Apple’s Growing Arrogance
I was having a conversation the other day about the state of Apple. My friend’s point was the greed element has become quite evident and my own perspective is that Apple’s success is causing it to become arrogant. At the centre of this is, of course, the iPhone. I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to blog about the iPhone, but in a way, here it is.
Since the iPhone’s announcement in January that dominated Macworld, it was clear that Apple’s focus was shifting. Up until then, things like the iPod and iTunes were accessories to the Mac and, for Windows users, represented the Apple experience, but in a single stroke the Mac was sidelined.
Further confirmation arrived with Leopard’s announced delay earlier this year. I think various posts on the web confirmed at the time that developers saw the 10.5 release not only as not ready, but as having stalled. Things only picked up after WWDC, although many people have been disappointed and even mystified by some of Apple’s design decisions demonstrated publicly back then.
Apple was quite honest in explaining the delay to Leopard: the iPhone had stolen all the talent. Sensibly, it appears Apple didn’t hire scores of new developers to work on the iPhone to address the delay (that stuff never works out) and as a result Leopard got behind. When Adobe made that strange announcement about not having enough time to test its apps on Leopard the other day, I took it to mean that, with Leopard having been so unfinished for so long, Apple is already cutting it too fine for them.
At WWDC the phone was everywhere. You could barely attend a session without someone picking one up and rotating it so the video went widescreen to audible groans from the attendees, as this would often be accompanied by the message that we should “develop web applications” for the iPhone. The irony being that you couldn’t do many of the fancy tricks Apple was so keen on demonstrating in a web browser. We were there to learn about Leopard and we weren’t learning much that was new at all.
If you find yourself underwhelmed or disappointed by the new Mac OS, you don’t need to be a genius to work out why.
It’s understandable that Apple couldn’t just release the phone and open it up to third party development simultaneously. Despite being based on OS X, it is obviously a very different beast with more constraints than the desktop OS. Such development would need proper tools, methods of testing, documentation, etc and once open, would place a further burden on Apple to maintain compatibility while evolving the functionality. It’s very early days.
The iPhone launched very successfully and that’s well-deserved, but at the phone’s UK event a number of things became clear. Apple was not going to give iPhone hackers an easy ride, which is one thing (no point in creating extra work to support the unsupported) but nor would it, as was hoped, turn a blind eye to the phone being unlocked.
Like many people, I questioned why Apple needed a single network partner with the phone. It doesn’t seem subsidised and as “the best iPod ever” it could sell just as well under its own steam. In the UK, where phones are usually subsidised to the point of being free with a contract, that is exactly what is happening.
Of course, features like the visual voicemail require changes on the network’s side and the unlimited data plans, while not new or unique, certainly made sense. Look a little deeper though and you can see that activating the phone through iTunes was not so much an advantage of integration as Apple being in control. It suddenly became much clearer that Apple is getting a slice of the subscription pie.
Negotiations are ongoing around the world to ape the AT&T model and it is surely no coincidence that the rumoured and announced network partners for the iPhone so far seem to be all related to the former national phone companies; the ones that really lost out domestically when mobile networks removed the need for cables to be run into homes. Perhaps these are more willing to accept unusual terms, such as Apple sharing subscription income in addition to sales of the device. These exclusive deals, where competition is nullified and there’s some awful company running the network, is hardly great for customers.
Also at the UK event, it seemed implied that, even if Apple does open up the iPhone, it may control what apps get onto it, much like the iPod’s games. That could potentially become a form of censorship as Apple acts as the art police, or even the business police. If they also distribute the apps, which would be likely in that scenario, then they’ll probably be taking a cut there, too.
Hubris, hubris.
Apple’s success to date comes down to the compelling nature of the iPod with iTunes and the breath of fresh air that Mac OS X brings to the personal computing experience. However, in the same way the iPod produced a halo effect for Apple and the Mac itself, the business practices associated with the iPhone could do the opposite, although it may take a while for the effect to set in. Apple probably doesn’t care what is said in the online world, because it is insular and irrelevant to the public at large. I think what disappoints me the most is that Apple isn’t somehow reinventing the business model of the mobile phone market. By association, they risk becoming one of the bad guys.
