Apple Announces Nothing (New)

“Apple announces NOTHING at developer conference”.

No, seriously, I read it on the internets, so it must be true. You can read it for yourself, here:

images-94

Apple Announces Nothing at Developer Conference ~ By Paul “Comic Book Guy” Ausick

Admittedly, that is just one man’s opinion, and an extremely harsh assessment at that. The consensus seems to be a little more moderate. What most Apple critics seem to have concluded is not that Apple announced NOTHING at their developer conference but that Apple announced NOTHING NEW.

No, seriously. That’s what they’re saying. You can read it here.

Great artists steal: The iOS 8 features inspired by Android ~ by Ron Amadeo

“(M)any of Apple’s announced upgrades were things the Android OS has boasted for years.”

WLETyping suggestions
Third party keyboards
Inter-app communication
Hotwords, music recognition, and streaming voice recognition
Notification Actions
Videos in the App Store
Beta testing
Widgets
Photo backup and storage
CloudKit

Fetish For First

NTSHWhat is it with our fetish for first? Where did we ever get the notion being first was all that mattered and — perversely — that nothing that comes after “first” matters at all?

Tech is not a race. It’s not some Olympic event, where you run 100 meters, cross the finish line, everybody jogs to a stop, and then you get awarded a medal. No. In real life, the tech race goes on and on forever.

If anything, tech is more like catching a train than running a race. You have to stand on the platform and wait for tech to arrive before you can get on board. Try to get on board too soon and you’ll fall flat on your face. Try to get on board too late and you’ll be left at the station. At least, that’s what it’s like for the consumers of technology.

If you’re a company that’s CREATING the technology — like Apple or Google or Microsoft or Amazon — you still have to wait for the technology train to pull into the station. But if you want to control that technology, you might have to actually anticipate where technology is headed and BUILD the platform first. And you’d darn well better hope you guessed right and built your platform at the right place and at the right time. Otherwise you’re going to be as lonely as a developer at a Microsoft Kin convention.

Maybe an even better metaphor is a wave. Tech is like many waves coming together to form one massive wave. To ride that wave, you have to time it perfectly. Too soon and it crashes on top of you. Too late and you are left behind. But catch the tech wave — catch it just right — and you can ride it all the way to wealth and fame.

Take, for example, the iPod:

People think of the iPod as just the iPod. But what people call the iPod was really three things: iPod, iTunes, and the iTunes Store. ~ Tony Fadell ((Excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.”))

The iPod was introduced in 2001, but it didn’t take off until the hardware (iPod), the software (iTunes Store) and services (iTunes internet services) all came together to create a groundswell that flooded the market and washed the competition away.

First To Fail

QR Codes. NFC. JOYN. MMS. Infrared. Haptics. Projectors. So many dead ends in mobile. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)

The tech graveyard is full of failed “firsts,” right?

— Apple’s Newton;
— Microsoft’s Windows Tablets;
— Samsung’s Smartwatches.

Here are some more examples:

The First Wheel:

Wheel

The First Convertible Automobile:

FirstCar

The First Electric Automobile:

FirstElectric

The First Highway Hi-Fi (1956):

HiFi

The First Pedal Skates:

Pedal

The First Motorized Roller Skates:

Motorized

The First Vending Machine With Pre-Lit Cigarettes:

PreLit

The First Automated Hot Dog Machine:

HotDog

The First Picturephone:

lady-bird-picturephone

The First Notebook Computer:

Notebook

Let’s face it, being first ain’t always a good thing. Sometimes, when you get too far ahead on the road you’re traveling, you find you’re no longer on solid footing.

RoadR

How Are We Not Getting This?

How are we not getting this? I mean, it’s not like this is new or anything. It has always been true, since the dawn of man.

