[Lewisham]

I would disagree. Apple fundamentally doesn't understand the Internet. MobileMe/.Mac has been a decent disaster for a long time, not even able to meet the quality levels of services that Google gives away for free. That's not because Apple chooses to not like bits about the net, that's because Apple doesn't seem to have any idea what its doing in that space.

I'd say that Apple doesn't just not understand the Internet, but at a higher level, it doesn't understand communication. Look at the iOS notification system: it is, and always has been, fundamentally broken. It assumes you'll only get a single notification, and that that notification is so important that it should interrupt your current app to get it.

Apple have been selling computers in phone formats. Android, Microsoft, and especially Palm, are selling you communicators, that pulls in data from all over your communication space and centralizes it. Apple doesn't seem to know how to do this (or assumes most people don't have an online persona in various locations, which I think most people really do).

[Samuel_Michon]

What you're saying is that Apple doesn't understand social networking and cloud services. I agree, but I suspect Apple is working on those; although it's anyone's guess what they're going to do with the massive data center they've just built in NC.

The article was about Apple trying to control how people interact with content on the internet. The author feels that that's against the nature of the internet, hence: "Apple doesn't understand the internet".

[Lewisham]

Well, to be fair, the author only has one paragraph about Apple and the Internet, and you could get multiple readings from it :) When I read control and centralization, I don't just think of iTunes, but I do think of Apple's dogged insistence that everything you do is essentially tied to one machine. Your iPhone, and (as I think Tim Bray described it "monsterously") your iPad, need to be sync'd to a computer when they start up, for no compelling reason. My Android phone lets me type in my Google ID and off I go.

Honestly, I think Apple's attitude towards the Internet is not because they don't like it. I think they just don't know what to do with it, certainly aren't willing to partner with companies that do, and they're letting their market get chipped away little by little. I've felt like Apple have been resting on their laurels for years, software-wise. Jonathan Ive is producing great hardware, but year on year competitors are catching up or surpassing Mac OS X and iOS, and Apple doesn't seem to notice/care.

[bane]

While I don't disagree with you, I wonder how much of this is a function of Apple not being able to figure out how to monetize the Internet to the profit percentages they want and/or use the Internet to constrain people to the Apple ecosystem (which I suppose it just another path to monetization).