Apple's responsibility as a superpower

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2638-apples-responsibility-as-a-superpower

by ph0rque • 16 years ago

51 76 16 years ago

joshuacc• 16 years ago

I find this a bit ironic coming from 37signals. Isn't this the sort of "opinionated" behavior that they champion in Getting Real?

Maybe DHH has a good reason for thinking it's different, but I'd like to see it spelled out.

dhh• 16 years ago

When you have the might to dictate an entire industry, you have a different set of responsibilities.

dailyrorschach• 16 years ago

I agree with the basis of this article, re: their responsibility. But, as of late, I'm not sure we have anything to go on to say that they are acting poorly.

Pushing web standards seems like a good position for an industry leader to take. Seems like any large corporate power, like Google, we just have to expect the worse and hope for the best.

tav2• 16 years ago

Empires rise and fall. The same could have been said of Microsoft only 10 years ago. Every platform provider faces this issue of responsibility and power — whether it be Facebook, Google, Apple or even Twitter.

The really interesting, and perhaps more fundamental, issue is that the various independent domains of the past (entertainment, communications, enterprise, gaming, mobile, etc.) are no longer so cleanly segregated and have been converging quite rapidly in the last few years. This inevitably results in the emergence of superpowers like Apple.

If we take this to be true, then the question becomes — what do we do about it? As entrepreneurs/developers/consumers, we fundamentally decide on the winners in these platform wars. But how do we counter superpower decisions? Lobby groups? Strategic pacts? Alternative, open, decentralised, systems?

arjunnarayan• 16 years ago

The problem with Apple is that they try and project some moral superiority while actually having a troubled record when it comes to moral actions. They claim to be champions of open standards, open architectures, etc. And oftentimes, they do exceedingly well: The early adoption of USB, a beautiful working integrated Java platform, HTML5 and web standards are all examples where Apple championed openness and followed through.

However, there is this other side: where Apple seizes a chunk of territory that they mark out as "ours to play with" and this is roped off and defended at all costs. When Google decided that cellphones needed an open option to keep carriers and developers honest, Apple reacted vociferously against this perceived incursion into their territory. And this is, I believe, what dhh is articulating unease about. Today Goliath Apple is fighting the good fight, taking down the monolithic clunky developer-terrorizing nonsense that is Flash in the name of open standards and on behalf of Davidesque HTML5. But tomorrow, there's no telling if Apple is suddenly going to decide that this is "their territory" and they are going to defend it against all incursions (open or not) at all costs. And that is worrying.

Apple's moral standards seem arbitrary, adopted post-hoc to conveniently justify a pre-ordained course of action. And that makes everyone fearful of their next move.

ceejayoz5• 16 years ago

> When Google decided that cellphones needed an open option to keep carriers and developers honest...

Google hasn't kept the carriers honest, and I've yet to hear of an iOS app that quietly copies all your SMS messages off to some server in Russia.

recoiledsnake2• 16 years ago

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/15YearOld-Sneaks-iPhone-T...

If someone was able to sneak something like tethering, I don't think it's a far stretch for text messages.

astrange• 16 years ago

> When Google decided that cellphones needed an open option to keep carriers and developers honest

Not only is this not what happened (they made a cell phone OS to make money), I'm not even sure it makes sense. What do you mean "honest"?

kenjackson7• 16 years ago

Google made cellphones to keep Apple from making web browsing a second-rate experience on the iPhone. Again, insider baseball here, but grumblings were that some at Apple really wanted to push the app store and begin to deemphasize web browsing.

With Android Google has made it clear that everyone needs to support the web, and that there will be a substantial portion of users that are hitting the web with mobile devices.

I think w/o Android we'd probably see slightly different positioning from Apple on the web with mobile devices. Of course, we won't know for sure now. Android is here and given its growth everyone has to support the web in a real way. And as long as you're browsing the web then Google wins -- if its with iPhones, EVOs, or HD7s.

jamesaguilar• 16 years ago

> When Google decided that cellphones needed an open option to keep carriers and developers honest, Apple reacted vociferously against this perceived incursion into their territory.

I thought the reason they were upset was that Google was substantially "inspired" by design choices that Apple pioneered (or at least popularized). I don't think it's solely about defending the smartphone market.

kylerove2• 16 years ago

For those who care to read about this interesting history, I can paraphrase it something like this:

1. Google buys Android and plans to make cell phone. First cell phone prototypes look/feel like then-current-day Blackberries (aka, key pads, small screens, no touch). 2. Apple makes iPhone. Touch-only. Changes world. 3. Google then remakes Android in mold of iPhone, copying its new touch-based metaphors and more. 4. Apple understandably does not take the imitator kindly.