For hardware, there isn’t much hope of Apple gaining serious competition soon. The MP3 player market is packed with woeful offerings and bad iPod clones. Now, the same seems to be happening in the mobile phone market, which at the high end was already starting to look like a mirror image of the Windows world. Companies run by suits and geeks rarely understand what the rest of us want. And look at history: the reason Sony couldn’t reinvent the Walkman for the digital age was its overbearing emphasis on its own technologies; Microsoft annihilated the competition, not just for its OS, but its applications, first by producing stuff that was actually good and then by playing dirty.
There is some light on the horizon though. Amazon MP3 does what people have always wanted. It’s early days, US-only and yet to be tested, but Amazon of all companies could really make a start at changing the landscape. In an instant, the iTunes Store looks not only restrictive but pricey. For devices, it seems Palm has poached the guy who headed up the iPod division and immediately showed a turnaround of common sense by dropping that Foleo thing, though we’re probably years away from seeing anything remarkable from Palm again.
The computer market hardly matters in this, except that Apple must not allow itself to neglect the Mac. It is the areas in which Apple is dominating that it needs some worthy competition. Until recently, Apple has been pretty good at doing the right thing, but once they signed that deal with AT&T that was no longer true. As much as I hate to say it, I believe we have to think differently about Apple these days.
September 30th, 2007 at 12:16 am
I think you’re pretty spot on there. Apple has always been a bit of an arrogant company though, that’s nothing new. The problem is that it’s starting to have a detrimental impact on user experience, and in the end that’s all Apple really has over the other guys. There’s a growing backlash against the kind of greedy no-holds-barred corporate culture Apple is now indulging in, a culture they grew off rebelling against, it’s gonna come back and slap them in the face if they’re not careful. The whole situation leaves a very bad taste in one’s mouth.
September 30th, 2007 at 7:01 am
This behavior is nothing new – its been as much a part of Apple as Steve himself. 15 years ago Apple cracked down on “unauthorized” resellers of their hardware to the point that the authorized dealers who sold to these grey marketers were scratching serial numbers of the equipment so Apple couldn’t trace it back to the original authorized reseller and pull their distribution. Why? Because Apple also forces its list prices to be followed at all costs.
How many times have they been on-and-off with Best Buy because they want more control over the shopping experience? And they wouldn’t even let CompUSA sell their hardware until CompUSA dedicated a portion of their store to Apple and even then Apple insisted that the sales rep be an Apple employee and not a CompUSA employee.
And even then, Apple wasn’t satisfied and opened their own stores in direct competition with resellers, many of whom went out of business. Apple didn’t do this out of ill will, they did it because they expect perfection and don’t care about anything else, including hurt feelings or past business partners.
The reality is that Apple, much like other “upscale” companies, not only wants to control their product design and distribution but they want to control their partners. They can because they are making amazing products now that people want. And its working, because the experience of owning an iPod, buying music on iTunes, and syncing the two DEFINES how the experience should work. Is it as cheap as Napster and a Diamond player? Nope. But the extra money, for most people, is worth it when their products just work.
There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance. So far, Apple is straddling it, but they are close to crossing the line.
September 30th, 2007 at 9:12 am
This is generally standard business practice for Apple. Has been since the Mac was released in 1984.
They’ve always had the most closed system in the market.
What do you think a Macintosh (or iPod, or iPhone) is?
It’s copy protection (or DRM if you will) for the vaulted Apple Software jewel: OSX.
They wrap up that super cool software with proprietary hardware to lock you in.
EB
September 30th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Bitch — Bitch — Bitch!
What a little Whiney-Baby you and Rory both are!
For Christ’s sake grow up!
Your article starts the 2nd paragraph: “I’ve long resented that phone.” So you admit right away that you are prejudiced against the iPhone. Good for you! I’m sure we can expect some rational opinions from here on.
Next sentence: “clear that Apple’s focus was shifting”. You could easily have said that Apple’s focus was “expanding”. Same paragraph: “in a single stroke the Mac was sidelined”. SIDELINED? Just a bit of a shrill exaggeration?
The rest of your dumb-ass article is equally slanted, prejudiced and moronic.
Apple’s not perfect — but let’s at least be intelligent in our complaining.
You’re obviously a small-minded, negative thinking, little whiner.
Grow up! This kind of BS just pollutes the net!
September 30th, 2007 at 9:55 am
i don’t think we’re quite there yet, but I did see the partnership with AT&T as rather ominous. Apple is not going to kill the Mac or OS X anytime soon. It is a great platform that allows them to do many things on their secondary devices.
