I’ll have a full story going up on Newsweek.com soon, but meanwhile something occurred to me today while I was watching the Webcast of the G1 phone from HTC and T-Mobile. It seems to me we’re seeing a replay of the PC wars from the 1980s, back when that market was small but growing very fast and there were loads of different vendors and different standards and everyone was constantly leapfrogging each other with new features and nobody really knew where things were going to end up. Now PCs have become boring but smartphones are the place where you tune in to see what each new device is going to be able to do and there seems to be a constant improvement in capabilities.
Difference now is that in the smartphone market we’re seeing strong open-source presence at a very early stage of the market’s development. What might have happened if Linux had been created and stabilized for the desktop in, say, 1990? Would it have kept Windows from taking over the world? We carp a lot about how Ubuntu and other desktop Linux versions haven’t made a dent in the Borg. But the problem may be simply that open-source really didn’t hit the PC market until long after the market had become mature and stable, and after one vendor had become entrenched as the leader. So on the desktop the Linux guys are trying to roll back a stone that’s already well stuck in place.
But with smartphones we’re seeing open-source options like Android and Symbian very early on, and though Windows Mobile has a big head start, it’s far from dominant in this space and I can see why developers would be attracted to the Android platform.
The other question is can Android pull developers away from Apple. It seems to me that there is real power in that open-source approach, and that while G1 doesn’t come close to the iPhone, nevertheless Apple may be consigning itself to niche status by sticking to its closed-garden approach.
I hate to say it but Apple may end up reliving its nightmare experience in the personal computer market — that is, arriving ahead of everyone else (in 1984) with a device that was really cool and really well built and really showed what the platform could do, but then keeping everything closed and thereby ending up a niche player. Will iPhone end up being the Macintosh redux? I wonder.
UPDATE: Earlier I included a photo with this item. Engadget wrote me to complain that it was their photo. I’d found it here, and you should definitely check out the original. Cause the photo is just that fucking good. Anyway, now I’ve taken it down. Okay? Peace.
the lord is good all the time. in every thing give him thanks cos the lord is good
I’m sick of asshat reporters who keep claiming that ‘Apple is making the same mistakes they did in 1984’ blah, blah blah, blah blah….
We heard the same nonsense for a couple of years in relation to Microshaft’s Plays for Sure platform vs. the ‘closed’ iPod/iTunes…
Gee, we don’t hear this garbage from uninformed/uninspired asshat reporters anymore… Especially as Walmart just joined a long line of former Play For Sure vendors who shut down their DRM servers.. While iTMS continues to crank…
What is difference this time is you don’t have a former cola executive in charge of Apple signing the company jewels away to it’s chief rival…
I am dubious Apple can “perform,” based on my experience with making the transition from MS Windows to a MacBook Pro, iPhone, and MobileMe.
OK, now that I have had a chance to consider this whole matter of my hassles with MobileMe and the transition to the Apple platform, I am even more disgruntled. Today, Time Capsule had to be reformatted because, if the MacBook Pro is put to sleep while doing a backup, the disk gets corrupted, either gradually or all at once. This problem, too, could easily be prevented though the use of some protection built into the software, but the best the support staff could offer was, “the user must make a minor behavior change and never close the lid on the laptop if the (tiny) backup icon is spinning.” So, this, on top of the MobileMe fiasco, and I am in the disgruntled user category. Anyoone know the most read blogs about Apple. I am ready to send this thread as an illustration of how Apple is falling from the tree. Here is the thread with Support regarding the duplicate email issues:
###BEGIN THREAD WITH APPLE TECH SUPPORT###
I do not think you understand my point, fully. It was not appreciated that you suggested restoring deleted messages to my Inbox when you have NO idea when I will get a response from Engineering, and that would create an entirely unusable unworkable situation.
When will you next contact the engineering team regarding this matter? I will be reminding you at least 1-2 times per week until this matter is resolved.
I would like this issue escalated to Apple management, in fact. This is completely unacceptable, that you have no idea when engineering will respond, and it is foolish of Apple not to have expectations that engineering will respond within a set time period. At this point, if I could, I would return my MacBook Pro, my Time Capsule, all of the software, my iPhone, and my subscription to MobileMe as a protest against this utterly inadequate response– if I could get a complete refund. I invested over $7000.00 into a transition which has had just as many problems or more than I ever had with Microsoft’s products.
