AntennaGate and the Future of Apple
Is this enough to drive users away from Apple? Of course not. But make no mistake: it has wounded the relationship between Apple and its loyal users — though to what extent is as yet unknown. But you only have to surf the Web and look at the comments about AntennaGate. Apple competitors and haters are, of course, piling on. But what’s new and surprising is that Apple users, famously arrogant and protective of their company — and willing to attack any doubters in the most vehement terms — are remarkably silent this time.
Innovation Exhaustion — History honors the winners, so it is easy to forget that Apple neither invented the MP3 player, the smartphone, or the tablet computer. What the company did do was to brilliantly improve on those technologies, add its massive army of dedicated customers willing to buy any new offering from the company, and turn a new niche market into a cultural phenomenon and a new mass market.
The question now is: What is still out there awaiting the Apple treatment? Internet radio? Television? Personal biometrics? The answer isn’t clear. That, in fact, is the main reason my friend raised his doubts about the continuation of Apple’s Golden Age. Indeed, when you think about it, the iPhone 4G is essentially just an upgrade from the original model. And the iPad is mainly a great, big iPod Touch — and have you noticed how quickly the buzz faded on it?
And there is another factor as well: with the iPod and iPhone, Apple caught the rest of the electronics industry off-guard — and gave it a well-deserved smackdown. But the industry has awakened, learned some of Apple’s tricks … and if it still can’t match the Wizards of Cupertino, it can stay very close behind. Look at how quickly iPad clones and Android 4G phones have hit the market. This strategy won’t catch Apple, but it will strip the company of some of the future profits it will need both to innovate and, as is Jobs’ way, to serve as the sole provider of all its customers’ needs.
Needless to say, Apple can continue to upgrade and further slick-up its current products almost forever — and make a lot of money in the process. But in the end, that isn’t what its followers are in the game for: the world isn’t going to notice your new iPhone 5G or iPad II when you whip it out at Starbucks.
The Burden of Jobs — Steve Jobs’ behavior at last Friday’s hurriedly called news conference was, to us old-timers, most reminiscent of another, similar event more than twenty years ago: the Intel Pentium Bug. Then, as now, a tiny flaw blew hugely out of proportion and threatened the image of a giant electronics company.
Then too, the company CEO, Andy Grove, dismissed the problem as inconsequential and all but described his complaining users as foolish and hysterical — and the media and government as “piling on.”
But Grove, a better businessman than Jobs, quickly realized his error, swallowed his pride, and made amends to the public. There is no indication that Jobs will, or even can, do the same.
The compliant press described Jobs’ tone at the press conference as feisty and fearless. But a lot of people saw something else: contempt. His attitude seemed to be: Look at all that I’ve done for you people — and now you quibble about some trifle? Even his announcement of a giveaway of a free case to fix the antennae problem was presented almost as a dismissal.
I would hardly be the first person to point out the authoritarian nature of Steve Jobs. Crushing clone makers, leaning on retailers, and forcing strange hardware and software decisions (Remember optical? No mouse on the first Mac? No Adobe Flash on the iPad? No adult content in the Apple Store? etc. ) on users, Jobs’ attitude has always been “my way or the highway.” So, even if you agree with these choices, there is always the sense that in joining the Apple family you are not only surrendering some of your personal liberty, but also putting yourself to some degree at the mercy and whims of the mercurial Steven P. Jobs.
That relationship goes both ways: Jobs too needs his army of true believers to cheer him on and buy his latest products, both good and not-so-good. So now, in light of recent events, what might happen if that army, and the social contract on which it was built, suddenly finds that it is both a little embarrassing to own the Apple products they have — and that there are no “unbelievably cool” new products coming down the pipeline?
And, at the same time, what happens to Steve Jobs? He’s already a billionaire, he has a large family waiting at home, and he’s already made history as the Rockefeller or Carnegie of his era. He also knows that for health reasons he may not see a long life. So, what if he begins to look ahead and see only years of endless product upgrades and a once-worshiping, but now increasingly restive and ugly, user base?
