

Google doesn't get 'social', but Apple doesn't understand the Internet - jfrumar
http://www.decipher.org/2011/02/blind-spots.html

======
larrik
Exhibit A: iTunes (the service) is essentially blocked off from being accessed
by people who don't have iTunes (the program) installed. This becomes VERY
obvious if you run Linux. The App Store and the iTune music library are not
easily searchable or browseable from your Linux PC.

3rd party websites that do this instead aren't really the point, either.

~~~
pohl
I don't think that makes a very compelling exhibit, given that "the internet"
is not "all things you can get to via a web browser". The internet, rather, is
IP, TCP, UDP, etc...and every protocol built on top of it. This includes HTTP
& HTML (which iTunes leverages heavily) but also a many other things that are
not browser-oriented.

Regardless, I think your exhibit is more easily explained by Apple
understanding exactly who is likely to spend money and making them want to be
their customers. I'm a huge Debian fanatic, but I have to admit that the linux
users are the most tight-fisted demographic I've ever seen.

~~~
btmorex
_but I have to admit that the linux users are the most tight-fisted
demographic I've ever seen._

This seems to suggest the exact opposite of what you just said:
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28471/Humble_Indie_Bundle...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28471/Humble_Indie_Bundle_Charity_Drive_Approaches_700000.php)

~~~
pohl
Yeah, that always gets trotted out in this context. If what you think this
suggests is true there would be more than one such story. To me it just smells
of a demographic grateful of finally getting some mercy sex.

Besides, it's a charity. I was talking about commerce.

~~~
btmorex
Well, one real story is a whole lot more compelling than hearsay.

~~~
Bud
He has a bit more than hearsay going for him; Apple's success in various
markets lately has been huge. Linux's success in getting people to spend
anything like that kind of money in any consumer context? Basically nil.

Come on, we all know this, we don't need a page of citations to prove to us
that Apple is the biggest non-Exxon company in world history, and it's not by
accident or some mysterious means.

~~~
fakelvis
Linux's 'failure' in getting people to spend "that kind of money" in a
consumer context is most likely due to the fact that it's not a centrally-
owned commercial entity with a product line and shareholders (i.e. what Apple
Inc. is), not due to do any actual 'failure'.

I'm not saying that the users of Apple products and those of Linux
distributions _don't_ differ in their purchasing habits (and I'm not saying
they do, either)--I'm just pointing out the flaw in this line of reasoning.

And I don't know why you keep repeating this "biggest non-Exxon company in
world history" argument, too. It's sensationalist and by two of the most
common metrics, false:

* By market capitalization they've been the biggest in only three quarters in history (most recent), all of which are smaller than other companies in history: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization)

* By revenue there are many, many non-Exxon (i.e. oil?) companies bigger than Apple: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue>

~~~
Bud
I'm repeating it because it's fun and useful shorthand for saying that Apple
has become incomprehensibly huge lately, not out of some innate desire to
mislead you personally. :) And come on; it's clearly not a linchpin of my
"argument", which does not fall flat just because PetroChina and whoever else
might also be really big. Nor am I delivering some cruel insult to Linux. I
loves me some Linux. I was just pointing out the facts.

As an aside, it would appear that Linux now has an exciting new path to
earning money: winning Jeopardy!

------
rbarooah
I think it would be more accurate to say that from Apple's perspective 'the
internet' is more than just the World Wide Web. Apps (and desktop
applications) are peers to the browser - not something that necessarily has to
run within it.

Part of the reason so much online activity shifted to the web in the web 1.0
era was that the browser sidestepped the problems of distributing and updating
client applications.

With its app stores, Apple has solved these problems, and put applications
back on an equal footing with web apps.

Whether or not this is is the winning strategy over the long term remains to
be seen, but I think it's hard to make the case that Apple doesn't understand
the internet.

------
Samuel_Michon
Apple understands the internet, it just doesn't like what it sees. There's a
lot of smut, hate speech, pirated content, and malware out there.

Just as Google has tried to do with its search engine, Apple is building a
system that makes it easy to find quality content. Content that is legal, age
rated and doesn't harm your devices. A lot of families value those qualities
over 'absolute freedom'.

~~~
Lewisham
I would disagree. Apple fundamentally doesn't understand the Internet.
MobileMe/.Mac has been a decent disaster for a long time, not even able to
meet the quality levels of services that Google gives away for free. That's
not because Apple chooses to not like bits about the net, that's because Apple
doesn't seem to have any idea what its doing in that space.

I'd say that Apple doesn't just not understand the Internet, but at a higher
level, it doesn't understand _communication_. Look at the iOS notification
system: it is, and always has been, fundamentally broken. It assumes you'll
only get a single notification, and that that notification is so important
that it should interrupt your current app to get it.

Apple have been selling computers in phone formats. Android, Microsoft, and
especially Palm, are selling you communicators, that pulls in data from all
over your communication space and centralizes it. Apple doesn't seem to know
how to do this (or assumes most people don't have an online persona in various
locations, which I think most people really do).

~~~
Samuel_Michon
What you're saying is that Apple doesn't understand social networking and
cloud services. I agree, but I suspect Apple is working on those; although
it's anyone's guess what they're going to do with the massive data center
they've just built in NC.

The article was about Apple trying to control how people interact with content
on the internet. The author feels that that's against the nature of the
internet, hence: "Apple doesn't understand the internet".

