Apple is the new Microsoft

Let me start off and say, I really like Apple. I think they make great products that look great and work wonderfully. I run an iMac on my desktop and an iPhone in my pocket and if I’m asked I recommend Apple products to most folk. I’m going to get a new iPhone posthaste, label me an Apple fanboy.

The latest WWDC had all kinds of interesting news but it also underscored something, Apple is a very, very closed ecosystem. It always has been and it’s always been fine, mostly because the ecosystem was very small. They offered you a desktop experience that, in my opinion, was unrivaled. They continue to do so but their offerings are expanding. Rapidly. First they conquered music, on the desktop and on the go. They’re working on video. They’re about to own your smart phone and your online mobile experience. But now check it, they’re pushing aggressively into the online applications space. They want to own your email, your online address book, your online calendar, your online photos.

mobileme, is their hook to that. It’s so convenient, sign up for this and everything works together all the applications Apple provides you handle this seamlessly continuing Apples excellent user experience. Your phone keys in and you don’t even have to sync it to your computer. They recently upgraded the OS and built in contact syncing with GMail. Well, doesn’t that make it easy and convenient to switch off Gmail and into mobileme! You already have all the contacts in place. The timing is very coincidental, it won’t lower the barrier to go the other way right now because well, no one’s using mobileme so they can’t switch off it. How long till this gets optimized for small businesses and then large ones? mobileme for businesses? Google Apps watch out! I expect the pricing on mobileme to come down pretty in the next year or so.

Apple is becoming a vortex sucking everything in and letting very little out. Developers will come in droves to the iPhone and some reasonable percentage of those developers will stay and work on desktop apps as well – the core services are the same. Just like on the end user end – when you start using some Apple apps it becomes easier to use others since they work so well together. Run iPhoto? Why not get an AppleTV so you can watch your slide shows on your big screen as well as the movies you rented from the iTMS?

Contrast that with the Microsoft of yore. While they imposed IE on their customers, which is different than Apple’s tack since we all voluntarily use what we use, their focus was on bundling and tieing everything together. They blocked other services from working (or at least working well) where Microsoft had staked claim. How is that different than, for example, Apple blocking background applications? Apple says that they’re providing developers with the same tools they are using, but that’s clearly untrue, Apple can build apps that run in the background and developers can not.

They’ve got a virtual monopoly on the mobile browser, the new growth frontier, and are making hay out of that. Of course the difference (from Microsoft) is that, they’re actually innovating on their browser (see SquirrelFish) and making it better, but don’t think it isn’t a monopoly. Nobody’s making Nokia optimized pages for their websites. And if you don’t think that was the killer app of iPhone 1, well, you haven’t been reading the same internets as me.

Compare mobileme with Microsoft Mesh. mobileme seeks to be an Apple fortress isolated from the outside world. Mesh wants to be a centerpiece for syncing any and all comers. It’s a strange and wacky turnaround. Instead of supporting IMAP IDLE, a standard for push email which my Treo email client had many years ago, they build a specific email service to support it? For now, Apple’s doing great, their products are just what I want and everything really does work very well together. Nevertheless, as Apple grows and the need to continuously top previous quarters’ gains starts to press in, well, I suspect that things will start being distinctly less rosy on the consumer front. Maybe it only happens when Steve retires, but it’s going to happen alas, but until then, I’ll bask in the glory of my soon to be new iPhone. Well? Too conspiracy theory?

felix

Good points, Gautam! Let's see:

1. True, but it has 30-40% of the mobile browsing market with something like 2% of the mobile browser market. The writing is on the wall here, nobody is making nokia versions of their websites, with the reduced price and global distribution of the new iPhone it's as good as done.

2. True, although, I won't argue it, but there's an irony in the thought that the iPhone's browser lock in is due to actually adhering to standards. :) Your point though is correct that anyone else could come along and do the same. It is interesting on the one hand to wonder why nobody has.

3. Also true. No argument here. :)

However, points 2 and 3 are not the definition of a monopoly. #2 is a benefit to maintaining the monopoly, but not a requirement - it is, admittedly difficult to maintain a monopoly without this. #3 is a common side effect of a monopoly but not an aspect of it.

