Will Apple’s history repeat itself and make Android the winner? | Hacker News Reader

Will Apple’s history repeat itself and make Android the winner?

blog.subotovsky.com

13 pointsssubo38 comments

Unfortunately, I believe the answer is yes. I run a MacBook Pro as my main machine and I own an iPhone and believe that they will be the last apple products that I buy for a while. After the Amiga dies, I was a apple user until shortly after the PPC and got burnt on that transition as I bought a machine right before the transition and then they killed OS support for the old 040 chips rather quickly, swore them off and then slowly got wooed back by their flawless handling of the transition to Intel. Now with the constant compromises I have to make for the iPhone, I am finding it to restrictive of a platform and am actively looking for a replacement.

For example, I was at our family lake house in NC last week on vacation, I am actively in talks over a few CIO positions and one of the companies asked me to forward my resume in word format. If I could upload files to my phone then I could have attached it to an email and sent it out. I have a striped down Google doc resume that I use for just this case but it doe not compare to my word or PDF resume which contain charts and diagrams to visualize my accomplishments. Due to an arbitrary platform restriction, I have to do funky stuff like email the file to myself and then forward that email to any requester.

Moving on from that, the tethering thing is another pain in the butt that to me has no rhyme or reason. I have to use my Wife's Blackberry (on AT&T) to tether my computer at the lake house. Same network but one phone has tethering intentional disabled.

Anyway, long story short I am starting to feel the restrictions of the platform and now it looks like Apple is abandoning a lot of good solution providers because they might compete a little on their platform. With no competition innovation stifles even in a company like Apple.

Time will tell, and Steve has pulled off some miracles but as for me, I think Apple has lost me again which is a shame because they are one of the few companies left that put such a focus on quality.

For me, Dropbox solves the problem of sending files. I keep most everything that matters (work related) on Dropbox. I can access files using the Dropbox app and email file links to whomever I like. If only there was enough storage for all of my media...

I don't see how your experiences have any wider ramifications- tethering and not being able to access a file system have nothing to do with the reasons Mac OS got killed by Windows in the late 80's/early 90's. It was pricing.

And, besides, as a power user you can just jailbreak and install NetModem, or you could have gone into Google Apps, forwarded yourself the actual PDF, and then forwarded that forward on. Those are roundabout, but we're talking about edge cases, and in a well designed UI, edge cases are handled in an edge fashion.

--I don't see how your experiences have any wider ramifications- tethering and not being able to access a file system have nothing to do with the reasons Mac OS got killed by Windows in the late 80's/early 90's. It was pricing.

I disagree, they where lagging in every department performance, aging OS, mismanagement and making horrible decision to rectify the situation. Copeland was a disaster the CHRP platform was a disaster the Pippen was a disaster the Performa was a disaster, the clones where a disaster. If Price where the only issue it would have been easily rectified.

--And, besides, as a power user you can just jailbreak and install NetModem

I am sorry but that is probably the worst justification I have heard. If I need to go through a bunch of half hacks to open up a platform then I would rather switch and that was the point of my original post.

--and in a well designed UI, edge cases are handled in an edge fashion

no well designed UI and systems provide usability and do not force a user to hack out workarounds to account for lack of usability. As well emailing an attachment is not an edge case.

Dropbox is your friend. It works on all major platforms and even on the iPhone.

re: tethering, I'm outside the US of A, and iPhone tethering works fine. So this particular rant at Apple is misdirected.

The situation is somewhat similar, but with some key differences:

- the PC/Mac market has Microsoft taking a cut of every PC sold. Not so with Google's Android. With minimal software costs, making Android handsets is dirt cheaper.

- in the PC/Mac market, Apple makes most of their money selling hardware. In the mobile market, Apple is also making money facilitating the sale of content (Movies, Music, Apps).

- currently, Apple has an enormous advantage in the number of developers targeting their platform. As the industry matures, developers will gravitate even more to the device where they can make money selling their apps. When people start realizing how to easily pirate Android apps, I predict Apple will be the clear winner here.

