Why has Apple been trying to stand by itself?

I have been wondering… Since the days when we talk about Apple versus Microsoft, the impression of Apple is that you are always up with the trend when you own an Apple device.  And if you own something from Microsoft, you are considered as a geek.

But come to think of it in another way… It seems like Apple has been focusing more on trying to be standalone while Microsoft has been more towards the open market… When you own an Apple device, you have no other choice except to use Apple peripherals… But when you buy a Microsoft operating system, you will have a wide range of hardware to choose from.  As such, the games seem to be all available on Microsoft platform.

Now, think about iPhone and iPad.  There has been a lot of reasoning why Apple chooses not  to use Flash… But ultimately, I seriously think this is going to be the deciding factor for me not to choose iPhone as my next phone.  And when they also thought of switching to Bing (from Google), I am more and more firmed with my decision.  No doubt that iPhone has been a great device… It has a lot of interesting applications and that I can share information with my friends (most of them are having iPhone!).  I just can’t imagine sticking myself with iTunes where the interface is not really sleek in my laptop (yes, I am using Microsoft Windows 7).  And to imagine that it is not supporting the usual MP3 format (it is standing by itself again with its own format…), I am feeling so restricted more than just using the phone.

Of course, I don’t have a lot of iPhone experience to begin with… It seems to be the definite decision for anyone to buy an iPhone 4 now… I am struggling with myself to know if I buy an iPhone, will I ever be drifted away from my favorite companies Adobe and Google?!?!

Of course I won’t mind if somebody is going to give me an iPad… I would most likely use it as my ebook reader replacement!  I have been waiting patiently for the e-ink technology to evolve into color version… And indeed, it has launched!  Now, I am waiting for the various companies like Amazon to launch their color-version of ebook readers.

Take a look at the support of HTML5 from their website. http://www.apple.com/html5/

Over there, they are actually saying that HTML5 is only supported by Safari… How is that possible when I am using a Google Chrome right now?  They are simply trying to stand by themselves again…

If you take a look at the number of factors above, you will start to see that Apple has deliberately stand by itself to set the standards.  They had been trying this for numerous times in fact!  They have a couple of new inventions along the way, but it’s only the Mac, iPhone and iPad have been able to set the trend!  I don’t think the iPod has been successful at all, but they will continue anyway since it is still in the production…