Apple’s Spat With Google Is Getting Personal | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s Spat With Google Is Getting Personal

nytimes.com

100 pointsjlhamilton47 comments

When the directors are good, sequels can be interesting sometimes they top the original concept.

Interruption technology appears, apple gets to it first in a consumer friendly way, with superior design. Apple makes lots of money. Apple attempts to lock the market. Other vendors imitate and innovate, maybe even with inferior design. Rival vendor makes said technology ubiquitous. Apple wails. Apple marginalized back to niche market.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes

its hard to imagine how Steve Jobs can win this without completely stifling innovation, which he does not have the power to do.

If Apple is experiencing a sense of deja vu its because the core mode of operation, that of an isolated by design operator, did not change.

The last fight of this type left apple half dead, and if apple isn't careful it might end up half dead after this one as well. Democratization of platforms has always been in the best interest of developers,and software drives hardware sales, not the other way around. Apple always fought this notion, personally i hope that on this issue it will lose and continue to lose, again and again.

At stake here is everything that made apple triumphant again. smart phones largely negate the need for an isolated mp3 players for instance, and online offerings attack itunes directly as well.

I have two apple servers in my shop largely stylish weights now. Take Apple's entry to the server platform. It betrays a conceptual gap with a huge industry, you cannot virtualize the os platform, nor can you use the hardware as sensible virtual host, it is harder to install a non apple operating system on the server offerings then its is on a desktop. incredible short sighted approach.

Sometimes i feel Apple has a distinct strategic reliance on the idea that the user must remain somewhat scared and in awe of the "magic" that operates the machines, it really aggravates them when other vendors, as well as consumers finally get it.

somewhat similar to a time you figure the priest was actually lying to you.

Not that I am pulling for Google, the are to be judged with suspicion as any business of this scale should be.

But just like Microsoft in many ways created the capability for people to have machines cheap enough and open enough to give birth to moders and Linux development. so Google with their approach allow a whole slew of technology that will mark the ascent of its future rivals

As John Grubber pointed out some time ago, the last time of that "fight", was with the iPod...

You might say that this iPhone situation has very little to do with the iPod one, but if so, so does the mac situation.

I disagree...

This is quite reminiscent of the Mac/PC battle in the 80's. It's a more open platform vs. a walled-garden.

There was never a 'open' mp3 player battling the iPod. There was never really a developer eco-system of any kind. Mp3 players, the iPod included, where single purpose devices. The value proposition never rested on open development and innovation.

I think Android will win this, provided that Google gets some kind of handle on the fragementation issues. They're pursuing a model quite close to what Series 60 has done for years. The entire Android eco-system is bringing a lot of phones to market. Some are hits and some are misses, but at the end of the day all of those phones results in HUGE numbers and ultimately a higher combined market share...even if no single phone ever sales as well as an iPhone.

I was not trying to say it is like the iPod, but at the same time, I think it isn't like the mac/pc either, and lets face it, the pc has never been (pc = windows pc, at least here) a truly open development platform.

Android will win this, if by win we mean more marketshare. But we all know that is not the only measure of success.

I suppose it really depends on how you define 'open'. Has windows ever been open in the open source sense? Of course not. However, the difference in the early days of windows vs. Mac was pretty stark. Microsoft did have a platform that was open in the sense that any developer could easily write software for it. The documentation was widely available. There where no hoops to jump through to actually sell the software. The whole thing was easy.

That 'openess' gave Microsoft a huge advantage. It provided it with a bevy of applications that simply didn't exist for the Mac. In addition Microsoft was hardware neutral, meaning that the collective marketing machines of thousands of companies worked to push Windows over the Mac.

It's the same thing here. As a developer, the release process is simpler and cleaner. The OS itself affords you more flexibility particularly with background apps. There are an entire classification of apps that you simply can't write for the iPhone that you can for Android. Over time, those become increasingly important. As Android devices proliferate, you'll begin to hear more and more about apps that are awesome... and they simply don't exist for the iPhone. That's when Android wins.

In addition there are a lot of manufacturers and carriers wedded to Android. That collective marketing muscle is far greater than even the greatest marketing company since Barnum and Bailey (Apple). We already hear a lot of noise about Android, and that's only going to increase in intensity.

