Saturday, July 28, 2007
a better explanation for my anti-Sony position
(warning: Not Safe for Work) I'm tired of Sony's bullshit.
So like recently I bought myself a Samsung C140 to replace the dying Nokia 5110 I had been using since I lost my Nokia 2300.
There are a few brand-new Sony Erricson cellphones that are available cheaper in the Indonesian market, and they do tend to have the best price-performance balance at least feature-wise. So naturally quite a few friends have on occations asked me, "so why don't you buy a Sony?"
I would usually begin my answer with, "Ideological reasons.," and they'd ask just exactly what I meant with that and I'd blabber on-and-on with technojargon and people would just get lost.
Well this guy IMHO has a better wrap-up of what exactly is wrong with Sony: "Sony hates their customers."
Its a shame though, how the company that invented the Walkman and the Betamax could become so high-winded and fearful of the open market; how they're so obsessed with lock-in. One would think that bringing in a foreign CEO like Howard Stringer would cause enough cultural change that the company would at least stop fearing their customers and stop demanding that the customer bend to the will of mighty Sony. Well Dude, you're not mighty anymore. D'uh.
'Mighty' Sony didn't come this far, becoming a gigantic multinational company, by being this anathema with their customers, did they? I'd imagine Sony's success in the past to come more from their innovations. Maybe they are dreaming that they can create these must-have electronic toys, and these toys would be so wonderful that no-one would mind if they put in these locks and cages so that once you went with Sony you'll be stuck with them forever amen.
It doesn't work that way anymore. It hasn't worked that way for a long time. How can Sony not realize that vendor lock-in does not work anymore? If you want user loyalty, you gotta begin with building trust. I don't trust you, Sony, and that's why I'm not buying you.
Get me to trust you again. Open up. Then maybe, maybe I'd just consider at least peeking your way again.
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
