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Fail to Succeed

Posted on 30/09/2007 at 05:00 PM in

There has been some growing dissent amongst the Apple ranks over the past few months. Starting with the delay the Leopard, then the lack of anything worthwhile new in Leopard at WWDC combined with the bullcrap Jobs spewed about web apps being a “great” way of developing for the iPhone. Now add to this list the iPhone 1.1.1 update and the iPod touch.

Apple is setting itself up for a fall. How do I know? Because IBM experienced one and Microsoft has experienced one and Apple is starting to act no differently to how IBM and Microsoft did. In other words they’re getting exceedingly arrogant. Having no competition leads to you thinking you are invulnerable and you can do whatever you want. Then a small company that has been in the shadows will come and steal your thunder.

Apple needs to fail, it needs a reality check to show that it isn’t always right. It looks like it could be heading that way, but I hope the current iPhone flops in Europe (honestly, £900 for a phone for 18 months?). I hope that it helps Apple realise that they need to listen to users more. I know I’m beating a dead horse but Apple needs to open up the iPhone to 3rd party apps. Not web apps, real native apps. Amazon also needs to gain serious market share with their online music store. We have finally found someone who can out-Apple Apple. Sure people will still be buying iPods but if they can lose market share with iTunes then it’s helping them come back down to earth.

Apple has always been able to do what is needed with the Mac, because they have always been the under dog. Yes they have made mistakes, but over the past 10 years they’ve done very little that has been seriously damaging for them. I was thinking that Apple was able to avoid becoming too arrogant with the iPod. After all, they have been making the best MP3 players out there even while they’ve been ahead of the rest of the pack by an order of magnitude. They could throw out something that was similar to the Zune and people would buy it, but they haven’t.

The iPhone has the potential to be Apple’s biggest achievement to date, the holy grail of digital electronics both geeks and regular people have been waiting for. Unfortunately recent success is getting to Apple’s head and I honestly believe they need to fail now and fail hard in order to succeed in the long run. Otherwise we could be looking at the holy trinity of tech companies that had it and blew it, does Steve Jobs really want to be grouped together with IBM and Microsoft in that way?

Apple actually had things going for them before the iPhone 1.1.1 update. The iPhone was a pretty decent phone and when jailbroken you could add an array of pretty cool 3rd party applications to it. If it was left in this state, or maybe finally fully supported, nothing would be wrong. Unfortunately it seems that the use of 3rd party apps has been deemed not within Steve Jobs’ terms of acceptable use of his products and so must be terminated.

But there is the argument that this is a phone and so it needs a relatively controlled environment for application development, which fair enough, is just about a valid argument. But then you get to the iPod touch. Why are there no applications allowed on the iPod touch? It’s fully capable. It’s not like there’s a phone carrier to worry about. Yes I’m still going to get one without the apps, because what’s there by default is worth the £200, but the apps would make it a bargain.

So the problem really boils down to this. Why the hell is Apple using an extremely powerful desktop OS with extremely powerful APIs on a device where they are severely limited? Yes you have a lot of work done for them that they don’t need to re-write, but why take something that can do so much more and lock it down so that it’s a mere shadow of it’s fully capable self. At the moment OS X is merely a toy when it comes to the iPhone or the iPod and the only way to see it fully shine is on a Mac, which is a shame because Apple has a chance to show a much wider audience what a good piece of technology their most valuable asset really is.

Also See: Apple’s Growing Arrogance - Reinvented Blog

(7) Comments

Comments

Talk about arrogance. Apple should do everything to make you happy and fuck all business conventions and standards. You remind me of the early iPhone naysayers… “If the iPhone doesn’t suck my dick, then I’m not buying it.”

Grow up. Apple is a business first and foremost. As a mac and iPhone user and AAPL shareholder, it boggles my mind that geeks (and it is mostly geeks) constantly complain that Apple is not doing everything to keep them happy. Here’s a few points that maybe will bring you to some sanity:
Just because there is no SDK doesn’t mean there will be no SDK.

Just because third-party apps do not work after the update does not mean that they cannot be fixed to work by the developers. How long did it take them to come up with the third-party apps in the first place? As a developer, are you ever surprised when your software does not work exactly with the next update of OSX?

Also, Apple does listen to their customers. 99% of their customers want an iPhone that works and does some amazing things. 1% wants to fuck with the iPhone software and break the user license and then complain like a 5-year-old that “Apple’s not playing nice!” when shit don’t work.

Apple does learn. That’s why they do what they do. They know they can set prices a certain way, and people will buy. Usability is paramount. Hackability is not. As one who stood in line for 6 hours on June 29th, I have no issues with the recent price drop. Its the best damn phone I’ve ever used.

