
Apple’s Spat With Google Is Getting Personal - jlhamilton
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/technology/14brawl.html
======
doron
When the directors are good, sequels can be interesting sometimes they top the
original concept.

Interruption technology appears, apple gets to it first in a consumer friendly
way, with superior design. Apple makes lots of money. Apple attempts to lock
the market. Other vendors imitate and innovate, maybe even with inferior
design. Rival vendor makes said technology ubiquitous. Apple wails. Apple
marginalized back to niche market.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes

its hard to imagine how Steve Jobs can win this without completely stifling
innovation, which he does not have the power to do.

If Apple is experiencing a sense of deja vu its because the core mode of
operation, that of an isolated by design operator, did not change.

The last fight of this type left apple half dead, and if apple isn't careful
it might end up half dead after this one as well. Democratization of platforms
has always been in the best interest of developers,and software drives
hardware sales, not the other way around. Apple always fought this notion,
personally i hope that on this issue it will lose and continue to lose, again
and again.

At stake here is everything that made apple triumphant again. smart phones
largely negate the need for an isolated mp3 players for instance, and online
offerings attack itunes directly as well.

I have two apple servers in my shop largely stylish weights now. Take Apple's
entry to the server platform. It betrays a conceptual gap with a huge
industry, you cannot virtualize the os platform, nor can you use the hardware
as sensible virtual host, it is harder to install a non apple operating system
on the server offerings then its is on a desktop. incredible short sighted
approach.

Sometimes i feel Apple has a distinct strategic reliance on the idea that the
user must remain somewhat scared and in awe of the "magic" that operates the
machines, it really aggravates them when other vendors, as well as consumers
finally get it.

somewhat similar to a time you figure the priest was actually lying to you.

Not that I am pulling for Google, the are to be judged with suspicion as any
business of this scale should be.

But just like Microsoft in many ways created the capability for people to have
machines cheap enough and open enough to give birth to moders and Linux
development. so Google with their approach allow a whole slew of technology
that will mark the ascent of its future rivals

~~~
Alejandro
As John Grubber pointed out some time ago, the last time of that "fight", was
with the iPod...

You might say that this iPhone situation has very little to do with the iPod
one, but if so, so does the mac situation.

~~~
enjo
I disagree...

This is quite reminiscent of the Mac/PC battle in the 80's. It's a more open
platform vs. a walled-garden.

There was never a 'open' mp3 player battling the iPod. There was never really
a developer eco-system of any kind. Mp3 players, the iPod included, where
single purpose devices. The value proposition never rested on open development
and innovation.

I think Android will win this, provided that Google gets some kind of handle
on the fragementation issues. They're pursuing a model quite close to what
Series 60 has done for years. The entire Android eco-system is bringing a lot
of phones to market. Some are hits and some are misses, but at the end of the
day all of those phones results in HUGE numbers and ultimately a higher
combined market share...even if no single phone ever sales as well as an
iPhone.

~~~
Alejandro
I was not trying to say it is like the iPod, but at the same time, I think it
isn't like the mac/pc either, and lets face it, the pc has never been (pc =
windows pc, at least here) a truly open development platform.

Android will win this, if by win we mean more marketshare. But we all know
that is not the only measure of success.

~~~
enjo
I suppose it really depends on how you define 'open'. Has windows ever been
open in the open source sense? Of course not. However, the difference in the
early days of windows vs. Mac was pretty stark. Microsoft did have a platform
that was open in the sense that any developer could easily write software for
it. The documentation was widely available. There where no hoops to jump
through to actually sell the software. The whole thing was easy.

That 'openess' gave Microsoft a huge advantage. It provided it with a bevy of
applications that simply didn't exist for the Mac. In addition Microsoft was
hardware neutral, meaning that the collective marketing machines of thousands
of companies worked to push Windows over the Mac.

It's the same thing here. As a developer, the release process is simpler and
cleaner. The OS itself affords you more flexibility particularly with
background apps. There are an entire classification of apps that you simply
can't write for the iPhone that you can for Android. Over time, those become
increasingly important. As Android devices proliferate, you'll begin to hear
more and more about apps that are awesome... and they simply don't exist for
the iPhone. That's when Android wins.

In addition there are a lot of manufacturers and carriers wedded to Android.
That collective marketing muscle is far greater than even the greatest
marketing company since Barnum and Bailey (Apple). We already hear a lot of
noise about Android, and that's only going to increase in intensity.

Again, this is all for naught if Google doesn't fix those fragmentation
issues. If the weight of supporting all of those phones individually becomes
to heavy, the whole thing collapses. It's hard to innovate when your simply
scrambling to keep up with the differences in hardware. If they're able to
unify these things and come up with a sane way for developers to deal with it,
well then I just don't think there is any contest.