Enter present day.

kylerove2• 16 years ago

Don't you think you're reading too much into the "opaque" intentions of Apple? Apple is fairly tight-lipped about what they do, so to assign words like "moral superiority" feels more like your feeling than some larger truth.

Take flash. When the iPhone came out, Apple and Adobe had discussions. Apple said, show us what you have. My guess is that it was shitty, didn't respect new iOS touch-based metaphors, made for bad UX and poor battery life. Apple passed. Now according to other reports about Flash, Apple gave them chances, but Adobe COULD. NOT. DELIVER. So when the iPad came to fruition and it began to seriously dawn on Adobe management that they were being left behind, they had only one option: try to garner public sympathy for something that Apple had originally intended be an option: flash on iOS. Apple realized, early on, that Adobe didn't care enough to solve what Apple saw as a true problem. Adobe completely whiffed their chances. So here we are today. Is that "moral superiority" or true pragmatism in dealing with someone who can't or won't deal?

This whole "slippery slope" things is pure FUD. Apple makes pragmatic decisions, not vengeful or hateful ones. Java for every other platform is maintained by Sun/Oracle. Apple has little need to spend precious engineering time maintaining a runtime that sees little use by end-users. Interested parties (Sun/Oracle) can certainly continue to maintain a runtime if needed and will probably have less overhead than Apple doing it.

kloc2• 16 years ago

I don't think that Apple is a superpower when it comes to promoting or killing technologies, be it on desktop or mobile. It is surely important in the whole scheme of things but certainly not the king maker. With the rise Android and Windows mobile 7 , apple and its iOS will matter even less. Here in India one can get an Android phone(1.6) for 7000rs( 120 $) which is a very competitive price, where iphone 3gs costs around 32000rs ( 650 $). I don't see apple getting a decisive share of mobile market anywhere outside of US in the foreseeable future.

ceejayoz5• 16 years ago

> Here in India one can get an Android phone(1.6) for 7000rs( 120 $) which is a very competitive price, where iphone 3gs costs around 32000rs ( 650 $).

Are they comparable phones? If nothing else, there've been two major Android OS revisions since 1.6.

kloc2• 16 years ago

They are not and a comparable Android phones costs around 27 k( 520$). But here we are talking of pervasiveness of the platforms rather then capabilities of the phones.

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

I think his point is they don't need to be comparable. Apple "over-delivers" because of its core demographic and commitment to a small product range. This naturally limits adoption outside that demographic. Though Apple perhaps doesn't care because they're targeting the richest consumers in the richest nations.

bbuffone2• 16 years ago

I have no worries about this, I can throw out my $199 iPhone and buy a new phone. The same apps I use (Planets vs Zombies, actually that is about it) will be available on the new phone shortly. Phones and its OS are dispensable. that is the great thing about them. As long as it can make a call and receive data the real utility of the phone will always be available.

The rest of it is just entertainment.

tav2• 16 years ago

And what about the time and money spent by people developing skills for the Apple ecosystem — Objective-C, XCode, iTunes partnerships, etc? There's a network effect in play here and the more territories that Apple dominates, the easier it becomes to parlay with inertia...

ceejayoz5• 16 years ago

Most of those developers hadn't heard of Objective-C just a few years ago. If something compelling enough comes around, they'll switch again.

bbuffone2• 16 years ago

The best thing about that is they can port the game and charge everyone again. Unlike console games that cost $60 dollars. Phone games are a couple dollars so people will pay that again.

They can even out source the development as there is a perfect spec of what to build (original game)

kenjackson7• 16 years ago

This coupled with the emergence of storing data online will make phones and their OSes completely non-sticky, and therefore very competitive. I think there are probably 20 apps that every phone needs to have, but beyond that its long tail.

Virtually nobody I know goes to get the same phone they currently have due to any type of lockin. In fact, I've seen more often than not, that people want a different kind of phone. Because its almost like a toy for adults.

Apple is dominant today, but I fully expect that in two years there will be some new company that everyone will be watching, who today no one really takes seriously (or may have even heard of).

credo• 16 years ago

Companies compete with each other and there are winners and losers.

When Google rolled out free Google Maps and navigation apps, they were directly attacking companies like Garmin and TomTom

Now frankly, it is reasonable to sympathize with many companies whose paid offerings are under attack by "free" products, but would you ask Google to recognize itself as a "superpower" and stop killing GPS navigation companies ?

davidw2• 16 years ago

> Companies compete with each other and there are winners and losers.