~~~
Lewisham
Well, to be fair, the author only has one paragraph about Apple and the
Internet, and you could get multiple readings from it :) When I read control
and centralization, I don't just think of iTunes, but I do think of Apple's
dogged insistence that everything you do is essentially tied to one machine.
Your iPhone, and (as I think Tim Bray described it "monsterously") your iPad,
need to be sync'd to a computer when they start up, for no compelling reason.
My Android phone lets me type in my Google ID and off I go.

Honestly, I think Apple's attitude towards the Internet is not because they
don't like it. I think they just don't know what to do with it, certainly
aren't willing to partner with companies that do, and they're letting their
market get chipped away little by little. I've felt like Apple have been
resting on their laurels for years, software-wise. Jonathan Ive is producing
great hardware, but year on year competitors are catching up or surpassing Mac
OS X and iOS, and Apple doesn't seem to notice/care.

------
zipdog
Thinking about the questions at the end,

Microsoft is (or was) really good at backwards compatibility (and making it
easy to import other formats into their own). This is their weakness: they are
focused on getting content into their own formats.

Facebook's strength is to get people to impart information into their system.
Their weakness is in always trying to make it public (or at the least visible
to anyone you friend)

~~~
notahacker
My slightly different spin:

Microsoft is very good at understanding the median user. Their sweet spot is
_good enough_ to justify paying rather than reassuringly expensive, and they
impress users with feature lists and [sometimes illusory] choice over
usability and extensibility. As a result their products can be pretty horrible
for beginners and power users alike, and their blindness towards early
adopters leaves them paying catchup in markets like smartphones

Facebook's strength is addictiveness; they understand how to get eyeballs in.
Their weakness is a failure to add much value to users' lives beyond voyeurism
and distraction.

~~~
bgruber
this bit of thread makes me feel like it's time for neal stephenson to write a
sequel to in the beginning was the command line, only this time the car
companies are apple, google and facebook instead of microsoft, apple, be, and
linux.

------
rradu
"Google doesn't know how to have fun"

Has anyone ever actually said this? Between the logo doodles, April fools
jokes, and bright colors, Google is one of the funnest companies around.

~~~
seabee
Don't forget silly extras you find from time to time (kayak across the Pacific
in Maps, 'Undo send' in gmail). How often do you find things like that from
large companies?

~~~
nickpinkston
Undo send is awesome - my ADD ass always remembers one more thing just after
hitting send. The delay helps on a mental level oddly enough.

------
jarin
What this is basically saying is that the software these companies create
doesn't understand the complexities and chaos of human interaction and
thought.

Pretty sure people have been working on this problem for a while, and it won't
be solved anytime soon.

~~~
Travis
Agreed. How can you possibly expect a computer to make a non-optimal decision,
such as humans regularly do (e.g., the lottery, short versus long-term output,
etc.)? Until we can model these decisions, there will be areas that tech falls
flat.

------
apress
Apps are a return to the walled garden -- the anti-Internet, if you will.

~~~
sfphotoarts
No they are not! apps mostly use the internet for their data, but provide a
richer UX than what a web browser can do. The internet is the underpinning of
most apps.

~~~
eftpotrm
But so much of the beauty of the Internet is its portable ubiquity; I can
write a website once and it's available in much the same format to Windows,
MacOS, Unix, iOS, Android.... you name it. Whereas in the mobile world we're
seeing _millions_ spent on creating what are essentially platform-specific
mobile data clients in parallel versions. They're barely even superior to
what's possible with HTML now. This is madness.

~~~
glhaynes
_They're barely even superior to what's possible with HTML now._

If this were really the case — not just in a spec-sheet way but in a user
experience way — why are all these companies making apps?

~~~
mcav
Because customers can buy apps in one click, so they do.

If webapps had the same payment/installation procedure, they'd take off like a
rocket too. (Given HTML5's local caching and the like.)

~~~
othermaciej
I'd love if it that was true, but the evidence isn't really there.

For instance, Chrome Web Store offers a payment/installation for web apps, and
it doesn't seem to be taking off like a rocket.

------
epistasis
iOS tries hard to make web apps first class citizens. And the HTML, CSS, and
JavaScript parts that make this possible are in HTML5.

It's not that Apple doesn't understand the internet, it's that many geeks want
"native" apps, rather than having web apps on mobile devices. Apple tolerates
these apps, but just barely, and offers the web as the way out of their walled
garden.

~~~
kbutler
>Apple tolerates these [native] apps, but just barely, and offers the web as
the way out of their walled garden.

Geeks wanting native apps, and Apple reluctantly going along may have been the
case when the iPhone & App Store first began, but Apple has long since
realized that the app channel is very valuable to users and to the platform,
and that control over that channel will be hugely profitable.

If Apple really wanted to have webapps be first class iOS citizens, they would
provide Phonegap capabilities standardized in the native browser
(<http://www.phonegap.com/>).