> When people start realizing how to easily pirate their Android apps, I predict Apple will be the clear winner here.

You could've said the same thing about Windows apps.

Piracy (which always acted as a marketing scheme for software) is also becoming irrelevant since many apps on the iPhone are just frontends to online services.

Besides, the free lunch is almost over. People are getting tired of fart apps.

You could have said the same about barely wired desktop PC app piracy in 1991 as ubiquitously connected mobile device app piracy in the year 2010?

I was thinking more about '95 when Win95 was released, but yeah.

Back then I had a PC with dozens of pirated apps and games (there were "pirates" which took orders by phone, and delivered CDs by mail).

In fact I haven't used so much pirated software as in the nineties :)

When I was younger and in a different legal jurisdiction, pirates would deliver the CDs to your house. Price was comparable with a pizza order, too.

> People are getting tired of fart apps.

Sir! Bite your tongue! This truly unique genere of iPhone apps has incalculable (by you, at least) amounts of potential. I'm certain that you would be shocked at the extensive research and development that is going into the next generation of these apps.

Besides, the free lunch is almost over. People are getting tired of fart apps.

Fart apps never made Apple much money. Of the top 5 grossing apps on the iPhone right now, the prices are $15, free, $1, $900, $7. They are hardly "fart apps". The free one is a TV streamer with an in-app subscription service of $10/month. The $1 is the RedLaser barcode scanner. Of the top 50 apps, 11 cost <$1, and 12 cost >$10 [1]. Apple is actively pushing developers to make more of the latter.

1. I mean >= and <=, rounded to the nearest dollar. That is, $9.99 ~ $10.

>> When people start realizing how to easily pirate their Android apps, I predict Apple will be the clear winner here.

> You could've said the same thing about Windows apps.

Precisely! Except the easier it is to pirate Windows software, the more valuable Windows becomes (at no loss to Microsoft). Handset manufacturers, on the other hand, are trying to make a profit by taking a cut of the app sales. The more iPhone apps are sold, the more money Apple makes. Their bottom line is negatively affected every time someone opts to pirate instead of buying. Not so with Microsoft.

People said the same thing about the iPod. Here, Google even has a handy graph of it:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=apple+microsoft+%22hi...

Although in that sense, they were in fact forced to drop the DRM due to competition. You can put any music from any source on an iPod.

They were not forced to drop the DRM due to competition. They dropped the DRM because they didn't like the DRM. They owned the market both before and after they introduced "Plus" tracks.

Problem is the iPod is for listening to music, being in a different category altogether.

Computers are about running general purpose software done by third parties. Companies / developers are targeting those platforms which are the most popular or which provide the path of least resistance.

History can repeat itself because smartphones are also about running software.

You just need to convince major players to standardize on your OS, and ironically Apple is playing a part in this by acting as a bully that might push established players out of the smartphones market.

I would cautiously advocate a claim that Apple cannibalized their own iPod market share with the iPhone OS devices precisely to avoid getting cannibalized by everyone else.

The problem is... where do you go from iPhone OS?

Why do you think iPod would have been cannibalized? IIRC its market share was holding steady at >70% when iPhone was announced.

Before, there was a music player market and a phone market. The iPhone covers both, reducing the size of the standalone music player market.

The iPod Touch is basically an iPhone, though it still counts as an iPod for purposes of marketshare.

Portable music players got too easy. Apple's strength is doing things either differently or better than everyone before them. The required hardware got commoditized hard, and if the competition wasn't quite as stylish or polished, they rapidly started being good enough to eat a substantial piece of the cake.

Portable music players were always easy. Apple always had competition, from big players and from small player, at high price points and low price points, competing on features, competing on design. Portable music players didn't get too easy. Apple ran out of people to sell them to.

Cost of a decent computer in 1990: >= $2000

Cost of the best smartphones in 2010: <= $200

"Good enough" is a tradeoff someone makes when they're forced to drop a significant fraction of their yearly income on a product. Smartphones are so cheap, the quality of the user experience is going to be far more important than it was with early PCs.