Alternatively, I may start a website along the lines of “MobileMe is Worse than You Can Imagine,” if someone has not done so, already. At this point, I will do my best to convince others to stay away from Apple products, for the time being, and it is largely because of MobileMe’s failed rollout.
So, no, I do not think you quite appreciate the depth of my dismay regarding this and other matters related to my use of Apple products over the past six months.
If someone else at Apple cares to deal with this matter, I can be reached by phone at 510-734-0885
Gregory Alter, Ph.D, NeuroAdvantage
On Sep 25, 2008, at 8:05 AM, MobileMeSupport@apple.com wrote:
Gregory,
I completely understanding that you want to have this matter resolved as soon as possible so you do not have the junk of duplicate emails in your Mail. Unforunately, at this time, there is not an estimated time of when this will be resolved. Once I do hear something from the Engineering team, I will be sure to reply back to you! I do apologize for this.
If you have any other questions, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Juliana
MobleMe Support
http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/ww
http://www.me.com/help
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.
How soon do you expect a reply? What is the goal for turnaround on a request like this. If you will please note, I have many hundreds of emails in my Trash, many of which are duplicates. Please direct the engineering team to inspect the Trash folder if they need to observe detailed header information. Without some additional reason, I really do not want to clutter my workspace with all these duplicates. I will leave the duplicates that are there, now, and I will let them accumulate for 3 days at a time, if that meets the needs of Apple. Thanks for your help with this vexing matter.
Gregory Alter, Ph.D., NeuroAdvantage
On Wednesday, September 24, 2008, at 01:06PM, wrote:
Greg,
Thank you for changing the password that I have requested in the previous email. I was able to reenact the issue to where you are seeing duplicate emails in both the Mail application and in WebMail. I do want to request that you put the emails that are duplicated back in your inbox. So, you can just undelete them.
I am requesting this because I have provided the details of your report to the MobileMe Engineering team. As always, the Engineering team appreciates feedback as part of its efforts to resolve issues and improve the MobileMe experience. They may need to test out your account, so this is why you need to leave the emails in your inbox.
I will reply back to you once I do hear something from the Engineering team. I do apologize for this. If you have any other questions, please let me know and I will be able to assist you.
Sincerely,
Juliana
MobleMe Support
http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/ww
http://www.me.com/help
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.
OK, Juliana, have at it! I do hope you can figure this out, since I am
being spammed by my own email, at this point, with dozens and now
hundreds of duplicate emails coming in.
Greg Alter
###END THREAD WITH APPLE TECH SUPPORT###
Someday the G1 may overcome the iPhone, but right now it looks like shit. Seriously, who the f designed that thing? My friggin cat can draw a better concept. Sheesh.
Dan,
on the Linux vs. Others question.
Back then, there were several Unix contenders but neither of them offered wide application support (word processing, databases) and they were *expensive*. Very expensive. If Unix machines were more affordable, they may have attracted more followers. Unix, for a long time, meant “expensive”.
Apple (Jobso, actually) wen’t through the same phase with NextStep (which BILLG described as “warmed up Unix” one day when he was playing visionary). Next-machine costed five grand (=and hardly any apps) when a PC could be had for half that amount (and a ton of apps available).
Technology wars are always decided with software of some sort. Machines are useless without neat software running on them. Linux, a century later, has all kinds of useful apps and now is a also-ran contender.
Jobso learned his lesson and included Mac OS Classic support into OS X. Nobody cared about it much, but it was there and that made all the difference.
Here is a better question: why can’t Borg redesign Windows to be a kick-a$$ OS with a WinXP virtual machine which can bring forward the compatibility features during transition? It is painful to watch MS insisting that Windows is cool. It is as old as Rome in software terms. It is a wreckage upon wreckage of APIs, no decent application framework (after all these years!), no decent dev tools (compared to Apple) but tons of apps that like to misbehave. Then there is the brilliant wreckage of driver API in Windows which gave Vista its nail for a coffin.