The unnerving thing about this industry, though, is that sometimes this "winning and losing" is fast and close to total, whereas in other industries, many players can continue to compete in the same field. Think about Microsoft's share of desktop operating systems at their peak vs car companies.

glhaynes3• 16 years ago

What examples of that can you think of other than Windows?

Edit: and things that were extensions of the Windows monopoly such as IE.

nanijoe• 16 years ago

From the article: (Think what happened or didn’t to Blue-ray, USB3, Java). --------- I'm not sure I knew that anything happened to Java and Blu-ray, can someone help?

ceejayoz5• 16 years ago

Apple has stated that they don't see a need to support Blu-ray on Macs, that USB3 isn't ready for prime-time, and that they're stopping their releases of their version of Java.

mattmaroon4• 16 years ago

I think Apple's not going to "win" the battle with Flash. They're simply going to drive a portion of their customers to Android in the interim due to fighting it. Like many actual wars, everyone involved will lose.

When I use my iPad, the #1 reason I put it down and pick up my laptop is that I want to watch a video (quite frequently one I found here in fact) or play a game that I can't. It's to the point where I now just dig out the laptop if I want to read Hacker News as a result. I made the mistake of taking the iPad on a trip without my laptop, only to find I couldn't view the website of any good restaurant. (Granted there's no reason those websites should be one giant SWF, but they are.)

You don't realize how much Flash stuff is on the web until you use an iPad.

moxiemk1• 16 years ago

Counter-anecdote: you don't know how much on the web isn't flash until you pick up an iPad.

We must use very different subsets of the Internet, because the videos I run into (on random, lower profile sites, no less) don't require flash.

Honestly, the thing that drives me from my iPad to pick up a laptop (which doesn't happen very often) is iPad-specific websites that don't let me opt-out and use their normal website. This has (unfortunately) been happening more and more lately.

mattmaroon4• 16 years ago

We appear to use at least some of the same subsets since we're both here. Just last week there were two videos on the front page the one time I looked that wouldn't play. This happens in my Google Reader on a daily basis as well.

As a Facebook Game developer I probably see more Flash than normal people, though the number of people who play Flash games on Facebook alone numbers in the hundreds of millions.

tjogin3• 16 years ago

Well, in the past six months, the amount of video available in non-flash, "html5" format on the internet has increased from 25% to 50%, something like that.

In another six months, what do you think that figure is going to be? Flash is headed towards marginalization, that's what my crystal ball says.

Besides, what capable mobile flash runtime were they supposed to put in the iPad anyways? It's not like they had a choice.

mattmaroon4• 16 years ago

The one in Froyo works just fine to play most flash videos and games.

neilc• 16 years ago

I think Flash-on-iOS is a great example of something that geeks love to discuss, but doesn't matter in the least to normal folks. Every non-technical person I know wants an iPad; 75% of them probably don't even know what Flash is.

smackfu6• 16 years ago

Put those two facts together and they don't even know that a bunch of their favorite websites won't even work.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

In discussions with friends, they've asked me why I tend to defend Apple and dislike Microsoft, when it seems that they both do the same things. Why is FairPlay okay, but PlaysForSure wrong?

For me, it primarily comes down to the fact that Apple has tended to impose restrictions within its own little empire, and not outside of it; for the large part, Apple seems to follow the Principle of Least Aggression. Even with the latest Flash shenanigans, Apple isn't making deals with partners to kill Flash. They're not trying to ruin support on Android or anything. They're just not including it by default on the new Airs anymore, and sort of publicly saying that they think it sucks.

I agree with David, though: Apple's cultural position of power means that if they want to keep our hearts and minds, they have some responsibility to play nice.

kenjackson7• 16 years ago

Apple's never really had power outside of its empire before. This is a pretty new position they're in now.

With that said, the difference between MS and Apple is that Apple builds the full stack. Apple blocking Psystar from creating clones effectively blocks anyone else from creating Apple products, thus Apple has a lot fewer people to have to bully. The just keep everyone off their block. With that said, within the industry, Apple's bullying of Intel is rather legendary, given their small market position.

Where Apple does dominate they certainly don't mind pushing people around.

MS works with a lot more partners therefore there is a lot more opportunity for bullying.