My concern is not with the current state of Apple, I quite like all their products and as Robb says below, there's probably a good reason why that's so. But, things are still early on in Apple's ascendancy, their overall marketshare is still tiny, but I can already see the seeds of bad news coming and worry. Maybe the worry is too soon or unwarranted, but that's just me. :) I suspect we'll be seeing more reason #2's creeping in and sold to us as "better" in the not so distant future. I would, though, love to be very wrong on this front.
gautamg

Great post, as usual. One point of disagreement - closed != monopoly in relation to you mobile browse point above. Monopolies usually have 3 attributes:
1. Majority market share - iphone has 30 to 40% at best. So mobile safari isn't a monopoly in mobile browsing
2. barrier to entry - browsers usually implement barrier to entry via not adhering to standards (think activeX in IE etc). Mobile safari hasn't shown any such thing yet.
3. Lack of innovation - IE didn't innovate after it got monopoly status till the status was threatened again by firefox years later. Mobile Safari, is rapidly innovating.
felix

Very good points! To be clear, I don't think closed and better are mutually exclusive. And I agree that Apple does indeed do it better, that's why I keep forking over all my cash to Steve. But, my point remains that Apple is taking the bundling to an extreme, from software to hardware. To use an iPhone you must use iTunes. Use iTunes, use their software updater, hey now you have Safari and you didn't even know!

Bundling their software with hardware is a step Microsoft couldn't have taken but would have loved to, AppleTV, unsuccesful as it's been thus far. Right now because they don't suck they are getting away with a lot of stuff that Microsoft would never be able to do now. Will mobileme allow other forms of external syncing? It doesn't seem so from anything I've read, but maybe? I don't know, for now I'm just remaining suspicious, but the worry is definitely there.
robb

here's what I think. Apple isn't closed, they are just better. The iPhone is a better phone. OSX is a better OS. Maybe mobileme will be better than GMail, which wouldn't be too too hard. Mail is better than entourage. Numbers is better than Excel. But Apple hasn't implemented everything under the sun, you still need Excel a lot, for instance, but you sure wish you could use Numbers because it is very nice and it integrates with a very nice OS.

Other platforms are a mess. They fail when you try to do new things because everything hasn't been thought through.

Point being this: This is what Apple had to do. No one else is doing it right. There are other OSes but they do not have a well thought out object model, a solid OO language underneath and the profoundly well wroung APIs that Apple has made. They waited and waited and no one did a good enough job. Adobe applications are a mess, MS's are worse. What are they supposed to do?

They use a ton of open API's though -- the only things that are off limits are DRM-related. I just don't think that the other folks are keeping up. All the big brains are writing internet applications instead of desktop apps -- isn't that what we've all been saying would happen?
felix

It's interesting, Bwana on FriendFeed ( http://is.gd/vIU ) commented that posts like this crop up after every keynote - he's right - and I think it's because, as you say, it's just getting worse. Each time Apple tries to expand it's ecosystem into new terrain. The larger it is, the easier it becomes to expand.

Right now the reasons for going with Apple, for me at least, outweigh any for not - but I can see that changing. I've already switch to Amazon for all my mp3 downloads. Other than that though, I can not, apparently, give Steve enough money fast enough. :)
Captain Wrong

You've hit the nail on the head here. This is exactly what has always bothered me about Apple and like you, I only see it getting worse. The odd thing is, I'm a fairly recent returner to Apple products (from a ][c to a MacBook Pro) and it seems like most of the long time Apple users are not only OK with this arrangement, but they actually have a laundry list of reasons why it's the best thing ever.

I don't know. I'm unconvinced. I mean, I get the stated reasons for creating such a closed system. The theory behind it is very nice. But, so many of the same criticisms leveled at Gates and Microsoft apply to Apple and Jobs, but people don't seem to be willing to make the connection.

I think a lot of it has to do with Jobs himself and the way he's created himself as a media figure. My favorite example of this is the FairPlay thing. Jobs gets up there and tells people the only reason they have the DRM is the labels require it, totally ignoring (or justifying aside) the fact that FairPlay content ties the user into Apple products. Perhaps there was a time when it was a requirement for the major labels, but with Amazon, Wal-Mart and Napster all offering DRM free music, that time has long since passed, yet the iTunes Music store still offers most of it's selections with DRM. Jobs makes a speech and everyone crowns hims as an anti-DRM crusader, but actions speak louder than words and Apple is still using DRM on 75% of what is sold at their store.

I like my iPhone, but it still chaffs my ass that there's a ton of things I could do with my iPaq that I still can't do with the iPhone. I've always seen Jobs as the gatekeeper to making that happen. Yet he's great at spinning these omissions as features, though I've never bought it.

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