The Greeks invented the Phalanx, but the Macedonians perfected it. They didn’t call him Alexander The “Late”, they called him Alexander The Great — and with good reason. ~ John R. Kirk ((That’s right. I cited myself. So sue me.))


images-95And it’s not only geeks like Comic Book Guy who are getting this wrong. A lot of people — people who should know better — are getting this wrong too. Take, for example, a look at this March, 2014 interview with a Steve Ballmer:

Ballmer also took shots at Microsoft’s rivals, waving off Apple as a company that was “quote, cool, unquote” that has “had a good run lately,” and in tablets, (Apple) only commercialized the idea that others, including Microsoft, had originated. ((Emphasis added.))

What.
The.
Heck.

I don’t stinking believe Steve Ballmer even thought those thoughts, more less said those words out loud, more less said them out loud to a reporter.

Apple ONLY commercialized the ideas? ONLY?

EXCUSE ME. Isn’t being a commercial success the frizzing POINT? Isn’t that Apple’s job? And Microsoft’s job too, for that matter? Tech pedants are so obsessed with “first” they’ve completely taken their eyes off the prize. They’ve forgotten the goal is not to be the first, but to be the FIRST TO GET IT RIGHT.

  1. You don’t want to be the first one to sail the high seas.
    You want to be the first one to sail the high seas and RETURN TO PORT SAFELY.
  2. You don’t want to be the first one to fly an airplane.
    You want to be the first one to fly an airplane and LAND IT SAFELY.
  3. To use a D-Day analogy, you don’t want to be the first one ON the beach.
    You want to be the first one OFF the beach…ALIVE.

There’s “First” And Then There’s “First”

There are many kind of firsts, my friend, and first in time is not always first in value to either the producer or the consumer of technology.

You say Android is the first to offer third party keyboards? iOS is the first to do it without allowing all of your keystrokes to be read by those self-same third-party developers.

You say Android is the first to offer inter-app communications? iOS is the first to do it without exposing your mobile device to a “toxic hellstew” of computer viruses.

You say Android is the first to allow Widgets? iOS is the first to make them a seamless experience.

You say Android is the first to allow photo backup and storage? iOS is the first to let you do it effortlessly.

You say Android is the first with a slew of other features? iOS is the first to do those same features without bringing your operating system to its knees.

It means much more to us to get it right then to get it first. ~ Tim Cook

SERVICES - word cloud - colored signpost - NEW TOP TREND

Customer, services, support, care, help, trust, advice, guidance — these are assigned ZERO value by Apple’s critics. Apple announces NOTHING, they say, and Apple announces NOTHING NEW, they say, despite the flood of new services and developer tools announced at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). Why the discrepancy?

You can’t teach a color blind man to appreciate a Monet and you can’t teach a person who discounts the importance of privacy, security etc, to appreciate what Apple does either.

Giverny Bridge on the Water Lily Pond

First To Market Or First Priority?

Apple employs a whole different definition of “first” than Apple’s critics do. It’s not about shipping first; it’s not about getting to market first; it’s about getting it right BEFORE it ships and BEFORE it gets into the hands of Apple’s valued customers.

It is key to understand that Apple puts the experience first. Everything else flows from that priority. ~ ßen ßajarin (@BenBajarin)

Security First

Box

Privacy First

    — “Google can periodically turn on mic, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, & similar features on all your current & future devices” ~ Android Police

    — TouchID is being used by 85% of iPhone 5S owners

iOS 8 now requiring apps reconfirm authenticity of background location periodically. Steve Cheney (@stevecheney)

Reliability First

    — Steve had been absolutely against opening the App Store early on, because he didn’t want the phone to crash. You have to be able to call 911 on the phone anytime, so we couldn’t trust our operating system to a bunch of crazy stupid developers without putting them in a huge sandbox first. ~ Andy Grignon ((Excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.”))

User Experience First

Ketchup

Ease Of Use And “Invisibility” First

In iOS 8, you’ll be able to AirPlay to Apple TV with zero configuration. Don’t even have to be on the same network! ~ Chris Marriott (@chrismarriott)

    — If your customer has to think about it, you’re not done designing the user interface.