My concern with Apple is that while Steve Jobs is brilliant, he also rules with what seems to be a larger degree of malice. With MS its obvious where they're going -- where the money is. With Apple that's usually the case, but sometimes its where Steve is just really mad. There's no single person, including Bill, at MS who wields that type of power.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

I dunno, maybe I'm being naive. It seem pretty obvious where Apple is going, too: whatever makes computers easier to use. Flash on mobile is total trash, from what I've read (I have yet to try it on my Nexus One, I don't visit sites with Flash). They've been working on making the music industry a nicer entity to interact with for years. They've been relentlessly simplifying product lines. The Mac App store is obviously geared toward making it even easier for people to install applications. They basically invented the modern smartphone market, and haven't let AT&T call the shots, to the benefit of consumers.

Is my fanboy showing? :/

davewiner• 16 years ago

Great piece, right to the point. What technology is Apple going to declare illegal next. And what if we depend on it.

shadowsun7• 16 years ago

This is a rather paranoid argument of what Apple may do, instead of what it's actually done. Even David admits that a) he's happy to see Flash go b) we're making a move towards open standards and c) Adobe deserves the walloping that they're getting.

Apple's done things like this before - getting rid of floppy drives, for instance, before anyone else did. (And they're very quick to remind us of this). But whether the move to 'attack' Flash is a bad thing isn't clear.

Apple seems to be more obsessed with delivering the perfect user experience - and they don't give me the impression that they're picking battles for the sake of picking battles. Whether Flash (or any other technology, for that matter) gets excluded is a direct result of this obsession. Which is the right way of going about it, of course.

S_A_P• 16 years ago

I don't think it was at all irresponsible of them for accepting a half hearted port of a 10 year old technology that really isn't intended for a touch screen. HTML 5, CSS3 and other standards saw wider adoption more quickly(thanks also in part to google)

What is happening here is Apple is streamlining its products in what they hope will make for a better user experience. It may or may not work out for them, but there is plenty of choice out there.

Further, this isn't the same situation as the 1990s when Microsoft would gun for other companies by releasing same-ish products for free to squash others out of the market. They are just not supporting them if they dont meet their standards.

smackfu6• 16 years ago

Heh. A 10 year old technology like HTML?

chc5• 16 years ago

HTML5 is not 10-year-old tech.

cletus• 16 years ago

I don't like this post for several reasons.

1. The author worries about Apple crowning a successor. What they're advocating is HTML5, which is essentially an open standard, where Flash is of course proprietary.

2. The premise of the article is that Apple has the power to kill anything they set their mind to. It uses the lazy argument of the slippery slope or thin end of the wedge ("What's next?"). It's simply fearmongering;

3. It mistakes cause and effect. A classic example of this was Intel's original Centrino platform, which became the basis of Intel's success (after the Pentium 4 debacle) for years. At the time it launched Intel spent $150m+ on marketing it. Sadly, many observers attributed its success to that marketing campaign when in fact the lesson is:

Good products sell themselves.

Centrino succeeded because it was a good product.

Flash came about at a time to solve a problem of creating "rich" Internet applications ("RIAs") when it wasn't possible any other way. That's no longer the case with a plethroa of Javascript frameworks and browsers with fast Javascript engines in them.

The use case for Flash was going away anyway. Apple just hastened its inevitable demise. They haven't killed it. They just threw some oil on the fire that was already burning down the house.

4. Apple is on the outs with a bunch of other companies? Large companies are complex creatures. You will find them competing savagely on one level while cooperating on another. But the real reason they don't like Apple? Nothing breeds contempt like success.

5. Blu-ray. Optical storage, like Flash, is dying. Apple didn't pick a side in the HD-DVD vs Blu-ray "war". Some might call this realpolitik. Personally, I think they took a long term view that the winner was irrelevant. The well is drying up. Who controls it doesn't matter anymore.

6. Apple is by far the company that has demonstrated an utter devotion to the paramount importance of the user experience. Now you can disagree with some of the decisions they've made but, on the whole, no company has engendered quite the same loyalty and fervour that Apple has for good reason.

They're still at the mercy of the market as a whole.

Supermighty• 16 years ago

Point 2: Apple has a great deal of influence to kill a great deal. Recently they depreciated Java on the Mac.

How many $30 desktop apps will you sell if users also have to download a 200MB Java runtime?

Don't fool yourself, Apple has to power to drive adoption (USB) or kill it (Flash, Jave, et al).

Aykroyd• 16 years ago

Maybe, I'm mistaken but when I think of desktop Java apps pretty much the only significant ones that I come up with are IntelliJ (which I use) and Eclipse. And I'd much prefer something native to the resource hogging of IntelliJ.

