Apple, Innovation, Dilapidation

I switched from a Windows PC world to Apple in 2004. The succeeding years saw my adoration for all things Apple grow immeasurably. Over the last five years, I have purchased pretty much every major product SKU they make.

I'll exempt the iPhone from the following criticism, but I do think that Apple has gotten a little flat over the last year or so. Iterative refinement seems to be the order of the day, rather than hard core innovation and product development. I really can't get that worked up about the mono-body notebook design (which as far as I can tell is the last 'innovation' they claim); it's nice and desirable but no cure for cancer.

I've felt this way for a few months. Perhaps I'm just at brand saturation point, and it's inevitable that I'm due a jaded period. But Jason Calacanis' post on Apple the other day just reminded me of my own Apple funk.

Granular Brand Loyalty

Apple came in for some anti-competitive criticism in some European countries over the proprietary manner in which the iTunes music store locked people into using the iPod in order to listen to their purchases. Apple defended the iTunes hardware lockout on the grounds that the music industry insisted that Apple maintained a very tight control over playback device security to mitigate music piracy risks. Apple said they could'nt give such guarantees if they didn't have direct control of the hardware, hence only Apple's own iPods could playback iTunes purchased music.

But the iTunes AppStore is a different kettle of fish because it enables Apple to lock its customers into the iPhone / iPod Touch market even more effectively than with music, and legitimately.

Whereas with music purchases where Apple allowed customers to burn the iTunes purchased tracks to CD, with applications purchased from the AppStore, no such export capability can ever exist. Therefore, if a credible iPhone challenger ever does emerge, it won't be simply competing on the spec, design or usability of the device, first it needs to convice every iPhone customer to write off the conceivably hundreds of pounds they've spent on AppStore applications and games (if they're anything like me) and feel good about doing without them on the new phone. Or, at best, re-purchase those apps that have been ported to other phone platforms.

Every seventy-nine pence spent on the iTunes AppStore, regardless of how materially insignificant such small individual cash transaction is, has the massively disproportionate effect of making that customer ever more sticky to the iPhone platform. In return, Apple's brand loyalty recieves an indirect strengthening by the sub-brand loyalty its users have for the Apps they purchase.

That Google and Palm have come to the party late is already an impediment enough for them, nevermind the prospect of how tough a job they've got on their hands unseating the incumbent leader whose customers get ever more stickier, 3,000 times every minute.

I Love Disruptive Ideas

From Bob Cringely's (whom I love - not literally) latest spouting:

“Microsoft is woefully late with its next Windows upgrade, while Apple is far ahead with even the current version of OS X. Apple is moving to Intel processors and hackers have already shown that OS X can run fine on non-Apple hardware. But Apple doesn't want to give up its profitable hardware business to compete head-to-head with Microsoft. And remember, Apple totally dominates the portable music player market and will probably sell 25 million iPods or more this year.

Every one of those iPods is a bootable drive. What if Apple introduces OS 10.5, its next super-duper operating system release, and at the same time starts loading FOR FREE the current operating system version -- OS 10.4 -- on every new iPod in a version that runs on generic Intel boxes? What if they also make 10.4 a free download through the iTunes Music Store?

It wouldn't kill Microsoft, but it would hurt the company, both emotionally and materially. And it wouldn't hurt Apple at all. Apple hardware sales would be driven by OS 10.5 and all giving away 10.4 would do is help sell more iPods and attract more customers to Apple's store.”

As far as I'm aware, you can already boot and run OS X from an iPod today, but obviously require a Mac from which to boot and actually run OS X, the iPod merely acting as a hard disk - which isn't strictly the same as what Cringely is talking about, but I can clearly picture Steve Jobs pulling a Dr. Evil pinky pose right now.