~~~
epistasis
PhoneGap seems interesting, but I don't fully understand it yet. Which of its
capabilities should be added to the browser? Should they be standardized in
HTML5 or should they be part of a devices OS?

~~~
semanticist
PhoneGap provides, if you include its JavaScript file in your PhoneGap-wrapped
web app, JavaScript APIs to the camera, stored photos, the address book, and
some other stuff.

Some of this stuff is in 'HTML5', like geolocation, but much of it isn't.
Apple could have provided custom APIs to the camera and so on and allowed
people to access it from their iOS-specific web apps.

The way that an API gets to be a standard is that someone implements it and
people use it - if Apple had included a camera access API in Mobile Safari, it
probably would have found its way into a spec and been implemented by other
browsers.

Your last question seems confused: HTML/CSS rendering and JavaScript
processing is part of the device's OS (in the form of its web browser). No
browser does everything that's in the standard, and most browsers do things
that aren't in the standard. Just adding it to the spec for HTML5 wouldn't be
directly meaningful.

~~~
GHFigs
_a camera access API in Mobile Safari, it probably would have found its way
into a spec and been implemented by other browsers_

To give the curious an idea of what that might look like:
[http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-
work/complete/c...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-
work/complete/commands.html#devices)

~~~
semanticist
Exactly. I would be surprised if people working on WebKit for Apple weren't
involved in those kind of discussions, and would fully expect Mobile Safari to
support a workable device API.

I wonder how long before iOS development is like WebOS development?

------
Synaesthesia
I'd venture to say the internet doesn't get Apple. Many geeks are just anti
anything Apple, and have an irrational hatred for them.

Apple have made huge contributions to the internet, such as Webkit, promoting
web standards, the iPhone and yes, even the iTunes store - still the biggest
internet-based media distribution channel.

~~~
sfphotoarts
Nearly every geek I know has a MBP, and every startup I've worked at uses the
same.

~~~
usaar333
His statement definitely feels true the other way though; the most ani-Apple
people are geeks.

~~~
Kylekramer
Well, of course. That is how fandom works. I don't particularly care if Bella
gets with Jacob or Edwards, but I don't like the Twilight books. In order to
dislike a particular team/company/entity, you probably have to passionate
about the field in general.

------
joshes
The author claims that Google doesn't "get" social because social relies on
messiness and Google's forte is providing order. However, Facebook, an
organization who does seem to understand social exceedingly well, is known for
its emphasis on organization. We see stories about the higher-ups in Facebook,
such as Zuckerberg, and their heavy hitters whom have gone on to other
projects (colloquially known as the "Facebook Mafia") all sharing this desire
to organize messy, chaotic information across numerous domains.

If Facebook succeeds in social, at least in part because of its attention to
order and organization, why is this fatal for Google?

~~~
philsalesses
In my opinion, facebook can see order where others would see chaos. Order does
not mean hierarchical yet too often those are the buckets information is
placed in. Facebook identifies hubs and organize things around those hubs.
Flexible yet rigid organizational structures are the future.

------
brudgers
> _"What, for example, is Microsoft really, really good at? Or Facebook?"_

Microsoft is really good at B2B.

Facebook has a great email replacement because it does not fill your inbox
with your friend's vacation photos, but still provides the opportunity to view
them.

------
vinceval
I think facebook understand human intra-actions. It understand community. But
it lacks understanding complications in relationships. What is lacks is
understanding of what is excess of usual social-ness. I dont really think they
are helping anyone with their social gaming time-waste-con or their wall post
advertisements or lot of means to do completely unproductive stuff.

For Microsoft its simple. They understand customers, and they understand that
avg customer never needs over-excellence in product. So, they would never be
creative like apple, or tech-savvy like google. Its sad, but the software
giant will never be upto the mark when it comes to driving technology and
innovations.

------
YooLi
People buy Apple because they like the way they work in comparison to
everything else. Since a lot of people seem to be buying Apple devices, by
extension does that mean a lot of people don't understand the internet?

------
pdenya
This article doesn't make sense. Recap: Apple gets people but doesn't get the
internet because the internet is too messy. Google gets the internet but
doesn't get people because people are too messy.

------
tatti_ke_tukde
what is this article about? It is totally random, not edited. It clearly lacks
lack of thought.

------
alsomike
Google has failed multiple times at launching social apps. Is there an
equivalent series of Apple failures from being too controlling? If not, what
makes this a blindspot?

~~~
redial
iTools, .Mac and MobileMe. Also, Ping.

~~~
yardie
The first 3 are the same thing and aren't even social apps.

But, iTools was great when it was around. Way ahead of its time and free! When
they went to subscription model I think most early adopters had a hard time
justifying the price when you could get hotmail for nothing.

------
leon_
Internet != Web

------
Synaesthesia
Also I think Google get social, they appreciate it's potential but just
haven't succeeded at it yet. They weren't focused on it.

~~~
Travis
What is your evidence to support that statement? All I see is many attempts
that indicate Google gets that social is important. All those attempts seem to
illustrate (to me), that they don't get how to do it, or what the core ideas
in "social" are about.