Dan, excellent post. One thing that changed over the years is drum-roll, consumer insanity. Apple is not such a niche player anymore. It dominates the Digital Lifestyle industry and defines its standards. Did Mercedes go out of biz because of Lexus? No. Lexus is still a cheapo simulation of Benz. Benz is Benz.
However, Apple seems to be falling into the pit of releasing too soon and letting their polished image suffer because of it. For any developer who has tried the taste of Mac development (yummy), there is a frustrated developer in a competitor’s market. Borg has lost the battle for Best Development Tools to Apple. For now, anyway. Easier development could mean faster software releases to market, faster cycles and better support over time. Combine that with cool, hipster, word-of-mouth advertising and you have to admit it will be hard to beat.
Android is cool but not as cool as Apple’s iPhone. Yet. Also, you can get an iPod Touch if you don’t need the phone to enjoy the platform and its apps. That, it itself, it very very cool.
gene koo – like those that got on before during the “japan doesn’t like iPhone” discussion who bemoaned the fact that until iPhone can be used like a pass-through debit/atm for purchases and train passes in japan, no one would want it there, i gotta say: are you out of your frig-tard mind???.
identity theft, especially via computer or other electronic means, is the hugest worldwide crime wave there is. forget the ease of just stealing your phone that doubles as an debit/atm and suddenly having access to your funds after a bit of hacking, it also makes it open, like all computers are right now, to a world of hurt from russian mob spoof’d sites that load keyloggers, root-kits and the like to record and steal all your personal password & financial info and then sell it off, in packages of such information on thousands of users, to the highest bidder. you gonads saying “i want my cell phone to be just like my atm/debit!” are like lemmings willingly jumping off the “my funds and credit are now willingly bung-holed for years” cliff.
helllooooo? on-line security — have you heard of it?!
eh. google android’s “openess” ain’t so open. see also here. it’s sorta “open-‘cuz-we-say-it-is-‘cept-when-it’s-not.”
and i prefer molly wood’s wonderful take on the whole google android cluster-f in this epiode of her c|net buzz report.
as to the HTC G1 pic — eh. looks like a treo with an iPhone-like screen. and it says, “built-in keyboard,” and a lot of other features lacking that make it just like another iPhone. we’ll see about what gets developed for it, but right now it looks pretty 2nd rate. am i the only one who prefers the iPhone on-screen keyboard (tho’ it could use some improvements, like being able to turn landscape everywhere, especially in mail)? i used smartphones like treo in the past, and i gotta say, tho’ there was a learning curve, i prefer the on-screen keyboard as being a quantum leap up. but that’s just me — i love gee-whiz stuff.
The killer app is going to be secure debit transactions. When I can (safely) pay for my groceries, or subway ride, or whatever with the iPhone or G#, I’m buying it. Is that system going to ride on innovation, or rather on smart business negotiations? I don’t think open source is going to be the decisive factor there.
If that is the case, Dan, I think we’re going to see all the potential flaws of the open source premise come to light. I think that the concept of a commerically successful open source retail product is at best an oxymoron and worst mutually exclusive. Yeah, developers are excited about the G1, what freetard wouldn’t be? Right now they can do whatever they want with their Andoid app EXCEPT MAKE MONEY! And once Google or T-Mobile or whomever figures out a way for the developers to get paid, probably once there are more devices available, these guys get to discover the joy of developing commercially viable consume applications for a variety of devices with differing hardware and capabilities within the potentially variable carrier constraints.
I think pretty soon all but the most rabid freetards will be longing for Apple’s NDA, approval process, well-delineated hardware/software framework and paycheck.
Dan,
The question you pose – What would have happened to the PC operating system market had Linux been around during the OS Wars – is, on first glance, an interesting one.
Where it falls apart is on second glance when you remember that Linux has been around since the days of Windows 3.1. Smack dab in the middle of the OS wars.
Let’s look back then…
Windows NT hadn’t shipped yet, IBM was pushing OS/2 hard, Apple was still a contender, NeXTstep was out and BeOS was about to ship, Windows 95 was still a few years out, and SUN was pushing into the PC market.
Most computer users were running MS-DOS and using WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase. Windows apps were just starting to get traction but almost all business users were running their old MS-DOS apps in Windows if they used Windows at all.
