suffocating effect on the world of tech consumer products. The iPod may have been a revolutionary device, and a master-class in less-is-more. But hear this: not everything needs to look or function like a one-button iPod. As designer Robert Brunner notes, "good work outside the Apple vernacular is routinely panned or criticized, especially if they are pushing the envelope and challenge. This creates a strange sort of conservatism. Companies are afraid to move too far beyond the ideal for fear of being trashed or not being accepted." As well, as anyone who's ever found themselves fruitlessly scrolling through an iPod menu looking for a function that just isn't there will tell you: sometimes less is less.

2. Convenient Online Content – at a Cost

iTunes saved the music industry, claim its fans, rescuing it from Napster and Pirate Bay by providing a functional, safe and convenient way to purchase music. The iPad will save newspapers and magazines, and maybe even publishing in general, say desperate publishing insiders. Perhaps. And Apple certainly didn't instigate the digital revolution that nearly destroyed these cultural industries. But what is the cost of this salvation?

Unless you possess a level of tech savvy well beyond that of most consumers, your iPod, iPhone or iPad can only access content via Apple and its online content stores – giving it vast power over publishers and music companies. Apple gets a hefty chunk of the proceeds of anything sold over iTunes or any of its other portals, but it also has the ability to impose conditions of sale – like its recent decree that any publisher selling magazine apps through the App Store while offering digital subscriptions via its own website must also offer the same subscriptions at the same rate through its Apple App – while giving Apple a 30% cut. Don't like it? No choice.

It's behavior like this that will cause the company and its online retail operations – no matter how slick, convenient and market dominating they seem at the moment – to lose disciples in a hurry when a more open-minded competitor gets its act together.

3. Changing Behavior and Imposing Morality

Again, Apple didn't create the digital content revolution – it just helped monetize it. But still, iTunes has forever changed the way we listen to music, fragmenting albums – remember them? – nearly out of existence, reducing cover art to a postage stamp on a Nano screen, and wiping out the livelihoods of thousands of snotty, over-educated slackers with better taste than you, who now have no bricks-and-mortar indie record store counters to slouch behind and stare at you witheringly as you put down that CD of J-Dilla instrumental-only tracks and flee in confusion.

As well, Steve Job's determination not to let his various portals sell anything porn-related is commendable – but worryingly. As the director Milos Forman has pointed out: "The first thing a totalitarian state goes after is pornography." As countless App developers have discovered in the last few years, the process of getting iPhone apps to market is puzzling, byzantine – and entirely up to the whims of Apple.

See: Apple Breaks No Porn Rule For Uncensored Playboy App?

4. The Apple Tax

Every iPod, iPhone and similar Apple device now sports a proprietary authentication chip that means all third-party manufacturers of cables and other compatible peripherals have to deal directly with Apple to ensure that their products will work. This development, quietly introduced in 2007 with no publicity by Apple, costs third-party manufacturers serious coin – but only briefly, because they promptly pass that cost on to you. That "Made for iPod" sticker or slogan emblazoned on a new set of mini-speakers or earphones? It also represents a payment to Apple by the manufacturer – as much as 10% of the sticker price. This doesn't just affect the cost – it also affects quality: "If we didn't have to pay Apple for the dock and auth chip, we could have made a much better speaker for the same price," one electronics company told Popular Mechanics back in 2008.

5. Control, Control, Control