Again, this is all for naught if Google doesn't fix those fragmentation issues. If the weight of supporting all of those phones individually becomes to heavy, the whole thing collapses. It's hard to innovate when your simply scrambling to keep up with the differences in hardware. If they're able to unify these things and come up with a sane way for developers to deal with it, well then I just don't think there is any contest.

Apple is really starting to subscribe to the competition is bad for business standpoint and it really is starting to get annoying.

You can see that apple really wants to be the smartphone distributor but they really can only do that two ways: create a cheaper phone or remove the cheaper competing phones from competition

For me I put my support into google I have a droid and like it very much and the iphone on the other hand was not meant for me but this fueding between apple and the tech world makes me not want to support apple.

they really can only do that two ways

You left out differentiation, which has always been Apple's primary way of competing. Differentiation becomes a lot harder when the competition can simply copy you.

Apple already did differentiation, that's how they became a leader in smartphone products and sales. It took how long for the competition to "copy" Apple? How much has Apple's market share, and market cap, increased since the original iPhone differentiating point? Maybe it's time Apple start differentiating their products again, now that the tech that made them different to begin with is commodity.

What you are suggesting is exactly what has happened: It is called the iPad, with books and periodicals in iTunes to boot. By his own admission, it is the first device to satisfy the ultimate vision of Alan Kay, the father of the modern personal computer. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

The interface potential of this device is enormous. Expect to see a whole new generation of must-have applications taking advantage of multitouch on a larger screen.

even so, the ipad technology will become a technology that is common as muck in even shorter time it took the industry to mimic and build on the concept of the iphone. what then?

If Apple can continuously innovate to a large degree, it can stay ahead. It seems to be doing just that.

But yeah - the open vs. closed platform does seem exactly like the battle for the PC. Apple seems primed to lose the bulk of the market once again.

This is the situation patents and IP law where designed to deal with. The real cost of innovation includes all the the failed ideas. When people can wait for a first mover and then copy them there is little to no value in being a first mover.

Perhaps some sort of short term look and feel right with a mandatory licensing agreement might be the best way to deal with this stuff. You can make as many iPhone / iPad knockoffs as you want but you need to pay 10 cents a pop.

Apple might then owe lots of money to palm if that would be the case.

> it is the first device to satisfy the ultimate vision of Alan Kay

I thought Alan Kay's ultimate vision were computers that can be hacked by anyone, hence Smalltalk. Oh well ...

Hah! Touche, yeah the closed platform was not his vision at all, but the iPhone dev kit must be good enough he is quoted as saying that a bigger iPhone would constitute a dynabook.

Yes, Apple continues to innovate in new areas, but being a leader doesn't seem to be enough for them/Jobs if they are going to attempt to keep their leadership in markets that are becoming a commodity by enforcing patents on what amounts to commodity technologies.

It can actually be a pretty wilily to upset one industry, let everyone spend their time catching up and dealing with it becoming a commodity, while you move on to upset the next industry. Apple is doing that with the iPad, and they still have, and will continue to have, a lead position in the smart phone market letting them have some influence over where that industry is headed, especially with things like the App store and their market penetration. But how much time and effort is it worth looking back at previous industries they've upset while they upset the next industry? Apple has had more success at exploiting their good brand name to enter markets that they wouldn't necessarily have been in and upsetting them, complaining about other companies copying them, after they've already reaped the rewards for their effort (and continue to do so), is not the mark of a true leader.

enforcing patents on what amounts to commodity technologies

Such as?

now that the tech that made them different to begin with is commodity

I was referring to the strategy, not any technology. What are you referring to, specifically?

Well, you know that Apple will be unwilling to make a "cheaper" phone. They are in the 'premium computing device' business—i.e. they'll never sell something perceived as cheap, they'll never cut features in order to get the price down.

I think what we're seeing here is partly a tragic flaw in Steve Jobs's persona. He obviously has an issue when he feels that his innovation has been ripped off. What we may be seeing here is a replay of the 'look and feel' type dispute between Jobs and Gates. Jobs felt that his innovation was simply ripped off by a cheaper, tasteless knockoff (and in a sense he was right). In the end, there was nothing Jobs could do about it. Now he feels like the same thing happened. Just as Jobs had shown Gates his ideas in confidence and was then ripped off, Jobs likely feels the same way about Schmidt--he took Schmidt into his confidence, allowed him to be privy to Jobs's vision, and now Google is producing graceless copies of what he's worked so hard on.