I have neither an iPod nor an iPhone but I do want the OS X experience to be the very best there is. It would be a bad thing though if Apple let the success of iPod and the iPhone get to their heads. It is much sexier to humbly accept the accolade and to continue creating great experiences for users.
Microsoft is the prime example of what happens when you know the world can’t live without your products and you stop caring about whether it actually makes any sense. Then the world comes to its senses and realises it doesn’t actually have to buy your products. This is a mistake I very much would like Apple to avoid making.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Of course it will leave a bad taste. Any individual that wholeheartedly wraps their lips around Steve’s appendage will have it end up tasting like cheese. Apple, Microsoft .. whatever – it’s all driven not by what people really want but by maintaining the highest possible profits in order to give shareholders the largest return and deliver the absolute least whether it be in features, quality, performance and so forth. Apple is particularly bad when it comes to vendor lockin. Just think operating systems … Apple can’t ship Leopard and when it does it only runs on their own highly overpriced, Chinese made hardware that’s failure prone and subject dreadful support and returns policies. Even that new iPod doesn’t sync to Linux anymore. Perhaps Apple’s arrogance is growing but I assure you it has been well established for a number of years. Buy their shares … just don’t buy their products.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Sad but true. I think your observation about ‘former national phone companies’ is even more keen than you imagined. I had close contact with 02 in the UK and can tell you they are so full of it. They knew years ago, they had customer service problems but decided it was easier and CHEAPER to spend the money on PR and Advertising (i.e. 02 millenium dome and iPhone) than spend the money to fix there customer support. I said 6 months ago, all over the web, Apple – please pick anyone but O2. This proved to me that Apple is losing the plot…
I’m hoping the iPod Touch outsells the iPhone 4 to 1 during Xmas because it may be a nice slap in the face to At&t, O2(uk) and make Apple aware that consumers are purposefully avoiding restrictive contracts. Perhaps if Apple offered an iphone nano / non smart phone at 1/3 the price of the current iphone that was available unlocked than the locked iphone /smartphone market wouldn’t seem so wrong.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:53 am
When Microsoft is more open than Apple, there’s something wrong…
September 30th, 2007 at 11:09 am
I don’t get what you mean about the MP3 players – I can name dozens that are vastly superior to the iPod.
September 30th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Poor fanboys, taking a beating from their god Jobs and struggling to play Job. The non-cultists have been telling you this for years – Apple is every bit as nasty a company as they come. Teh iPhone scam fits the pattern of all the other Apple rip-offs over the years – charging for OsX update being the most obvious and grievious, but by no means the only example.
September 30th, 2007 at 11:24 am
You mention Amazon as a potential iTunes competitor. Tried Amazon Unbox? Both the technology and the support is horrible. People who are more than happy to pay the price for watching videos end up being very alienated by the Unbox experience.
http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6636289.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/15/amazon-unbox-to-cust.html
Amazon has been quite smart about their other products, but their iTunes clone is a piece of shit. I don’t like everything that Apple does, but I can’t deny that their technology and customer support are consistently excellent.
September 30th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
As usual, Apple fanboys write off everything else because its not shiny and hip enough. The market is *saturated* with DAPs and there are pleanty off good ones out there (not Creative or Microsoft) that are superior to ipod+itunes. If Apple zealots would only *try* thinking different instead of being dazzled by the latest shiny bauble out of Cupertino, then maybe we would all get somewhere.
September 30th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I respectfully disagree. APPLE’s strength has long been seamless integration and wonderfully smooth user exeriences, and they’ve achieved and maintained this by remaining closed, controlled and proprietary. If APPLE products became platforms for wideranging developers, interesting things could and would happen, no doubt, but the APPLE experience itself—the essence of what APPLE markets so brillliantly–would be balkanized and degraded to the point of unrecognizability. The consistent “look and feel” has always been APPLE’s point.
There are many MP3 players and mobile phones out there, and APPLE does nothing illegal by selling their products as closed, proprietary systems that work everytime, and beauitfully, because of this very control. If developers or consumers are offended by this, they are entitled. But they waste their efforts complaining about the situation they know to exist and were warned not to try to change. APPLE, afterall, accepted contractual obligations to their iPHONE and so, you can purchase it and accept similar constraints, or simply pass and purchase something else you can have your developer fun with. Your frustration might be justified if APPLE were the only game in town, but options abound. So pointing to their “arrogance” misses the point entirely. Just purchase something else. For me? APPLE works just fine.
