However, all of this success seems to be going to the heads of the Apple elite, and a number of recent actions indicate this hubris may lead to the second downfall of Apple. And this time, they might not be so lucky as to have Microsoft or Google save them.
The iPad
The infamous Apple tablet has long been rumored, and sought after by Apple fanboys. I can think of no better example of the arrogance of Apple than the iPad. If announcing a glorified extra-large iPod Touch and dubbing it, "Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price," and expecting people to ignore the copious shortcomings and just eat up this pile of crap isn’t the epitome of arrogance, I don’t know what is. The list of things missing from the device is extremely broad: no multitasking, no Flash, no Mac OS X, no camera, DRM, AT&T being the sole provider of 3G coverage. Yet, Apple will throw the poorly manufactured device out there at a minimum price of $500 and expect people to waste their money on it while a new generation will come out every three months with each successive version fixing exactly one of the massive problems with the device. Well, except Flash of course.
Flash
Steve Jobs really hates Flash. And guess what? He expects his customers to abide by his little personal vendetta. 71% of online video and 75% of online games are Flash based. Guess what? Steve Jobs doesn’t care. Instead of catering to the customer, he expects the industry to cater to him. This was pretty evident when he visited the editors of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and told them they should switch from Flash to H.264 encoding, something the iPhone and iPad supports. He didn’t care that retraining their staff, losing interactive capabilities, and converting all existing content to this format might be cumbersome; he just expects them to drop the technology at his whim. He explained that Apple’s decision to not include Flash was because Flash is a dead technology, similar to Apple’s decisions to drop support for floppy drives, ditch legacy data ports, and replace CCFL backlighting with LEDs.
DRM
DRM is just about the worst technology out there right now. For those of you who don’t know what DRM is, it stands for Digital Rights (Restrictive) Management. Basically, it is a tool used by companies to restrict your access to third party resources to ensure a dependence on their company. The best comparison I can think of to explain it is how some printers will only use ink cartridges made by the company itself, and will refuse to use cartridges that have been refilled by places like Office Max. Its main goal is to restrict piracy, but ultimately it fails completely at that and ends up just harming the average user. Apple forces you to use only applications that are in its App Store. That doesn’t really seem like a big deal, the App Store has thousands of applications, and a large amount of them are free. However, Apple has complete control over what products make it into the App Store, and they can reject any application for a variety of reasons. For example, in May of last year, Apple rejected an e-book reading application named Eucalyptus that taps into Project Gutenburg. So why would Apple reject an application that seems pretty harmless? Explicit content. One of the e-books listed was a Victorian translation of the Kama Sutra, a book that is freely accessible by other applications and the Safari browser. Well, that’s the reason Apple gave. When the iPad was announced, guess what else was announced? A paid e-book store in iTunes. Oh, and you can’t import e-books from other sources, view e-books from public libraries, or anything along those lines. Nope, you’re stuck buying every ebook directly from Apple, even though the EPUB format they’re using is free and open source. I think it’s pretty clear that the Eucalyptus app received the same treatment as Google Voice did.
The only way to circumvent this is by jailbreaking your iPhone. Jailbreaking is just another term for “makes your iPhone do what all other smart phones do”. Jailbreaking is the only way to escape AT&T’s crappy service (their network is so bad, they had to stop selling iPhones in New York City because they couldn’t put up with the bandwidth consumption of users). Apple has made it clear that even though you buy the device, you don’t actually own it. They’ve sent out updates that attempt to disable the Apple IDs of jailbroken iPhones, and make it so you can’t access the App Store. It is this mentality of treating your customers as criminals that is exactly why DRM is a horrible technology.
App Store Hypocrisy
This falls directly in line with the issue of DRM, but DRM is not the only problem with the App Store. Since the implementation of the App Store, Apple has restricted explicit content. While I’m against censorship of any kind, I do understand Apple’s decision to not have pornography infiltrating and consuming every portion of the App Store. Up until recently, some “sexy” applications have been allowed, typically showing images of girls in bikinis or lingerie, with no nudity. However, a couple weeks ago, Apple decided to strip (pun definitely intended) these adult themed apps from the App Store. I mean, what is the point of having the parental controls in iPhone settings if Apple is going to be your parent?
The new rules prohibit showing skin (men and women in skimpy clothing), innuendo, and graphic sexual descriptions. Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition application is currently one of the featured applications on the App Store. Can you smell the hypocrisy? Applications featuring the now banned content from several large companies, such as Playboy, Playgirl, and Victoria’s Secret are still allowed on the app store, while applications from small name companies and personal developers are gone. That’s because Apple doesn’t give a crap about the little people, just the people that have strong legal divisions.
Legal
Yesterday it was announced that Apple is suing smartphone manufacturer HTC over 20 counts of patent infringement. HTC is most popular for manufacturing Google owned Android products, but they also produce several Windows Mobile phones. The bulk of the patent claims strike against the Android product in particular, a move that isn’t particularly strange since Apple’s relations with Google have been diminishing greatly over the last few months. (I wrote a blog about this but my laptop decided to crap out on me, so I’ll post it later). So what kinds of intellectual property is HTC accused of stealing? Well, one example is “Patent #7,657,849: Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image”. Well that sounds like something essentially every touch screen phone in existence has. The rest of the patents are extremely vague. Apple is demanding a bar on importing HTC phones, not because it is infringing on their patents, but because they see the Nexus One as a threat. God forbid there be any competition with the iPhone for the top seat of the smartphone market.
But it isn’t just competing businesses that the Apple legal division chases after. Take the case of Jason O'Grady, who writes a blog about Apple for ZDNet. One day he decided to report a little about some insider information he had gotten about a new product release. Well, Apple didn’t like this one bit. Apple subpoenaed his ISP and attempted to get his website taken down. The case went all the way to a state court of appeals before Apple lost the case. All this was over a FireWire breakout box for GarageBand. Did I mention that Apple also sued a school for using an apple in their logo?
It’s going to be interesting to see what will happen with Apple over the course of the next few years. Armed with the success of the last decade, Apple is becoming more belligerent each and every day, burning bridges with all of the companies that helped get them to where they are today. They’ll ride the success for another few years, but if nothing changes, the oh-so loyal fans might realize they’re being taken advantage of. This time, they might not have a safety net.
Google Nexus One Unlocked Phone
Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)