Mail attachments up to 5GB in size are not a problem anymore. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)

    — There was a debate [on the Lisa] team about the mouse. Was it going to have a mouse, and how many buttons should it have? Steve and I wanted one button, because if there’s one button, you never have to think about it. One of the former Xerox guys argued for six buttons. He said, “Look, bartenders have six buttons on those drink dispensers, and they can handle it.” But that was a failure to understand what Steve was trying to do with user experience. ~ Trip Hawkins ((Excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.”))
    — There is a huge difference between a learning curve, a low learning curve and NO learning curve. When you get to NO learning curve, everybody uses the feature, no matter how complex it is technically or how geeky it used to seem.
    — According to Teller (head of Google X), the truly innovative projects should become perfectly transparent in our lives. He started off his keynote by talking about car brakes and ABS systems. When you put your foot on the brake of the car, you’re not actually activating the brakes. It’s just an interface. You are actually making a request to a robot.

    “That is a wonderful technology moment. We don’t have to mess with it. We just say here’s what we want,” he said. “When technology reaches that level of invisibility in our lives, that’s our ultimate goal. It vanishes into our lives. It says: ‘you don’t have to do the work, It’ll do the work.’”

Design First

    — “Jobs unveiled the so-called Bondi Blue iMac—named for a beach in Sydney, Australia—at a special event in May 1998. “It looks like it’s from another planet,” Jobs said. “A planet with better designers.” ((Excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.”))

Integration First

    — Google loves to characterize Android as open, and iOS and iPhone as closed. We find this a bit disingenuous and clouding the real difference between our two approaches. […] In reality, we think the open versus closed argument is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is, “what’s best for the customer?” Fragmented versus integrated. ~ Steve Jobs

(T)oday’s additions are pieces in a larger puzzle, not the whole puzzle by themselves. ~ @BenBajarin

Benefits (not features) First

    — The competitors, like Commodore and Kaypro, were all doing speeds and feeds, whereas Steve always wanted things like “What is the significance in the world? How might this change things?” ~ Steve Hayden ((Excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.”))
    — I find speed is typically the least interesting feature of a new phone. I’ll run a benchmark on a new phone out of dumb obligation (and noting how many times the maker used the word “speed” during my briefing). Fine. Yes. I find the numbers that are supposed to be higher and the numbers that are supposed to be lower are higher and lower, respectively.

    But how, precisely, does the faster CPU make a phone better? Bravo for being the first to get the latest Snapdragon processor in a handset, but after people like me file our reviews and move on, who notices or even cares?

    Here’s why I love Apple: speed actually matters. To Apple, there’s no point in putting in a faster CPU unless it makes the phone better. And “it’ll do things faster” isn’t necessarily a good enough reason. ~ Andy Ihnatko

Performance First

Battery Life First

Apple is opening up iOS to extension in the same way it added multi-tasking: controlled and sandboxed, retaining security & battery life. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)

Evaluation

Conclusion

So, am I saying iOS is superior to Android? No, I am not. “Superior” is a subjective term. Each consumer gets to decide for themselves what product best suits their needs. That’s the beauty of the free market.

What I AM saying is it’s time to stop contending Android is copying iOS and iOS is copying Android because it’s a damn lie. The WAY both operating systems create their features and the WAY those features are implemented makes their respective experiences totally unalike.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original. ~ Jean Cocteau

images-98images-96I can order chicken nuggets from McDonalds or chicken cordon bleu from a five-star restaurant. Both meals are made of chicken but that’s where the similarities end. HOW something is prepared is often as important — and often more important — than WHAT that something is.

It’s the same in mobile technology today. Even if the ingredients were the same — and they’re not — the way Apple and Google “bake” their products is as different in style and substance as would be the same meal prepared by Chef Ramsey and Chef Boyardee.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, in my Insider’s article (subscription required), I’ll focus on how Apple is making use of different “ingredients” to make their phones, tablets, notebooks, and desktops and how those different “ingredients” both differentiate their products, and make them competitor-proof.