September 30th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I think people forget that Apple’s goal has always been to make money. It is not your friend. They just happen to make products that appeal to you. And in that sense, I cannot blame them for their recent actions.
As far as all this iPhone uproar is concerned? The simple summary might be that yes, Apple *should* have made available a real SDK. But they didn’t. So why are people freaking out because they’re not supporting 3rd party software under warranty? What happens when you purchase your Dell computer, get a virus on it, and then send it in? They will not cover it. This is no different, especially since 3rd party apps directly modify the firmware and inner workings of the current SDK.
And as for the Mac issue. It may be true that Apple is paying less attention to the Mac, but I don’t think we’re necessarily suffering from it besides the Leopard delay. They’re trying to launch an integrated platform across all their devices. Does it really come as a surprise that they’re focusing on the most profitable part of their business? Not to me. Besides, the “halo effect” seems to actually bring more people to the Mac platform, which in the end may be good or bad for us current Mac users depending on which way you look at it.
I’m not just trying to blindly defend them here. I really wish my iPhone were open. I wish I could have 1.1.1 and my 3rd party apps. I also wish they were doing a lot more cool new stuff with Leopard and making cooler Mac hardware. But I also realize that they’re just a company. I still like their products best and I still think they have the greatest platform out there.
All this negative blog-PR, coupled with the $100 rebate, is just proof that the internet is creating whiny babies out of tech consumers. Everybody just needs to shut up.
September 30th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
while I don’t support the recent goings on concerning the iPhone, I do think that for the most part apple acts and performs better than most other companies. Also, calling leopard a “new” os is ridiculous. It will follow the same pattern of being a major refresh instead of an actually new product. I still like apple and think you overstate their woes and corporate culture.
September 30th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
So, if some kid gets the computer in his Honda reprogrammed so he can race away from traffic lights faster than the other guy, and then, when he brings it in for service, the dealer installs a firmware update that results in his car turning into a 2,000 pound brick with fancy rims, that’s the fault of Honda?
If you hack a piece of hardware and you run into trouble later, get over it.
Apple is — wait for it — in business to make money. Who decides how much money they get to make, you?
Maybe people ought to design their own fancy gadget; and then after designing it, let other people decide how to deprive them of the money they had intended to earn.
September 30th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Well, I agree with you Apple has made some bad moves, and I like the ones you cite.
However, where you say “greed and arrogance,” I say “standard-issue capitalism and free market price controls.” If people will pay $X for Y product, $X is by definition deserved. Apple is not being arrogant; its customer base is being naive.
Apple is not and never was an experiment in technological socialism. For most of the eighties, the profit margin on a Mac was about 50%.
But we can still critique a company for its good or bad strategy, in the sense that what it does today will translate into future business returns. In the category of bad strategy, I think Apple’s failure to focus on the Mac and OS X is bad strategy which in the long run will reduce both revenues and share price.
Also, there is now hardware as good or better than an iPod. Consider the new Creative Zen 16 GB player — supports a wider range of movie formats including .wmv, so I don’t have to spend literally hundreds of hours converting, and it also has a removable media card slot like a digicam, something no iPod has ever had. This means its library is theoretically infinite, which makes it look *much* more appealing than a 16 GB iPod Touch with *no* slot, despite the Touch’s sexy interface.
Combine such players with Amazon’s service and you get serious competition for Apple, whose stock price has risen with the iPod’s market share. If I held AAPL right now, I’d be cashing out.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
There are a lot of things to love and to hate about Apple. They are creative and own certain areas of the market besides iPhone, iPod – they are the industry standard for video editing now for instance, (If you have seen a movie lately chances are it went through finalcutpro at some point).
Are they making mistakes? Yes. They are pushing out the “appliances” too quickly and they are bound to make mistakes. It is mind numbing how many problems there are with the iPhone alone.
But, remember that apple runs lean and mean as far as the programming goes. 4000 programmers work on every XP/Vista release. In other words, the alternative sucks more.
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:28 pm
There’s nothing wrong with being arrogant. In fact, without arrogance, greatness is not possible. The problem is that Apple isn’t arrogant enough. They should have just said “we can do this alone, and screw everyone else,” and released the iPhone unlocked, world wide. Instead, they bent to AT&T’s will just to get a bit more money.
October 4th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Wow, you guys debate Apple as if it was of any importance. There sure are more important issues. You guys worry me. So entangled in your little gadget world that I am afraid you may be too distracted to tackle the real problems human kind is facing.