Obviously Google's side of the story may be true—they bought Android and developed it for a long time, well before the iPhone was revealed. Apple doesn't necessarily have a right to prevent other companies from copying touch interfaces and other aspects of the iPhone that were unique when it was first introduced. But if I were Steve Jobs I might feel like the same thing that happened to me in the early '90s is in danger of happening to me again in the late '00s / early '10s. It's one of those fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me situations, and I'm sure it's frustrating for Jobs at a time when he's rightly perceived as being at the top of his game.

While it's nice to build a cool narrative around Steve Jobs and a long time "tragic flaw," this doesn't hold up. Steve Jobs was not at Apple when they sued Microsoft. It was filed in 1988[1], and Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 [2].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso.... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs

You're right that the lawsuit itself was not Jobs's personal doing, but the acrimonious personal dispute between Jobs and Gates certainly was about 'look and feel' and the perception that Gates knocked off Jobs's innovation. Gates was brought in by Jobs and shown his project in order to get Microsoft on board for Mac software. Then Gates came out with what Jobs thought was an imitation of the Mac UI, an imitation he believed that Gates could only have done by copying what Jobs had shown him.

Jobs's perceptions in that case or in the current case with Schmidt may not be accurate or just, but that doesn't mean they don't play an important psychological role in Apple's current strategy toward HTC, Google, and Microsoft.

while Pirates of Silicon valley was a cool movie, it wasn't exactly a good recount of the whole affair. In fact, Microsoft really mostly took their idea from the same exact place Apple did, Xerox. They even hired many Xerox employees to work on Windows.

Jobs seems incapable of believing that two companies can come up with similar products at the same time. The iPhone did not include any technology not already available elsewhere. It was the package as a whole that made it innovative.

While I agree with your sentiments, it should be pointed out that Steve Jobs had nothing to do with the 'look and feel' lawsuit against Microsoft.

'Apple Computer, Inc. vs. Microsoft Corporation' was filed in 1988, and finally resolved in 1994. Steve Jobs was at NeXT the whole time.

Apple is really starting to subscribe to the competition is bad for business standpoint.

Competition is bad for any company that seeks to maximize profits. That is just a fact of life. You cannot hope to innovate forever and expect demand to grow or even remain steady for all but a few markets.

A monopoly is bad for the consumer (most of you) but it is definitely good for the company.

To maintain a monopoly in itself would be expensive and not necessarily the way to maximum profits (there is always the threat of outside investors). Innovation of course costs money but if a company remains stagnant (because its profits are unaffected by competition) then it runs the long term risk of becoming obsolete when substitute technology comes onto the market. You could say competition is a short-term cost but non-competition is a long-term disaster.

In Apple's case, though, there's already plenty of tough competition going on.

in the short run.

"Competition is a sin." — John D. Rockefeller

That's why he tried to crush all his competition - to remove sin.

Google and Apple used to be bound together in a common goal: break the Microsoft hegemony.

However, they had two fundamentally different reasons for doing so. Google wanted a free and open web, where they could develop awesome server-based applications. Apple simply wanted to replace Windows computers with Apple computers. Those two goals are increasingly incompatible.

Now that they've managed to make Microsoft widely irrelevant, these vicious fights look inevitable. I think it's healthy, actually. Hopefully they'll keep each other honest.

I wonder if Microsoft is as irrelevant as people claim it to be. Bing is gaining share, windows 7 sales are good and the experience of users is good as well. a new phone system is on the pipeline, and they still completely dominate business.

This fight is a huge importunity for Microsoft, bring something new while the other spend their time in courts and media frenzy pushback

It's true, they've still got massive market-share and piles of cash. If you're competing in the enterprise software space, they're a major contender.

However, it used to be that every new technology venture had to consider 'the Microsoft problem'. As in, 'How do we avoid getting squashed by Microsoft?' That's simply not true anymore. When was the last time you heard someone seriously discussing Microsoft as a competitive threat?