Join me then.

Published by

John Kirk

John R. Kirk is a recovering attorney. He has also worked as a financial advisor and a business coach. His love affair with computing started with his purchase of the original Mac in 1985. His primary interest is the field of personal computing (which includes phones, tablets, notebooks and desktops) and his primary focus is on long-term business strategies: What makes a company unique; How do those unique qualities aid or inhibit the success of the company; and why don’t (or can’t) other companies adopt the successful attributes of their competitors?

38 thoughts on “Apple Announces Nothing (New)”

  1. I really wonder how many of these “analysts” are just Trolling.

    For Developers (target of show), this was likely the biggest WWDC since the App store opened up to them.

    Of course there is also the factor that you are going looking for this stuff. Seems to me there was also much laudatory ink over this WWDC as well.

    Apple gets among the largest amount of tech press of any company. To stand out some of it will be purposefully controversial (to put it mildly).

    Is there a way to meaningfully gauge what the overall press sentiment on the WWDC was?

  2. “If your customer has to think about it, you’re not done designing the user interface.”

    To quote to great Marvin Gaye, “Right on, brother, right on.”

    Joe

  3. “So, am I saying iOS is superior to Android? No, I am not. “Superior” is a subjective term.”

    “I can order chicken nuggets from McDonalds or chicken cordon bleu from a
    five-star restaurant. Both meals are made of chicken but that’s where
    the similarities end.”

    If you actually did not mean to label one OS superior to another, it would have helped if you had chosen examples that were less obviously pejorative. Instead of comparing expensive cuisine to fast food, perhaps you could have compared Indian butter chicken to Thai chicken curry. Both have chicken, both are very delicious, both very different, neither is better or worse than the other, it’s merely a matter of taste.

    Android started out as open source, with all the crappy inconsistent, overly nerdy UI experience that that implies. But it was a marvelous way to sell the platform to phone engineers working at OEMs, which is what Google wanted to do. And incidentally, it sold the platform to those who care deeply about being able to be in control of their computers (the Cory Doctorow crowd, shall we say). Since then, it’s been getting steadily better, more consistent, as Google gradually polishes the software and smooths over the user-hostile bits. The nerdy bits and the degree of user control are still there, but their presence is no longer necessarily ruining the experience.* Depending on your starting expectations, it’s either still got a long ways to go before it’s simple enough for my ultra-luddite mother or it’s already good enough for most people.

    IOS started out as a closed platform on which nothing would run except first party apps. But it was a marvelous way of ensuring that the phone would always provide a first class experience to the people using it, since everything about the phone was under Apple’s direct control. Since then it has gradually been becoming more open as Apple has allowed more 3rd party functionality. The first class user experience is still there, but it’s no longer ruining the ability of the phone to do things that Apple’s engineers never would have dreamed of doing. Depending on your expectations, it’s already good enough for most people’s needs, or it still has a long ways to go before it’s open enough to satisfy the Cory Doctorows of the world.

    Some people regard open source and user control as the sine qua non of cordon bleu software cuisine. Others regard the user experience as the quintessence of 5 star software. Sadly both groups tend to label the other group’s priorities as beneath notice, something to turn one’s nose up at, like fast food. By opting for comparisons of McDonalds to 5 star cuisine, I fear you have displayed the same snobbish prejudice as you set out to criticize in the article.

    1. “If you actually did not mean to label one OS superior to another, it would have helped if you had chosen examples that were less obviously pejorative” – Glaurung-Quena

      You’re the one projecting “pejorative” onto my comparison, Glaurung-Quena, not I. I wanted to make the point that you can call two meals “chicken” or call two meals “ravioli” but have, in fact, two totally different meals.

      5 star restaurants may attract the elite but they can’t compare to the popularity of Chicken McNuggets and Chef Boyardee. Who’s to say which is better? The buyer, that’s who.

      But don’t say they’re the same. It’s objectively untrue.

