

Will Apple’s history repeat itself and make Android the winner? - ssubo
http://blog.subotovsky.com/2010/04/will-apples-history-repeat-itself.html

======
kls
Unfortunately, I believe the answer is yes. I run a MacBook Pro as my main
machine and I own an iPhone and believe that they will be the last apple
products that I buy for a while. After the Amiga dies, I was a apple user
until shortly after the PPC and got burnt on that transition as I bought a
machine right before the transition and then they killed OS support for the
old 040 chips rather quickly, swore them off and then slowly got wooed back by
their flawless handling of the transition to Intel. Now with the constant
compromises I have to make for the iPhone, I am finding it to restrictive of a
platform and am actively looking for a replacement.

For example, I was at our family lake house in NC last week on vacation, I am
actively in talks over a few CIO positions and one of the companies asked me
to forward my resume in word format. If I could upload files to my phone then
I could have attached it to an email and sent it out. I have a striped down
Google doc resume that I use for just this case but it doe not compare to my
word or PDF resume which contain charts and diagrams to visualize my
accomplishments. Due to an arbitrary platform restriction, I have to do funky
stuff like email the file to myself and then forward that email to any
requester.

Moving on from that, the tethering thing is another pain in the butt that to
me has no rhyme or reason. I have to use my Wife's Blackberry (on AT&T) to
tether my computer at the lake house. Same network but one phone has tethering
intentional disabled.

Anyway, long story short I am starting to feel the restrictions of the
platform and now it looks like Apple is abandoning a lot of good solution
providers because they might compete a little on their platform. With no
competition innovation stifles even in a company like Apple.

Time will tell, and Steve has pulled off some miracles but as for me, I think
Apple has lost me again which is a shame because they are one of the few
companies left that put such a focus on quality.

~~~
colinplamondon
I don't see how your experiences have any wider ramifications- tethering and
not being able to access a file system have nothing to do with the reasons Mac
OS got killed by Windows in the late 80's/early 90's. It was pricing.

And, besides, as a power user you can just jailbreak and install NetModem, or
you could have gone into Google Apps, forwarded yourself the actual PDF, and
then forwarded that forward on. Those are roundabout, but we're talking about
edge cases, and in a well designed UI, edge cases are handled in an edge
fashion.

~~~
kls
\--I don't see how your experiences have any wider ramifications- tethering
and not being able to access a file system have nothing to do with the reasons
Mac OS got killed by Windows in the late 80's/early 90's. It was pricing.

I disagree, they where lagging in every department performance, aging OS,
mismanagement and making horrible decision to rectify the situation. Copeland
was a disaster the CHRP platform was a disaster the Pippen was a disaster the
Performa was a disaster, the clones where a disaster. If Price where the only
issue it would have been easily rectified.

\--And, besides, as a power user you can just jailbreak and install NetModem

I am sorry but that is probably the worst justification I have heard. If I
need to go through a bunch of half hacks to open up a platform then I would
rather switch and that was the point of my original post.

\--and in a well designed UI, edge cases are handled in an edge fashion

no well designed UI and systems provide usability and do not force a user to
hack out workarounds to account for lack of usability. As well emailing an
attachment is not an edge case.

------
andreyf
The situation is somewhat similar, but with some key differences:

\- the PC/Mac market has Microsoft taking a cut of every PC sold. Not so with
Google's Android. With minimal software costs, making Android handsets is dirt
cheaper.

\- in the PC/Mac market, Apple makes most of their money selling hardware. In
the mobile market, Apple is also making money facilitating the sale of content
(Movies, Music, Apps).

\- currently, Apple has an enormous advantage in the number of developers
targeting their platform. As the industry matures, developers will gravitate
even more to the device where they can make money selling their apps. When
people start realizing how to easily pirate Android apps, I predict Apple will
be the clear winner here.

~~~
bad_user
> _When people start realizing how to easily pirate their Android apps, I
> predict Apple will be the clear winner here._

You could've said the same thing about Windows apps.

Piracy (which always acted as a marketing scheme for software) is also
becoming irrelevant since many apps on the iPhone are just frontends to online
services.

Besides, the free lunch is almost over. People are getting tired of fart apps.

~~~
colinplamondon
You could have said the same about barely wired desktop PC app piracy in 1991
as ubiquitously connected mobile device app piracy in the year 2010?

~~~
bad_user
I was thinking more about '95 when Win95 was released, but yeah.

Back then I had a PC with dozens of pirated apps and games (there were
"pirates" which took orders by phone, and delivered CDs by mail).

In fact I haven't used so much pirated software as in the nineties :)

~~~
jarek
When I was younger and in a different legal jurisdiction, pirates would
deliver the CDs to your house. Price was comparable with a pizza order, too.