> Cost of the best smartphones in 2010: <= $200

You should use the unsubsidized cost. Like if you need to replace an iPhone or buying a Nexus One. More like $600.

$200 is what the average person pays up-front for their phone. But my point is that you can't save a significant amount of money by buying one of the iPhone alternatives.

I absolutely agree with the author's observation. I was in my 20's when Apple released the Apple II and Steve is basically repeating history which is that Apple is the only game in town until the rest of the world figures out their secret sause and gang up on them. I wrote this up recently, hope you like. http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/ipad-is-the-prequel

The problem with people who make this argument is they attribute causation to the fact that Apple was integrated when in fact Apple lost out to the PC because it stagnated. Anyone who looks at Apple's history realizes that they managed to stay ahead of Microsoft for almost a decade. If you look at the original Mac versus Windows which really didn't overtake the Mac until Windows 3.11 in 1992. So Apple didn't lose because it was an integrated provider Apple lost because they basically didn't move forward for an entire decade while Microsoft continued to move forward at a rapid clip. There are other reasons like Steve Jobs leaving and them choosing the PowerPC but in the end you can't say that Apple lost strictly because of its exclusive nature.

But "Windows" wasn't the product Apple was competing with, it was MS-DOS and the PC platform in general. And Apple was losing there too. Windows 3 was a big product event inside the PC world. It had little to no effect on the Mac vs. PC marketshare numbers (though it did force a lot of churn in the PC deployed base as it finally managed to obsolete all the XT clones).

> There are other reasons like Steve Jobs leaving

I'm not entirely convinced that Apple would have done better had Steve Jobs stayed at the company. It's entirely possible that he would have run the company into the ground while avoiding the other poor choices that Apple made in his absence. It's also entirely possible that during his time away from the company he learned things that allowed him to come back to the company with a fresh outlook. The idea the Steve Jobs is the sole reason that Apple can be successful, leading to the conclusion that Apple would have been successful for their entire history, had Steve Jobs never left, is wild speculation at best.

Another reason to think it'll repeat itself is that Apple is picking a fight with seemingly everyone. It's fighting MS, Google, Adobe, its own developers etc. It wants to own and control pretty much every aspect related to its products and that's not sustainable.

I realise comparisons with 1984, and Apple's 1984 commercial, are fairly obvious, but with Apple's recent "must be written in" developer rules, they're now extending their ownership and control into the words you can use (as a developer). ++Bad.

This article was a nice change of pace from the usual quality of apps, poor adobe kerfuffle.

I personally am intrigued by this battle unfolding between Apple and everyone else as I was too young to fully digest/enjoy Microsoft's battles with Apple/IBM/etc.

A counter point is that consumers have had years of headaches with traditional "open" platforms like windows

Apple has been gaining market share for a nearly a decade on their messaging of simplicity and stability and plenty of non-techies that I know LOVE their iPhone vs. frustrated with the lack of continuity with Android already.

I'd like to know how MacOS X is any less of an 'open platform' that MS Windows is. Other than hardware lock-in, there are no tight developer restrictions.

People aren't complaining that they can't run iPhoneOS on another smart phone. They are complaining that they can only run software on iPhoneOS that has been approved by Apple, and that Apple is being an ass towards developers for the platform in general. None of this was true of either Windows or MacOS.

> I know LOVE their iPhone vs. frustrated with the lack of continuity with Android already.

[citation needed]

Cite me people that are 'frustrated with the lack of continuity with Android' that aren't:

* in the techie 5% of the population

* designers that are anal about the smallest of details

People who aren't in that 5% don't know what Android is.

Well, people who aren't techies and don't have some involvement in the industry, anyway.

How can non-techies be 'frustrated with the lack of continuity of Android' if they don't know what it is?

a) re: closed platform: Mac OS runs 99% on Apple's hardware which = less bugs.

b) re: lack of continuity. Sorry I wasn't clear - I've heard from several people about apps not working properly, the "app store" being tied into their hardware supplier etc. Total heresay, you got me on that one.

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