      1. And of course the jobs to be done are quite different: a peak gustatory experience with a side of status signalling, versus some inexpensive tasty calories to fuel the body and stave off hunger pangs.

  4. “You say Android is the first to offer third party keyboards? iOS is the first to do it without allowing all of your keystrokes to be read by those self-same third-party developers.”
    And how exactly does Apple’s version not read the keystrokes? Are they also using databases created in Android? How would this work without?

    “You say Android is the first to offer inter-app communications? iOS is the first to do it without exposing your mobile device to a “toxic hellstew” of computer viruses.”
    Never encountered one. Maybe the “hellstew” is just a travel portion Dinty Moore? How big is the Apple malware environment? It does exist and it’s growing.

    “You say Android is the first to allow Widgets? iOS is the first to make them a seamless experience.”
    So says you. You’re entitled to your opinion.

    “You say Android is the first to allow photo backup and storage? iOS is the first to let you do it effortlessly.”
    Because you know, I just broke my back uploading mine? Really?

    “You say Android is the first with a slew of other features? iOS is the first to do those same features without bringing your operating system to its knees.”
    Specifics please… And even so, what does Apple do when it brings the system to it’s knees? It disallows the feature. That should be the default, not the exclusive. Nothing is slower than “won’t run”.

    Anyway, you present these valid opinions as fact. Facts, they are not.

    You then go one to contradict yourself in your conclusion:
    “So, am I saying iOS is superior to Android? No, I am not. “Superior” is a subjective term. Each consumer gets to decide for themselves what product best suits their needs. That’s the beauty of the free market.”
    There’s also beauty in the “free device”, I offer jailbreakers as proof. The free device and open market are not incompatible.

    1. “And how exactly does Apple’s version not read the keystrokes?” ~ klahanas

      The communication is sent to an iOS sandbox and only non-personal information is released to the developer. My article has a slide demonstrating how this would work in theory under the highlighted phrase “SECURITY”.

      “Never encountered (a virus) ~ klahanas

      I’ve never met a terrorist either but that doesn’t make them any less real.

      Report: 97% Of Mobile Malware Is On Android.

      http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/03/24/report-97-of-mobile-malware-is-on-android-this-is-the-easy-way-you-stay-safe/

      There’s no point trying to have an intelligent discussion, klahanas, if you’re going to consistently refuse to acknowledge facts that are known to all.

      You’re entitled to your opinion (on widgets). ~ klahanas

      Yes, I am. And you’re not entitled to an opinion on iOS widgets because you know nothing about them. When you know nothing, say nothing.

      “Because you know, I just broke my back uploading (my photos).” ~ klahanas

      Again, if you think that “seamless” is the proper description for how Android uploads your photos, the discussion is over either because you refuse to acknowledge reality or because you’re not using the standard definition of words.

      “Anyway, you present these valid opinions as fact. Facts, they are not.”

      Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. ~ Aldous Huxley

      “You then go one to contradict yourself in your conclusion: “So, am I saying iOS is superior to Android? No, I am not. “Superior” is a subjective term. Each consumer gets to decide for themselves what product best suits their needs. That’s the beauty of the free market.”

      There’s no contradiction in my statement, klahanas. Let’s say that I like sedans and you like all terrain vehicles. Sedans make poor all terrain vehicles and all terrain vehicles make poor sedans. But each respective vehicle might be the perfect vehicle to serve our separate needs.

      1. There is no point. I’ve never had a virus on a PC. In klahanas’ world, viruses on the PC are not an issue.

          1. I have a clue. Accept reality, not this bizarre version of it you wish to exist in.

      2. There is a slide under “Security First” that tells me absolutely nothing. It’s the one with three boxes and the picture of a guy. That one? I’m supposed to infer sandbox from that?

        “I’ve never met a terrorist either but that doesn’t make them any less real.” Right! And that does not make Apple Airways immune. This is about the bad guys!