------
bugs
Apple is really starting to subscribe to the competition is bad for business
standpoint and it really is starting to get annoying.

You can see that apple really wants to be _the_ smartphone distributor but
they really can only do that two ways: create a cheaper phone or remove the
cheaper competing phones from competition

For me I put my support into google I have a droid and like it very much and
the iphone on the other hand was not meant for me but this fueding between
apple and the tech world makes me not want to support apple.

~~~
Perceval
Well, you _know_ that Apple will be unwilling to make a "cheaper" phone. They
are in the 'premium computing device' business—i.e. they'll never sell
something perceived as cheap, they'll never cut features in order to get the
price down.

I think what we're seeing here is partly a tragic flaw in Steve Jobs's
persona. He obviously has an issue when he feels that his innovation has been
ripped off. What we may be seeing here is a replay of the 'look and feel' type
dispute between Jobs and Gates. Jobs felt that his innovation was simply
ripped off by a cheaper, tasteless knockoff (and in a sense he was right). In
the end, there was nothing Jobs could do about it. Now he feels like the same
thing happened. Just as Jobs had shown Gates his ideas in confidence and was
then ripped off, Jobs likely feels the same way about Schmidt--he took Schmidt
into his confidence, allowed him to be privy to Jobs's vision, and now Google
is producing graceless copies of what he's worked so hard on.

Obviously Google's side of the story may be true—they bought Android and
developed it for a long time, well before the iPhone was revealed. Apple
doesn't necessarily have a right to prevent other companies from copying touch
interfaces and other aspects of the iPhone that were unique when it was first
introduced. But if I were Steve Jobs I might feel like the same thing that
happened to me in the early '90s is in danger of happening to me again in the
late '00s / early '10s. It's one of those fool me once, shame on you, fool me
twice, shame on me situations, and I'm sure it's frustrating for Jobs at a
time when he's rightly perceived as being at the top of his game.

~~~
matasar
While it's nice to build a cool narrative around Steve Jobs and a long time
"tragic flaw," this doesn't hold up. Steve Jobs was not at Apple when they
sued Microsoft. It was filed in 1988[1], and Jobs was forced out of Apple in
1985 [2].

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp).
[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs>

~~~
Perceval
You're right that the lawsuit itself was not Jobs's personal doing, but the
acrimonious personal dispute between Jobs and Gates certainly was about 'look
and feel' and the perception that Gates knocked off Jobs's innovation. Gates
was brought in by Jobs and shown his project in order to get Microsoft on
board for Mac software. Then Gates came out with what Jobs thought was an
imitation of the Mac UI, an imitation he believed that Gates could only have
done by copying what Jobs had shown him.

Jobs's perceptions in that case or in the current case with Schmidt may not be
accurate or just, but that doesn't mean they don't play an important
psychological role in Apple's current strategy toward HTC, Google, and
Microsoft.

~~~
nkassis
while Pirates of Silicon valley was a cool movie, it wasn't exactly a good
recount of the whole affair. In fact, Microsoft really mostly took their idea
from the same exact place Apple did, Xerox. They even hired many Xerox
employees to work on Windows.

Jobs seems incapable of believing that two companies can come up with similar
products at the same time. The iPhone did not include any technology not
already available elsewhere. It was the package as a whole that made it
innovative.

------
megaduck
Google and Apple used to be bound together in a common goal: break the
Microsoft hegemony.

However, they had two fundamentally different reasons for doing so. Google
wanted a free and open web, where they could develop awesome server-based
applications. Apple simply wanted to replace Windows computers with Apple
computers. Those two goals are increasingly incompatible.

Now that they've managed to make Microsoft widely irrelevant, these vicious
fights look inevitable. I think it's healthy, actually. Hopefully they'll keep
each other honest.

~~~
doron
I wonder if Microsoft is as irrelevant as people claim it to be. Bing is
gaining share, windows 7 sales are good and the experience of users is good as
well. a new phone system is on the pipeline, and they still completely
dominate business.

This fight is a huge importunity for Microsoft, bring something new while the
other spend their time in courts and media frenzy pushback

~~~
megaduck
It's true, they've still got massive market-share and piles of cash. If you're
competing in the enterprise software space, they're a major contender.

However, it used to be that every new technology venture had to consider 'the
Microsoft problem'. As in, 'How do we avoid getting squashed by Microsoft?'
That's simply not true anymore. When was the last time you heard someone
seriously discussing Microsoft as a competitive threat?