Linux failed to capture the market for many reasons and I’m sure there an MBA paper or twenty in there but an established Windows dominence cemented by the universality of Office is historically not valid.
The problem is that Linux’s succes depended on there being a free distribution medium called the Internet. Without the Internet being available to the masses in the early ’80 it is impossible to do distributed development that has made Linux so powerful. It would have been impossible to distribute copies of the product too. There wouldn’t have been the web server niche for Linux to start growing. And as a developer OS it wouldn’t have had a GUI later on in the form of Windows. Hardware was terribly expensive those days too, Windows being the dominant OS is what has made hardware cheap.
Linux owes it succes to the existence of the Internet, and partly to the dominance of Windows.
Good informative blog entry. Some pictures of G1 can be found on http://raiyaraj.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/google-phone-t-mobile-g1-htc-pictures/
@builder: Cut him some slack. This is a good article, unlike what he has been writing a little while ago.
Good one Dan, I agree with you on how Apple should stop locking-down their platforms. Interesting read, good viewpoint.
YAWN.
If I want this type of article I’ll buy Newsweek, which won’t ever happen.
Dan,
Thanks for an insightful post. I was getting ready to drop this blog from my feed because it simply wasn’t funny (I was a huge fan of Fake Steve).
The question of whether Open Source may have made a dent in the evolution of PC operating systems is a good one. Here we have an experiment in progress that may answer that question/ However, I’d say that you’re somewhat anticipating the result of this experiment. It’s not at all clear yet that Android simply being open source can compete against the very compelling user experience that Apple has put together with the iPhone both for users and developers.
Interesting times ahead.
Oh, and don’t you think the G1 looks a bit cheap and plasticy? It certainly doesn’t exude that “I want to hold one of those in my hand” feeling from the photos that I had with the iPhone.
As Monkey Boy once bellowed, “Developers!Developers!Developers!”. Whoever wins their hearts and minds will win the war. Will Jobs miscalculate and find himself ousted, yet AGAIN?(Hello, Al Gore!). If anything that F. Scott Fitzgerald has been wrong about, there are second and third acts in America. There’s always Disney …
I think Apple are happy to remain being the same old Apple they’ve ever been. They presumably like their users, and have enough of them to be making enough money!
At the back of the store it says “93% left to go” – referring to the amount of users left to get using a Mac, but Steve Jobs’ current policies don’t seem to be wanting to invite a heck of a lot of new users. Perhaps 10-15% more, but not 93%…
Yeah. I keep thinking this is a replay of the desktop battles. This time around Google is MS-DOS, which while not as flashy and late to the game, is willing to license to anyone. Better still, they’re open source friendly, which will help with their geek momentum.
Apple is Apple. iPhones will always have 3-12% market share, and they’ll have to fight tooth-and-nail and work their “lifestyle” fans to remain successful.
Or, tortoise and hare. Google starts slow but should build and maintain momentum.
-danny
Isn’t Apple being a nice player a good thing?
Consumer choice and competition drives innovation and whatever market is in question. Can you imagine a world where everyone had an iPhone? How boring. In Europe Nokia has been king for years and we’ve had to deal with that standard Nokia look, the buggy implementation of Symbian the awful launch of the N Series and people switched in droves as other manufacturers made more out of Symbian than Nokia ever did.
If Apple were the consumer choice, they would have a monopoly, if they had 70% market share the regulators would be tearing the company apart, insisting it allowed its OS on to other hardware and did not bundle iLife and Safari and iPhoto with its OS.
Ok, in the real world that’s unlikely these days, things have moved on from when MS were sued by the US government for forcing such things upon people, but you get my point.
Apple is a choice of computer and OS, it’s not a lifestyle choice or a cult despite what many will have you believe, it’s a company that is fantastic at innovation and one that drives other companies to produce better products. Roll back 12 months and think, were there any touch screen phones?
The iPhone was a game changer but it’s not for everyone. the important thing is it got attention and made Apple a mint. The brand awareness alone was worth the gamble.
I’d rather arrive ahead of everyone by taking tech and making it work better than alternatives like Apple (PC, iPod, iPhone etc.), than be a multi-dimensional company who follows the crowd and relies on the innovation of others.