        97% percent! I’ll accept that. 97% of what? A small number! Certainly compared to Windows. On Android, I do use AV. It’s a reality of life. We don’t like paying for cops, but we do need them. I do think you of the Apple persuasion are perpetuating a false sense of security. This isn’t as much about the platform, as it is about the bad guys. I’ll tell you what…. if curation is good, Apple should cache their own subset of the Net, and declare that that’s all you need. That would be even safer. That, of course is an intentionally ridiculous point to highlight trading freedom for the perception of security. But what do I know, I’m clearly over my head in this otherwise intelligent discussion…

        I know enough about iOS widgets in that they’re limited to the notification area. That’s okay, I suppose. How is that seamless compared to placing them anywhere you like? Widgets placed on my homescreen, or anywhere else I want, seems pretty seamless to me. There at a glace, wherever I find it convenient. Strictly subjective as to what one may prefer.

        Regarding Photos, I don’t know how much more seamless it can be when I shoot a picture on my phone and it ends up, without my intervention, on my cloud account. Seems pretty seamless to me. How do YOU think Android uploads?

        You cannot proclaim superiority via strongly held opinion based statements on one hand and then back out that it’s subjective on the other. It’s a change in tone, and that’s what I called contradictory.

        1. “97% percent! I’ll accept that. 97% of what? A small number!” ~ klahanas

          If you want to contend that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around the earth, then there is no point in my discussing geography or astronomy with you. And if you want to contend that Malware isn’t an issue with Android then there’s no point in my discussing Android with you either.

          1. I was actually agreeing it’s an issue. Did I not say I run AV? What the heck!

            Here’s where I disagree…

            If you think that Android is the flea infested mongrel you paint, you’re wrong. The very article you cite states 804 new threats in 2013 among ALL platforms. That’s a tiny number, certainly when compared to Windows. The article further states that they are predominantly from sideloaded apps, centered mostly in the Middle East and Asia.

      3. I’ve never met a terrorist either but that doesn’t make them any less real.

        That is a far superior response than I have been using to the “I never get viruses” crowd, and so I am stealing it.

          1. Funny ’cause Justin Long told me “Macs don’t get viruses”. The people who change their video cards know what they are getting into, and they wouldn’t tolerate being managed on their own machines. Their head is in silicon chip, which is a higher form of sand (see what I did there?).
            I can go into a whole litany of how all computer are subject to viruses, how viruses are now just a different form of malware. It’s a reality of life, deal with it.
            I did get a few viruses over the years… My devices were hijacked, it hid the filesystem, and I couldn’t install anything unless it was “approved”….

  5. The Mac versus Windows race is still being run, and for the past few years the Mac has been gaining on Windows. I wonder if it’s time for Apple to do one more of those things they never would have done under Steve Jobs, and start licensing OS X to OEMs? I wonder how much a PC manufacturer would be willing to pay per machine for OS X? I’m pretty sure it would be some multiple of the price Microsoft gets for Windows.

    1. I wonder if it’s time for Apple to do one more of those things they never would have done under Steve Jobs, and start licensing OS X to OEMs? ~ Mayson

      If you’d watched the recent WWDC, you’d know that Apple is going in the opposite direction. They’re going for “continuity” between the iPod, iPhone, iPad and Mac and that requires a maniacal focus on integrating both the hardware and the software for iOS and OS X.

      1. And what’s in it for Apple to license their machines? We have the benefit of history on this on. We know what happened.

    2. Doubt any licensing to OEMs will ever occur, especially since OS X is free, and Apple includes no mechanism to validate.

    3. It isn’t going to happen. Apple doesn’t need that many customers. Very soon Apple will have north of a billion users, and not just any billion users, Apple dominates the ‘best customer’ segment of the market. I suspect Apple will level off somewhere in the billion-plus range. Licensing OSX or iOS would not help Apple, it would actually hurt the company. In the next decade it is going to become painfully clear that Apple’s model of privacy, security, integration, and curation was the correct path.

