| Jul302009 | Today I’m ranting about Apple again |
I was pulled into a late meeting at work yesterday between my team. After we got the official business out of the way, we started talking about random stuff as armchair analysts of the computer industries. Stuff like the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, Google’s current state of innovation and its investor appeal, and pondering on why the Apple iPhone is such a strong performer in the marketplace.
Well, I bit my tongue on the last one. They dismissed it as simply fashion and they think as soon as the iPhone loses its fashion appeal, it will go away. I’m probably being a fanboy when I say this but: they just don’t understand Apple’s success.
One, the iPhone’s true appeal: the market for smartphones was a wasteland before Apple joined. There were these Windows Mobile phones where you had to fire up task manager and kill Internet Explorer because it had hung, just like we do today on our computers. There were these Blackberry things that were super popular amongst the hyperactive typist crowd but had a hard time appealing to the casual people. There were all these other phones that each came with a slightly different variation of the core operating system, slightly different user interface, every single app had to be re-invented for each new iteration and it was about as convincing a sell as those Casio calculator-watches. The iPhone came and brought you a common set of hardware platforms and a common software platform that everyone could build off. As Apple updated things, updates were sent to all iPhones of all ages and your existing apps still worked with the new hardware. The UI is far more obvious than other phones. The advanced touchscreen is bucketloads of fun (yes, fun) to play with. When the App Store was introduced, apps were dead easy to find, install and play. Apple controlled the entire experience from the bottom up so that customers didn’t have to suffer the same problems as other phones today.
Two, the fashion thing: this is a terrible argument. Yes, there will always be uninformed consumers that buy according to peer pressure but sometimes peer pressure ain’t so bad when there are a hundred different products in the marketplace and there’s all this jargon you need to read up on before you can make an informed decision. We’re in the middle of a recession and people are still lining up to buy these things, you don’t think there’s a reason beyond trying to look hip? iPhones are actually useful and fun things that people love them and it’s just sour grapes to dismiss it as a fashion accessory. I bet when your company’s product beats out Apple and has people lining up for it, you won’t be dismissing it as “just fashion”.
Finally: once the iPhone loses its appeal, it will go away. This is true of umm… everything in the consumer electronics market. Everyone is trying to build something better than the iPhone. You know who is in the best position to obsolete the iPhone 3GS? Apple. With the iPod mini to iPod nano transition, they proved that they’re willing to innovate and kick any of their existing products to the curb. Because each new iteration of their products makes the old one look like turds and they have a proven track record that makes buyers and investors trust them more than say, the makers of Windows Vista.
One of the biggest reasons I’m glad I switched to Mac and started following Apple news is that I can see things from both sides. I don’t ever want to be one of those software developers that is firmly in one camp and just takes pot shots at the competition. And yes, I understand that Apple is doing a lot of things wrong with its App Store because its new territory for them but, look, the App Store is only one year old. In one year, they introduced this runaway success that has pulled in hundreds of smart developers (and thousands more stupid ones) and all its competitors are now following suit. If they aren’t able to fix this App Store in the next year then it will be because all the smart people that built iTunes and the App Store have collectively died and been replaced with morons.
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