Outside of games, operating systems, and office suites, MS has been largely de-fanged. Unless they turn things around, they're going to turn into another Oracle. Big, but not a powerful force outside their narrow domain.

more tripe.... Businesses will act like Businesses. Google and Apple have very different ways of making money and they have now reached a point where their business models are in opposition. No drama, no betrayal, just business.

HTC is Google's weak link because they don't have a patent chest of their own to defend themselves. Apple and Microsoft already have agreements. Nokia and Blackberry have their own patents so they probably will get some resolution with Apple. Samsung does manufacturing for a lot of these companies so they are probably safe.

Which is sad since HTC has been making very good phones even before the whole iPhone craze started. Their windows mobile phones were by far the best in my view before the iPhone came. (I never owned a Windows Mobile HTC but have had experiences with a few of them through friends). HTC seemed to work hard on creating better interfaces for the Windows Mobile platform and it does so again with Android. Their sense UI is quite nice and I believe has many things that put it above the iPhone. The widgets on the home screen they provide are awesome.

The problem for Google is that they're wholly dependent on their near-monopoly on Internet advertising, possibly the world's least rare commodity. (Can you imagine what a company that controlled a similar share of TV or print advertising would be worth?) It's easy to imagine a left-field competitor, like Google itself ten years ago, stealing a substantial chunk of their revenue. They're also vulnerable to a platform owner like Apple, RIM, or Microsoft choking off access to its customers. Either scenario would be apocalyptic for Google.

I can't fully agree. To the extent that they rely on advertising on search, they are selling searchers to advertisers. It's their monopoly on search that they're dependent on, not advertising; people searching with intent is the commodity they trade in.

Rather then wielding this patent b.s., the solution to hurting competitors (Andriod) would for Apple to kill it's exclusive at&t contract and then further innovate the iPhone. Andriod's uptake is attributed to the Droid being on Verizon, but if iPhone was available on Verizon, t-mobile and Sprint, Andriod's uptake would seriously slow down.

I owned a HTC hero in oct., but it was junk compared to the iphone and took it back; replaced it with an iphone. The driod feels junky to me when comparing it to the sleekness of the iphone, as well the lack of apps andriod has comparatively is another negative.

Here's the thing about that though: it would devastate Apple's profits. At&t hands over a hefty portion of the contract (where the real money is in wireless). Why would any carrier consider that with a nonexclusive phone?

Thing about the 'Apple may switch to Bing' threat is... wouldn't that actually put consumers OFF? (unless you could change the search bar settings back to google)

Regarding the 'spat,' all I'm saying is, "everyone" knows Apple should open up their platform more, yet Apple must have their reasons. It reminds me how "everyone" knew Nintendo should have ditched cartridge technology earlier, yet Nintendo (a 100+ year old business) hung in there, poised to make a massive comeback some point in the future, while other console vendors dropped like flies.

I like how the photo that shows that their home screens look alike also is virtually identical to an ancient Palm Pilot home screen.

http://www.pdamuseum.com/palm/palm_pics/palm_personal.jpg

http://www.thocp.net/hardware/pictures/pda/apple_newton_sml....

That's not even the home screen on Android!

They opened the applications "drawer" which shows an icon for each application you have ... and showed that next to the iPhone's home screen. Icons aligned in a grid on a screen have been used everywhere since early GUIs.

If they had shown the home screen for Android (desktop with widgets and a couple of icons) the two screens would not look so similar.

If Apple tries to make Bing the search provider, or takes away my Google service synching, I'll switch to an Android phone the next day.

quote from article: "One well-connected Silicon Valley investor, who did not want to be identified talking about the Google-Apple feud, says he is stunned by the level of rancor he’s witnessed."

I wonder who this is?

Steve got burned a long time ago by MS copying many of Apple's designs. I think anyone in his shoes would go out of their way to not let it happen again.

He did not. Both Apple and Microsoft used designs originally from Xerox Parc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_i...

Are you sure that no one at Microsoft ever saw a Mac before they implemented Windows, and that there never was any discussion between Microsoft employees saying that they liked or dislike any feature of the Mac GUI?

Are you really sure :-) Your one-liner sounded like you know your facts.

What he meant was, Mac's concept of gui was not original, it was pretty much based on Xerox's. So, even if Microsoft meant to copy the mac, they actually copied Xerox Parc.

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