Yes I own several apple products, I also own several Sony products and others that I feel are the best on the market. Sony is a niche player in home cinema systems and TVs but that isn’t a bad thing, it means it has to innovate, and thus we come the full circle.
If Apple were to become ACME it’d lose whatever it is that drives the company to think different.
It does look like history is repeating itself, and Apple’s repeating its mistakes with the Mac too.
But phones are more thoroughly consumer devices that demand simplicity and elegance, and Apple’s ahead here while Google, true to form, is pretty messy (and has alienate developers too). If people don’t buy Android phones in big numbers, that will decide things for developers.
[…] PC Vs Mac circa 1990, all over again? We know how it ended for Apple. […]
It’s an interesting line of inquiry. Another possibility is the gPhone will get all segmented like Unix did.
When PCs first got going, there wasn’t a killer app. But for phones there is: making phone calls. And all the phones can do that regardless of the OS. Smart phones call all do phone calls, email, and web in a standard way.
So unlike for the early PC, there is less to invent, less the sense of a solution in search of a problem, and there is nobody with platform control. Does that make sense? As long as a smart phone can make phone calls, do email and browse the web, it doesn’t have to run the same underlying software.
Now if there is some absolutely killer smartphone app that can’t be easily cloned, as Office was for the PC, it could happen. But unless you articulate what that is, and somehow the creators of it keep it closed while it’s used on these open and semi-open platforms, it won’t be a replay. It seems inconceivable that a killer app for gPhone or whatever wouldn’t be ported to or cloned for iPhone and vice versa.
Also gPhone is susceptible to the same platform problems that Microsoft is suffering with.
Apple now better understands the importance of prices on marketshare, something they didn’t quite seem to grasp back when they were the dominant desktop system.
Apple’s “asshat” behavior can change with one memo. The question isn’t can it change, the question is will it.
Apple iPhone developers may have tighter controls on making money but Apple has cultivated a following of customers that “pay real money for digital services”. Android is going to cultivate a following of customers that “expect free digital services”.
One pays the bills, the other doesn’t. And tying to explain to your wife the glories of the open source movement while she’s opening a can of spam and wondering how the mortgage is going to be paid, might be a tad difficult.
Microsoft encouraged open hardware platform. IBM failed.
Google’s success was built on free and open services. Yahoo&Co. failed.
If Apple stays closed on all fields, will fail (again).
They had the chance to make their software platform open, but they failed.
Don’t count out BlackBerry. They’re a bigger factor than Windows Mobile.
I’m a veteran of the Unix workstation wars of the late 80s and early 90s, right around the time the entire Unix workstation market got flattened by PCs. The difference then was that there was a clear killer app — Microsoft Office — that gradually but inexorably rolled up the competition. (Show of hands: who remembers Interleaf? FrameMaker?) When Sun, HP/Apollo, and SGI failed to get Office ported to their platforms (which was a possibility then) they doomed themselves on the desktop in the long run.
Phones don’t have a killer app yet — or if you consider SMS and email the phone killer apps, they’re available on every smart phone in an agnostic way. So I’d think we’ll see a lot more ecological variation for a while, because there’s no compelling reason to select one platform. Yet.
Great post Dan.
I think Apple is holding the iPhone back by running the App Store with an iron fist and having an NDA over developers’ heads. Google’s G1 is great, however I think it’s still lacks compared to the iPhone. Will it ever dethrone the iPhone? Maybe. But definitely not now.
Apple seems to be intent on destroying the iPhone third-party software market, with their stupid NDA and app rejections and basic asshat behavior.
However, Android uses Java, which makes it completely uninteresting right out of the gate. As unhappy as I am with how Apple is handling things, I’ll keep writing code for that platform because it’s a good platform to develop for. I’d rather find a new career than develop software with Java.
Not sure. We’re (consumers) in a different place now. We’re much more discerning and want things to just work. Linux on the desktop still doesn’t match OSX. There’s tons of open source out there and with it a ton of crap. Will open source/phone be any different. And, how much control will the carriers impose. Even though the underlying OS is open, the sytem as a whole is not.