------
tptacek
People said the same thing about the iPod. Here, Google even has a handy graph
of it:

[http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=apple+microsoft+%22hi...](http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=apple+microsoft+%22history+repeating%22&scoring=n&hl=en&ned=us&sa=N&sugg=d&as_ldate=2000&as_hdate=2004&lnav=hist4)

~~~
jarek
I would cautiously advocate a claim that Apple cannibalized their own iPod
market share with the iPhone OS devices precisely to avoid getting
cannibalized by everyone else.

The problem is... where do you go from iPhone OS?

~~~
wmf
Why do you think iPod would have been cannibalized? IIRC its market share was
holding steady at >70% when iPhone was announced.

~~~
jarek
Portable music players got too easy. Apple's strength is doing things either
differently or better than everyone before them. The required hardware got
commoditized hard, and if the competition wasn't quite as stylish or polished,
they rapidly started being good enough to eat a substantial piece of the cake.

~~~
tptacek
Portable music players _were always easy_. Apple _always_ had competition,
from big players and from small player, at high price points and low price
points, competing on features, competing on design. Portable music players
didn't get too easy. Apple _ran out of people to sell them to_.

------
gamble
Cost of a decent computer in 1990: >= $2000

Cost of the best smartphones in 2010: <= $200

"Good enough" is a tradeoff someone makes when they're forced to drop a
significant fraction of their yearly income on a product. Smartphones are so
cheap, the quality of the user experience is going to be far more important
than it was with early PCs.

~~~
Nwallins
> _Cost of the best smartphones in 2010: <= $200_

You should use the unsubsidized cost. Like if you need to replace an iPhone or
buying a Nexus One. More like $600.

~~~
gamble
$200 is what the average person pays up-front for their phone. But my point is
that you can't save a significant amount of money by buying one of the iPhone
alternatives.

------
dennykmiu
I absolutely agree with the author's observation. I was in my 20's when Apple
released the Apple II and Steve is basically repeating history which is that
Apple is the only game in town until the rest of the world figures out their
secret sause and gang up on them. I wrote this up recently, hope you like.
<http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/ipad-is-the-prequel>

------
TomOfTTB
The problem with people who make this argument is they attribute causation to
the fact that Apple was integrated when in fact Apple lost out to the PC
because it stagnated. Anyone who looks at Apple's history realizes that they
managed to stay ahead of Microsoft for almost a decade. If you look at the
original Mac versus Windows which really didn't overtake the Mac until Windows
3.11 in 1992. So Apple didn't lose because it was an integrated provider Apple
lost because they basically didn't move forward for an entire decade while
Microsoft continued to move forward at a rapid clip. There are other reasons
like Steve Jobs leaving and them choosing the PowerPC but in the end you can't
say that Apple lost strictly because of its exclusive nature.

~~~
pyre
> _There are other reasons like Steve Jobs leaving_

I'm not entirely convinced that Apple would have done better had Steve Jobs
stayed at the company. It's entirely possible that he would have run the
company into the ground while avoiding the other poor choices that Apple made
in his absence. It's also entirely possible that during his time away from the
company he learned things that allowed him to come back to the company with a
fresh outlook. The idea the Steve Jobs is the sole reason that Apple can be
successful, leading to the conclusion that Apple would have been successful
for their entire history, had Steve Jobs never left, is wild speculation at
best.

------
martythemaniak
Another reason to think it'll repeat itself is that Apple is picking a fight
with seemingly everyone. It's fighting MS, Google, Adobe, its own developers
etc. It wants to own and control pretty much every aspect related to its
products and that's not sustainable.

~~~
nfnaaron
I realise comparisons with 1984, and Apple's 1984 commercial, are fairly
obvious, but with Apple's recent "must be written in" developer rules, they're
now extending their ownership and control into the words you can use (as a
developer). ++Bad.

------
gxs
This article was a nice change of pace from the usual quality of apps, poor
adobe kerfuffle.

I personally am intrigued by this battle unfolding between Apple and everyone
else as I was too young to fully digest/enjoy Microsoft's battles with
Apple/IBM/etc.

------
aresant
A counter point is that consumers have had years of headaches with traditional
"open" platforms like windows

Apple has been gaining market share for a nearly a decade on their messaging
of simplicity and stability and plenty of non-techies that I know LOVE their
iPhone vs. frustrated with the lack of continuity with Android already.

~~~
pyre
I'd like to know how MacOS X is any less of an 'open platform' that MS Windows
is. Other than hardware lock-in, there are no tight developer restrictions.

People aren't complaining that they can't run iPhoneOS on another smart phone.
They are complaining that they can only run software on iPhoneOS that has been
approved by Apple, and that Apple is being an ass towards developers for the
platform in general. None of this was true of either Windows or MacOS.

> _I know LOVE their iPhone vs. frustrated with the lack of continuity with
> Android already._

[citation needed]

Cite me people that are 'frustrated with the lack of continuity with Android'
that aren't:

* in the techie 5% of the population

* designers that are anal about the smallest of details

~~~
tvon
People who aren't in that 5% don't know what Android is.

Well, people who aren't techies and don't have some involvement in the
industry, anyway.

~~~
pyre
How can non-techies be 'frustrated with the lack of continuity of Android' if
they don't know what it is?