Remember, geek, the iPhone will never suck your dick. And Apple will probably dominate the phone business in a few years. I’m a realist, and Apple ain’t perfect, but they are doing a far better job of innovating and growing compared to their competitors. And as a mac software developer, most of your rantings seem to be based on “biting the hand that feeds you.” Maybe you should develop for Vista.

Posted by Chris on 30/09/2007 at 11:03 PM

“As a developer, are you ever surprised when your software does not work exactly with the next update of OSX?”

If my software didn’t work because of some bug Apple introduced or using some bad code or something then no I wouldn’t be surprised, I’d go and fix it, but what Apple did would be akin to them locking out all 3rd party apps on the Mac. Using private APIs and then seeing your app break is not quite the same as Apple removing all apps and preventing them working.

It is also a lot more than just 1% of people putting software on their iPhone. There was a figure a while ago (I think in the New York Times) that said that one application for the iPhone had been downloaded 80,000 times. That’s closer to 10% of iPhones, just with one application. The fact is that a completely closed platform doesn’t help innovation in the slightest.

And I don’t really want an iPhone. While the phone itself is cool the contracts are ridiculously expensive for what I need, so it’s much cheaper for me to get an iPod touch and a cheap pay as you go phone. I get 500 free texts with my pay as you go phone just by topping up £10 a month (this is with O2). The cheapest iPhone contract at £35 a month gives me just 200 free texts. Yes you get “unlimited” data but data transfer doesn’t help me with calling and texting.

And if you read the blog post you’ll see I don’t mind Apple doing stuff that isn’t 100% what I want. The thing is with the Mac someone else can come along and make something to fill the void that Apple leaves, with the iPhone there isn’t that ability. You have to use what Apple says you can use and just put up with the fact that there’s huge gaps in functionality that only Apple is allowed to fill.

Posted by Martin Pilkington on 01/10/2007 at 12:52 AM

You are maintaining a double standard, Pilky: that you don’t have to comply with your agreements with Apple but Apple has to comply with theirs to you. You broke your agreements and your warranty when you installed third party applications and unlocked your iPhone. Now, you want to whine like a baby because you got caught.

Apple is probably not going to brick your iPhone forever so long as you go back to keeping your agreements. You hackers will test Apple’s patience periodically and Apple will jerk your leash. Hackers need to get much better at spoofing Apple. So far, your efforts have been pathetic.

I believe that Apple will sell third party apps through the iTunes Music Store, but it will be a managed process rather than a free-for-all. It must be to prevent the malware problems on the Wintel side.

Posted by Louis Wheeler on 01/10/2007 at 01:39 AM

1. I’m in the UK and haven’t got an iPhone.
2. I’ve not done any hacking on the iPhone
3. 3rd party apps on the Mac aren’t distributed by a managed process and we don’t have the malware problems we have on the Wintel side.

Posted by Martin Pilkington on 01/10/2007 at 05:55 AM

i have more then 4-5 phones laying in a box in another room. ericsson to nokia to phillips to siemens. all of them start SUCKING as soon as they try to smarten up.

the reason? simple too many variable user combinations and even more application developers who are missing major chunks of their gray matter.

in the end ur phone slows down, crashes, reboots in short annoys the hell out of you until you decide to test its physical strength by bouncing it off walls!

this might be because of the users idiotic setup, half baked apps or a bug in the symbian release as the phone is rushed to market conflicting with something that used to work. too many variables to track, in development for the phone by apple and others. AND IN THE END it pisses its user off, which ends up as bad rep. Bad comments/reviews…

i have a sony-ericsson p990i. i synch it with my xp box (work) through usb and also iSynch it with my iMac by bluetooth. i also have blackberry service running on it utilizing gprs if wifi is not available. it works. its part black magic.
(and did i say im also waiting for a skype release?)

so thinking of geeks such as myself as well as the basic user, the phone needs to be unbreakable. like the mac, or its NOT an Apple. (besides all the security implications for the gsm networks).

running apps through the browser allows a predictable and controllable manner of limiting the potential messes others will create by lack of skilled programming, moronic user behavior and never ending combination of user scenarios. it will also manage to recover better…

Posted by Omer on 02/10/2007 at 07:33 AM

You do make a good point, but you have to remember that there are 1000s and 1000s of 3rd party applications for the Mac and they rarely cause serious reliability issues for OS X. Plus Apple’s applications aren’t exactly always infallible

Posted by Martin Pilkington on 03/10/2007 at 12:05 AM

Why do geek-types have so much trouble with the English language? You guys never fail to amaze me! Why don’t you stop all of your naive whining and complaining about Apples’ business plan and hire yourself a good copy editor? Oh yeah, one more thing… how are you suggesting that any of the problems that IBM and Microsoft may experience are in parallel with those that may or may not be occuring with Apple Inc.? You speak in vague generalities but don’t make a lot of sense. I suggest that you stick with a peecee and and old windoze operating system… Apple isn’t going to wait around for people like you.