Dear Apple,
So I’m in technology consulting, and a moderate tech geek. I even spent a few years being an Apple sys admin/tech guy for a private school in Chicago. I don’t work at a genius bar, but I know my shit. Self-proclaimed mac fanboi’s and sworn lifers are surprised when I know more about when system 8 went live, what changed with in system 9, and how much OSX sucked when it first got released (slowest OS ever). All I mean to say is I can hang with the best of them.
My point? I have a pet hobby staying on top of Apple. I grew up using them, spent time with them professionally, and now I’m a casual consumer (no iPhone, just an iPod).
I think I, as much as anyone, recognize the incredible and undeniable impact Apple has had on the world of professional computing. Apple’s bread and butter historically were expensive graphics workstations (a loyal but very small market) and education (a loyal and fairly large market). With Steve Jobs’ triumphant return in the 90’s, Apple saw their explosion in the laptop market, home PC market (iMacs mostly), and most recently consumer electronics (iPod and iPhone). Apple made a brilliant move finally moving to a more familiar hardware paradigm with Intel a few years ago, and I believe it was their tipping point. It’s only going to get better from here for them. Maybe.
Apple still has this little problem whereby someone there thinks it’s a good idea to stifle what has come to be recognized as the greatest driver of innovation in human record: collaboration. Call it wiki, call it information sharing, open source, whatever the H you want. It’s the age old idea that “2(or n) heads are better than one”. To be more specific, I was reading this article which set me off:
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/iPhone_Coders_Miffed__Muzzled_By_Apple_s_NDA
In a nutshell, Apple released the software and tools people needed to develop all those fun apps for the iPhone everyone is talking about and buying. They made these dev tools available before they released the new iPhone 3g. Reasonably, in order to get head starts coding and programming for the new phone before its release, Apple required acquiescence to an NDA forbidding developers and programmers from discussing anything they did with anyone else.
This would be like if after Al Gore invented the internet, NO ONE was allowed to talk about HTML. Ever. No emails, no web forum posts, no magazine articles, NOTHING. THERE WILL BE NO TALKING ABOUT HOW TO MAKE THE INTERNET BETTER. JUST DO IT YOURSELF. Think about how long rollover animations and Gem buttons would have taken to become common. Where would the internet be without rollovers?
This is obviously preposterously stupid. As the article states, there are people who are giving up on the iPhone as a platform simply out of frustration regarding their inability to talk, collaborate, and work through programming issues. But more importantly than that, this group model which drives innovation over the internet; the ability to communicate and share ideas and problems instantaneously with people on every part of the globe, is hamstrung.
Why is Apple doing this? It’s hard to say, Apple has never been good at discussing its feelings. The whole company is one gigantic black box. They even throw their biggest fans in jail and sue them to keep them quiet. It’s a very strange business model, and one that borders on the unreasonable. To give Apple the benefit of the doubt, it was probably as the article states to protect the inner workings of the new iPhone software and hardware previous to it’s launch. But it’s been a month. Why would Apple take its most promising new platform, and lock it down to everything except some stupid Sudoku and Pinball games? Or, like, a program that lists restaurants around me based on GPS. That’s fucking great Apple, but how about your Enterprise phone allowing me to turn off syncing with Active Sync on a schedule so I can do business by day with my iPhone and party with it by night?
I mean that was the idea, right? Even if you don’t let me do that with Active Sync right now, why won’t you let someone else pick up your slack? Oh right, HUBRIS.
Apple has always maintained that it is a hardware company, not a software company. They started building PC’s, and to this day their greatest achievements are mechanical and engineered, not programmed (I have enormous respect for Apple software engineers, without them none of Apple’s success would be possible).
So why the fuck are they making the same mistakes of using difficult and closed hardware platforms, and relying on other people to innovate with software FOR THEM while simultaneously providing significant barriers to that process?
This is a classic Apple contradiction; Apple for some reason always manages to shoot itself in the foot when it comes spreading their seed (pun intended). This company (or maybe it’s just Jobs) is fatally flawed. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Apple products. I love that they are market leaders. In terms of hardware, no one can compete with Apple for polish, usability, aesthetics, or function. They are just too far ahead and too willing to take risks where others won’t. Whereas all other computer and electronics companies build and design for business or government or education (cheap, mass produced, low frills, etc.), Apple does what it does the PEOPLE. The iPhone was for hipsters and chic nerds before it was touted as an “enterprise phone” (it still isn’t an enterprise phone, but it’s so awesome in other ways people are starting to look the other way about that).
Apple makes products that people want to integrate into their everyday lives. More than a bricky smartphone, more than a clunky ugly laptop, more than a slow and unintuitive cheap MP3 player. They make tech accessible and cool for everyone.
And yet, they’re stifling people who are trying to do all of the hard work to make the iPhone 3g something Apple never could: a richly supported hardware platform. It’s the richly supported part Apple can’t do on its own.
Again, why? Control. It’s always about control with Apple. Control of the media, control of it’s product launches, control of it’s OS, control of it’s hardware, control of what network you use the iPhone on, control control control. For the iPhone specifically, the closer they can keep the development to their chest, the more programs they get a cut of on the App store. So revenue protection has something to do with it. Also, the more people learn about the iPhone and potentially post about it on the tubes, the sooner Apple’s competitors can catch up through imitation.
Maybe Apple’s tight control on things is necessary for them to remain the market leader. They generally tend to produce such radically advanced devices that it’s possible they need the extra lead time between products for the next big products pipeline. IF they keep people guessing long enough maybe it gives them the time they need to really push the next “big one” to that “oh my god look what Apple did” level.
In any case, I love their products, but at the same time I hate their games. I hate that they are one of the most profitable, offering rich, interesting companies in the world, and yet they wallow in this old world, black box, closed door paranoia clusterfuck.
Don’t you get it Apple? You aren’t powering iPhones with cold fusion or using materials no one else knew existed. You’re actually just taking (for the most part) fully extant technology, and being really really smart and thoughtful about how you package it and how you present it from an interface standpoint to your customers. That’s it.
You didn’t invent touch screen, you didn’t invent 3g, and you didn’t invent the MP3 player. You just took all of that and put it together way better than anyone else did. So all of your stupid secrecy and craziness is just that, crazy. No one can take away the brilliance your company has at beautiful design (and you can’t hide that either!), no one is going to take away your slavishly loyal workforce (that’s not a secret either), and no one can take away your vision at bringing the right products with the right features to the market at the right time.
This weird fake “we are for the people” up front and “we are crazy fascist psychos” in the back thing is totally unnecessary, and frankly probably stifling to you as a company. You’re not DARPA, and your technology really isn’t very impressive. It’s your EXECUTION that kills off the competition every time. Your shit usually doesn’t break, and it’s usually sexy and fun and exciting to use. TO cap it all off you make it pretty. You make being a geek cool, and have for a long time. That’s your bread and butter. That’s your base. SO STOP ALIENATING GEEKS WHO ARE TRYING TO HELP YOU MAKE MORE GEEKS COOL AND SEXY. ALSO WHO ARE HELPING YOU TO TURN REGULAR SEXY PEOPLE INTO GEEKS WHO BUY APPLE.
This is not rocket science.