You are talking about a product that no one really needs, while 1 billion individuals go without clean drinking water today, our oil resources are seizing and religious fanaticism has a grip on our daily life’s.
Buy Apple products or don’t. Who cares? Be glad you can still worry about which unnecessary gadget to buy in the first place. The real arrogance here is to believe that it is of any importance to anyone what your little consumer ass thinks. Jeeezzzeees fuckin christ!
October 4th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
[...] there’s that. There’s plenty of blog discussion about the grievances with Apple, so rather than joining the choir, I offer the [...]
October 4th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
[...] you can’t easily create cool. And Apple has that in surplus. Whether they’re starting to crap all over that coolness, though, is another [...]
October 4th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
When the Mac went into development, Jobs moved his best talent to work on it and let Apple’s other computers slide and eventually die off. Now he’s moving his best talent to work on his gadgets instead of the Mac. It’s not surprising, and a move that may result in the Mac becoming obsolete or just an OS option instead of a full package OEM computer. Once Macs made the move to Intel processors, they’re really just very pretty PCs running a different OS. Doesn’t it seem natural that they might just leave it to other computer manufacturers to make the hardware, and move to a software model for their OS so it could actually go head-to-head with Windows?
And to Snusket, some of us can do more than one thing with our minds and our money. It’s pretty stupid to think that just because someone purchases and thinks about technology, they are ignoring the greater problems of humanity. Also, you’re reading and commenting on a tech blog on the internet, so you clearly have some “unnecessary gadgets” of your own, and aren’t living in a hovel in a third world country helping the oppressed indigenous peoples, so screw you and the high horse you rode in on.
October 8th, 2007 at 1:16 am
[...] A very interesting read on Apple’s attention being taken away from “computers” and…. Worth a read. (I’m still thinking about getting a MacBook Pro though…) [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
After trying out your quality OS X software Together, I am appalled to read your tirade against Apple. And even more surprised to read so many uninformed comments. You guys really need to visit http://www.roughlydrafted.com and read their articles. Personally, I think Apple is making all the right moves. The reviews of the Mac experience from switchers, as well as reviews of the iPhone, OS X Leopard, the iMac, the MacBook Air bear this out. Their increasing market share bears this out.
Apple has always wanted to make the whole widget. It’s about making a unique, quality user experience that no other computer manufacture bundling with Windows can provide. You, however, equate Apple’s obsession with quality and control over the user’s experience as a company that is greedy and creates lock-in. Unbelievable. I thank every day that Steve Jobs came back to save a dying Apple and renewed its mission to provide a total quality experience with hardware and software, thinking entirely different about the way to do things as opposed to the rest of the industry.
Today, I enjoy my aluminum iMac, my MacBook Air, my iPod Touch, along with best consumer operating system experience of Leopard and the many excellent Mac-only software titles available. I shudder when I think how close Apple came to becoming irrelevant and that we might be doomed to be stuck in the dark ages of computing forced to buy commodity beige boxes running the spaghetti-coded, insecure, virus-burdened, poorly designed and implemented, copy-cat software that is Windows.
Apple are not the bad guys here, folks. Apple strives to make the best product and user experience and sell computers and software that way. Their hope is that you will buy their products, not because you are forced to, but because you get as excited about their products as they do. Microsoft has historically been about copying others’ innovation to make something “good enough” and then using its monopoly position to destroy competitors and to create user lock-in — not by providing a better quality offering but by creating artificial compatibility issues and through devious business practices.
Apple doesn’t force electronics sales companies to only sell audio players with the iPod operating system on it. Apple makes the entire widget and sells a complete hardware/software/electronic music delivery solution for the best user experience and the public has chosen its offerings over a sea of competition.
I don’t see arrogance here. I see a company obsessed with quality and user experience and being willing to reinvent the computer, the mp3 player, the phone, and certainly more devices in the future that will change the world, change our lives, or less ambitiously, to at least give us a more pleasurable experience with these devices than ever possible with the competition’s. Does Apple want to make money at this? Of course, it’s a business! As Steve Jobs said that Ross Perot advised him when Next was struggling: at the end of the day, always be sure you make a profit and you will survive another day. And I applaud Apple for taking cautious steps to make sure their inventions/innovations are never sabotaged again by opportunistic copycats; to make sure their new iphone platform is not riddled with the unmanageable problems that plaque the albatross of Windows; and to make sure Apple is never at the brink of death again.