Aug
24
2009
The Case Against Apple
Posted by: Rowan in Personal Blog, tags: App Store, Apple, iPhone, iTunesFair disclosure right now: this is going to be a boring post about whether Apple are evil or wonderful, and so many of you won’t give a rat’s backside. But it’s not very technical, it’s about business ethics, so I hope you’ll give it a punt…
http://calacanis.com/2009/08/08/the-case-against-apple-in-five-parts/
1. Destroying MP3 player innovation through anti-competitive practices
The whole argument here is flawed. To say that by disallowing other media players from syncing with iTunes Apple is stifling competition is rubbish. Apple developed a nice piece of software in iTunes, and so that effort gets tied to their players – a cynical but accurate view might be that by not supporting other players they avoid consumers blaming them when they have problems with other players. But here’s the thing – Apple doesn’t stop anyone else making their own media software! iTunes isn’t so great that people would choose the iPod just to use iTunes, if anything, people do the opposite; use iTunes because they have an iPod. The clear example here is the Palm Pre, where Palm couldn’t be bothered to write their own software, so they wrote a hack to make the Pre work with iTunes and passed it off as a feature. Yes, Apple broke it, but they warned Palm before the Pre ever shipped that they would likely break it. It’s not stifling the competition, the Pre is a good product, all Palm had to do was make good sync software to go with it, but they didn’t bother.
2. Monopolistic practices in telecommunications
I agree here to a great extent, but it’s important to note that carrier exclusivity is an old problem in the phone industry, not one invented by Apple. No-one complained about the O2 XDA or the T-Mobile sidekick. Just because the iPhone is more popular, Apple gets the heat. However, yes, it would be nice if the iPhone was available on more carriers. But note that in many countries it is, and all the indications are that the iPhone will be available on more networks once existing exclusivity agreements expire.
The article also ignores the fact that Apple has done a lot for the good of the mobile phone industry, and a lot to help handset makers break the stranglehold that carriers had on them. By vastly expanding the market for premium quality phones, they’ve allowed other manufacturers to produce more decent quality products and charge a decent price for them, rather than being forced into making “free” rubbish products because the networks want the price to look good. They’ve forced networks to innovate too – take Visual Voicemail, something tried by others before but never successfully, because getting handset makers and carriers to work together was virtually impossible.
3. Draconian App Store policies that are, frankly, insulting
OK, let’s start with the first paragraph. “your phone–which you render obsolete every 13 months” Err…. Hello? That’s rubbish. Apple provide new models on a roughly yearly basis, yes. They also provide software updates with major new features FREE to existing users. Let’s contrast that with HTC & Windows Mobile as an example. HTC release new models just about every month, while Microsoft don’t provide a simple updates system for their OS, and in fact say that current Windows Mobile phone won’t be able to upgrade to version 6.5 let alone 7. Apple releasing new hardware does not make the old hardware obsolete, far from it. If you’re geeky enough to want to upgrade (as I am), then that’s your choice, and is no worse with Apple than with any other handset manufacturer.
As for the App Store approvals process, over 95% of all apps are approved. Age ratings now mean adult material is allowed, contrary to the article (albeit not hardcore porn, but I can’t say that bothers me!), and often the approvals process helps users out a lot. An app I love just had an update rejected because it presented iPod touch users with an option to use “vibrate only” for notifications. Fair enough really, that would have been very annoying and confusing for iPod users whose device doesn’t have a vibrate function. I also think it’s reasonable that Apple controls what it sells on its store, and you do have to remember that Apple charges less to host, distribute, promote and provide a payment infrastructure for the App Store than Blackberry, HandAndGo (the most popular Windows Mobile store) et al, so it’s an attractive proposition for developers, not to mention the fact that they charge nothing to provide those services for free apps. However, I do agree that it would be good to have a way to download and install apps from elsewhere direct onto my device. No argument from me there.
4. Being a horrible hypocrite by banning other browsers on the iPhone
Yeah, that was a bad move, but they changed their minds. C’est la vie. I don’t agree that Opera on a WinMob device is anything like as nice as Safari, but that’s beside the point. I agree that other browsers should be allowed, and they now are.
Fair disclosure right now: this is going to be a boring post about whether Apple are evil or wonderful, and many of you won’t give a rat’s backside. But it’s not very technical, it’s about business ethics, so I hope you’ll give it a punt…
Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com and generally respected geek recently presented The Case Against Apple in Five Parts, explaining that he’s an Apple fan but has grown fed up with them recently. Much has been said in many places about the merits of his arguments, but the general concensus seems to be that he’s mostly talking rubbish. However, he’s talking enough sense to be worth considering, and I don’t disagree with everything he says. I had a lively discussion around this with a colleague, who urged me to blog my thoughts, so I am. I recommend reading the original post, and perhaps one or two of the other good responses. But anyway, here’s the relevant bits, along with my take on them…
BBC iPlayer is a great service, and its recent expansion in the mobile space is impressive, but the line-up has a gaping hole – the iPhone. The iPhone and iPod touch have been able to stream iPlayer content over WiFi for over a year now, and were in fact the first mobile devices to support iPlayer at all. But you can’t download programmes to your iPhone, and so you can’t watch them offline, which is a very large caveat. The issue has been addressed in 