Outside of games, operating systems, and office suites, MS has been largely
de-fanged. Unless they turn things around, they're going to turn into another
Oracle. Big, but not a powerful force outside their narrow domain.

------
protomyth
more tripe.... Businesses will act like Businesses. Google and Apple have very
different ways of making money and they have now reached a point where their
business models are in opposition. No drama, no betrayal, just business.

HTC is Google's weak link because they don't have a patent chest of their own
to defend themselves. Apple and Microsoft already have agreements. Nokia and
Blackberry have their own patents so they probably will get some resolution
with Apple. Samsung does manufacturing for a lot of these companies so they
are probably safe.

~~~
nkassis
Which is sad since HTC has been making very good phones even before the whole
iPhone craze started. Their windows mobile phones were by far the best in my
view before the iPhone came. (I never owned a Windows Mobile HTC but have had
experiences with a few of them through friends). HTC seemed to work hard on
creating better interfaces for the Windows Mobile platform and it does so
again with Android. Their sense UI is quite nice and I believe has many things
that put it above the iPhone. The widgets on the home screen they provide are
awesome.

------
gamble
The problem for Google is that they're wholly dependent on their near-monopoly
on Internet advertising, possibly the world's _least_ rare commodity. (Can you
imagine what a company that controlled a similar share of TV or print
advertising would be worth?) It's easy to imagine a left-field competitor,
like Google itself ten years ago, stealing a substantial chunk of their
revenue. They're also vulnerable to a platform owner like Apple, RIM, or
Microsoft choking off access to its customers. Either scenario would be
apocalyptic for Google.

~~~
barrkel
I can't fully agree. To the extent that they rely on advertising on search,
they are selling searchers to advertisers. It's their monopoly on search that
they're dependent on, not advertising; people searching with intent is the
commodity they trade in.

------
paul9290
Rather then wielding this patent b.s., the solution to hurting competitors
(Andriod) would for Apple to kill it's exclusive at&t contract and then
further innovate the iPhone. Andriod's uptake is attributed to the Droid being
on Verizon, but if iPhone was available on Verizon, t-mobile and Sprint,
Andriod's uptake would seriously slow down.

I owned a HTC hero in oct., but it was junk compared to the iphone and took it
back; replaced it with an iphone. The driod feels junky to me when comparing
it to the sleekness of the iphone, as well the lack of apps andriod has
comparatively is another negative.

~~~
rortian
Here's the thing about that though: it would devastate Apple's profits. At&t
hands over a hefty portion of the contract (where the real money is in
wireless). Why would any carrier consider that with a nonexclusive phone?

------
Tycho
Thing about the 'Apple may switch to Bing' threat is... wouldn't that actually
put consumers OFF? (unless you could change the search bar settings back to
google)

Regarding the 'spat,' all I'm saying is, "everyone" knows Apple should open up
their platform more, yet Apple must have their reasons. It reminds me how
"everyone" knew Nintendo should have ditched cartridge technology earlier, yet
Nintendo (a 100+ year old business) hung in there, poised to make a massive
comeback some point in the future, while other console vendors dropped like
flies.

------
smackfu
I like how the photo that shows that their home screens look alike also is
virtually identical to an ancient Palm Pilot home screen.

<http://www.pdamuseum.com/palm/palm_pics/palm_personal.jpg>

~~~
patrickas
That's not even the home screen on Android!

They opened the applications "drawer" which shows an icon for each application
you have ... and showed that next to the iPhone's home screen. Icons aligned
in a grid on a screen have been used everywhere since early GUIs.

If they had shown the home screen for Android (desktop with widgets and a
couple of icons) the two screens would not look so similar.

------
pkulak
If Apple tries to make Bing the search provider, or takes away my Google
service synching, I'll switch to an Android phone the next day.

------
protomyth
quote from article: "One well-connected Silicon Valley investor, who did not
want to be identified talking about the Google-Apple feud, says he is stunned
by the level of rancor he’s witnessed."

I wonder who this is?

------
hop
Steve got burned a long time ago by MS copying many of Apple's designs. I
think anyone in his shoes would go out of their way to not let it happen
again.

~~~
tensor
He did not. Both Apple and Microsoft used designs originally from Xerox Parc.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface#Xerox_PARC)

~~~
alain94040
Are you sure that no one at Microsoft ever saw a Mac before they implemented
Windows, and that there never was any discussion between Microsoft employees
saying that they liked or dislike any feature of the Mac GUI?

Are you _really_ sure :-) Your one-liner sounded like you know your facts.

~~~
kuzux
What he meant was, Mac's concept of gui was not original, it was pretty much
based on Xerox's. So, even if Microsoft meant to copy the mac, they actually
copied Xerox Parc.