I don't think they're killing off a big industry by ditching java on the mac. It's just potentially going to make things more of a pain for those of us who write server-side java code on our Macs. Do you think their move will have an effect on that industry?

tpinto2• 16 years ago

Since they don't own Java, they can't "deprecate" it. They are just ditching their own implementation of Java. According to them, because release cycles of Mac OS X and Java don't match, thus Java being generally a couple of versions late on the Mac.

Windows don't ship with Java preinstalled and it isn't that big of a deal, people install it the first time they need it and that's it.

That's what is going to happen on the Mac.

tpinto2• 16 years ago

Agreed. Apple has the same power as others and they should take their side on debates like these. Honestly I don't get the gist of the original linked post because I think there's nothing to worry about.

All the technologies are in the market, some will win and some will lose. The only thing that will define this is adoption, and Apple is adopting the technologies they believe are the best to deliver a great user experience to their customers.

recoiledsnake2• 16 years ago

1. The author explicitly states that HTML5 is a good thing. He's just worried about a time when a successor is not a good thing.

2. Apple growing hugely day-by-day does change things up a little bit. Doesn't it?

3. Flash being supported on iPad could have changed things a bit.

4. Apple is known to be particularly insular, especially because of it's quest to define consumer experience.

5. Bluray is not dying, bluray players and discs are being sold in record numbers. Perhaps you meant optical storage is dying for computers.

6. The article is specifically talking about their new found power. Your statement has no bearing on this except makes it feel that you're making an appeal to gloss over the possibility of Apple's power being used for bad just because it's a 'good' company.

For example, as Apple's share in PC market grows, it might be enough to send AMD/ATI down, since Apple won't ship their chips thereby granting a free monopoly to Intel and Nvidia which is bad for everyone involved.

matwood3• 16 years ago

5. Bluray is not dying, bluray players and discs are being sold in record numbers.

Record numbers compared to what? Of course when BR uptake has been as slow as it was in the beginning it's easy to set records. I think the OP was pointing out that physical media in general is dying. Of course you'll still have the technobuffs who have 5.1/6.1/7.1 surround in their house and 100" projectors (this is where BR really shines and it's amazing to experience), but for most people convenience trumps the good enough that is current streaming. Even now I believe that Netflix has recently added 5.1 sound to many of their streams and I think they have started to stream some 1080p material to the PS3.

wmf• 16 years ago

I have to disagree a little on the Centrino example. The processors were great but the Centrino Wi-Fi was the worst on the market (heck, Intel was selling b at the same time Broadcom was selling draft g), yet it still got fairly high merket share due to the marketing.

richardhenry• 16 years ago

Do Apple ship every other item of Mac software on their platform? They don’t? Then why are they obligated to ship with Flash preinstalled?

It’s up to Adobe to make their own future, not Apple. Perhaps that’s why Adobe recently unveiled Adobe Edge, and a Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool.

brudgers• 16 years ago

> "Blu-Ray, USB3, Java"

They are all about minimizing Apple's investment in the Mac platform. Each shows where Apple is heading with the Mac, toward streaming content as what differentiates platform, away from cutting edge technology as what differentiates the platform, and away from enterprise sales - not that enterprise sales are a high priority for Apple beyond getting a continuous stream of articles written about "recent enterprise adoption." The same cost reductions criteria could be seen to apply to Flash, but it's more about sparking development for iOS and the future MacApp store.

clawrencewenham• 16 years ago

Presumably Apple is obligated to support everything on everything, simply so it isn't seen as "demonstrating its might".

Apple has said no to technologies like Flash, USB3 and Blu-Ray for their own reasons and only for their own devices, which is part of how they make those products good.

If they begin supporting every feasible technology just for the sake of not being a bully, then their products will start to suck, they will lose their customers and the power they've been giving them, and then a new kingmaker will arise. The cycle will continue.

This is an argument for making technology independent of the products that embody them, which is not realistic.

smackfu6• 16 years ago

What comes to mind: How is what Adobe does with Flash different from what Apple tried to do with Quicktime? If Apple had its way a few years back, all the video on the net would be Quicktime Sorenson encoded. Would they be pushing for open standards then?

chc5• 16 years ago

One is a proprietary Web platform that can completely shut people out of a site and the other is a video codec. Apples and oranges if ever anything was.

smackfu6• 16 years ago

Apple has always wanted to make Quicktime a proprietary interactive platform with a scripting language, UI elements, etc. It used to be used heavily to make CD-ROMs, where Flash would be used today. Apple just lost that battle.

Apple's responsibility as a superpower

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