  6. Thank you. This is the most intelligent and most common sense article about Apple, Samsung, Google, etc. technology that I have heard. Your points are right on point. “All roads lead to Rome.” All of these companies will end up with the same hardware and the same software eventually. What matters is how well these companies integrate these elements and features. Samsung rushed many items into production like their Galaxy Gear Watch. It’s not a good product. Sales figures verify this. Google’s Android OS’s cause Android run products to crash and require re-booting very often. The lack of consumer updating and upgrading is partially at fault. Apple customers line up for days and even weeks for new products, and the majority of customers update to new software versions the day they are released. This is because Apple spends years working on products, software and hardware, before they even begin Beta testing, or announcing a future release. Wonderful article.

  7. great article! If only some of the tech pundits had half a clue as you so eloquently put here.

    1. Thank you, Alex, your comment is much appreciated. And your flattery is overwhelming, so please…keep it coming! 🙂

      1. Samsung: (2nd post) we’ll be announcing something soon
        Samsung: (4th post) and here’s what it looks like (modeled on 3rd post)
        Amazon: people who’ve commented on this, have also commented on
        Facebook: see comments that friends have made , but don’t expect to see the same list on your phone, tablet, or computer. Also at any moment we’ll change the algorithm, so you’ll see a different set of comments. Meanwhile, have you seen a business case lying around anywhere?
        Microsoft: Come back to your desk, and get real work done!
        Twitter: dang! Out of charac…
        Yahoo/MySpace/Friendster/Others: Remember us? No, oh.

  8. The big thing that Apple did with iOS 2.0 – and the thing that made the entire app economy possible – was making it safe to download software. As anyone who has had to fix family PCs knows: it was NEVER even remotely safe to download software prior to 2008. You just had to teach people not to do it. Furthermore, almost nobody realised that the main value of the web browser was its safety. And yet what part of the web experience did Apple take pains to copy? That very safety; the sandbox. Not just copy, but extend with curation. And they’ve kept it as a priority ever since. And few people appreciate this fact.

    Now, it might be “subjective” whether iOS or Android is better, but let’s consider the impact of Apple vs. Google. Without Apple’s singular focus on safety, there wouldn’t be an app economy, not as it exists today. Google only changed the way it approached 3rd party software because Apple showed it what an app store could be. Without Apple, it would’ve been the same story all over again. Without the App Store reaching such dizzy heights, nobody would have known what was possible. They would have just assumed that people don’t much like apps, like they didn’t much like software. They only need a few, obviously. Maybe Google would’ve emphasised the browser. Nobody except Apple ever really understood that people were rightfully terrified of software.

    This is similar to another claim I like to make: without Apple’s singular focus on the user experience in creating the Mac, the personal computer wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Nobody else was interested in the user experience. It was hard to get people interested in it even after Apple demonstrated how it’s done. Right up to the mobile era, Microsoft seemed to approach consumers with contempt. Wanting to put a PC on every desk is one thing, but being culturally capable of building a PC normal people want to use is quite another. If you rerun history without Apple, I don’t think you’d get the personal computer as we know it today (and hence the internet and web as they exist today) and you wouldn’t get the smartphone as we know it. You’d have something much, much narrower.

    There’s an important lesson about economic history here too. You don’t always get the “best.” There’s no guaranteed outcome. Markets don’t naturally find the right solution. Left to their devices, markets create ugly smushed together, barely usable consumer electronics of the kind you probably have under your television. Once in awhile, visionary companies, operating far outside the norms of business and management theory, come along and force greatness of the world, much to its confusion and disappointment.

    1. The big thing that Apple did with iOS 2.0 – and the thing that made the entire app economy possible – was making it safe to download software.

      A point entirely lost on the crowd Falkirk is describing. Just as it’s lost on those Windows users who insist they’ve never had a virus (that they know of) to deny the fact that the overwhelming majority of viruses, trojans and malware have been and continue to be for Windows, and less than a half dozen trojans on the OS X side don’t suddenly tip the scales.

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