Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures (Foursquare), recently called Apple an evil company. The reason? “They believe they know what is best for you and me. And I think that is evil.”
It’s a definition of evil I think most of us would not agree with. On the other side of Wilson’s argument, you’ll find a few light-weight thinkers such as Socrates (see Plato’s Republic). So … doctors are evil because they claim to know what’s best for us. Add to the list accountants, plumbers, carpenters, and architects.
I think Wilson has a different gripe with Apple. Apple has successfully shown that the America consumer has an appetite for quality products, even though they’re based on walled-off hardware and software. While passing Wilson’s test for goodness, Google’s open-source Android platform is not necessarily a path to quality and may actually do some evil.Continue reading