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?