I’m an apple fan. Dyed in the wool. However, several factors have made me shun the iPhone itself and gladly embrace Android. 1) enslaved to AT&T. No thanks. VERY bad idea. VZW is essentially THE king of the cell band in the USA, and T-Mobile in second (in my opinion). Both supported Android. Your new widget is a brick if you can’t get calls through effectively. AT&T charges way too much and delivers too little (even less now with the stripping of the unlimited data plan). 2) Lock-down on app development. While one can easily program new things for OSX, you can’t for iOS. This stiffles development and that really put a thorn in my side.
Now this. I’m an engineer by learning and by trade. This was a MAJOR engineering gaff and no “minor” flaw. Even just a finger RESTING in the right spot (and way too easy to do with NORMAL holding of the phone) can cause this serious signal attenuation. This would be forgiveable if it were NOT predicted beforehand by one of Apple’s senior antenna engineers. I only got my BSEE, and I can tell you that antenna design is no easy field, so this guy who TOLD Jobs of the serious problems in the chosen design should have been listened to. You don’t get to be a senior engineer in that field without knowing your stuff. AND JOBS KNEW. This is hubristic dismissal at its most abysmal. This guy was doing what you hire engineers FOR and Jobs dismisses this. FOOL. Is this the same guy who built Apple starting out of his garage? One thing he should’ve learned in those years is to listen to your engineers. He didn’t and he then had the gall, knowing what he did, to dismiss the problem as minor (such a flaw in design is MAJOR, since it so easily and so seriously affects the primary function of the device…. this kind of error would have gotten people FIRED had it not been caught and fixed before product release in my last job).
Jobs should’ve said “Look, this is my concept for the iPhone 4. You make it work.” That engineer would’ve probably come up with a better, more shielded design and we wouldn’t be having this controversy. But that’s not what happened is it and now Apple falls flat on its face and Jobs doesn’t even have the honesty or humility to admit that he’s fallen flat. The emperor doesn’t know he’s naked and won’t listen to EVERYONE telling him he is (except for those whose self-identity is so wrapped up in Apple that Jobs can do no wrong…. they won’t help the company, only hurt it by NOT telling Apple when it screws up). That’s just about the biblical definition of a fool right there.
I’m a very happy iMac and iPod user, and apple’s wi-fi router is one of THE most robust and reliable routers I’ve ever used (and I’ve used just about every major one in times past). However, the smart phone market is different. And while the iPhone did introduce some solid leaps in tech that took us out of the bloated PDA (blackberry, palm pre) smart phone era into the sleek, touch-screen, hi-res, multi-media smartphone era where more folks now have smart phones and not just business execs and lawyers, they still handcuffed themselves by their idiotic move for exclusive use on AT&T (bad move even THEN…. that’s like chaining oneself to a corpse already stinking) and by a dictatorial lockdown on the mobile SDK that trumped previous efforts (kinda contradictory as Jobs lobbied hard for the record label folks to drop insistence on DRM in the ITMS). Now, competing OS, Android, has overtaken iOS and with it being open core, WILL continue to trump it as users improve the system and release innovative apps for it.
Apple still has room to keep delivering innovative solutions that look absolutely COOL and work AMAZING and represent a perfect balance between beauty and functionality. But to do so, they have to start being honest with themselves and admit that they have serious, comprobable competition from other arenas.
Apple gave themselves a SERIOUS shot in the arm by ditching much of their proprietary interfaces (such as ADB) for universal interfaces (such as SATA, USB, and their own universal interface: Firewire (IEEE1494)) and then ditching proprietary chipsets for intel and nvidia chips. Those steps are part of what makes the iMac such a serious option today.
Apple needs to look into doing something similar with their smart phone line. It is NOT just an iPod which they could be more strict about and get away with it. It is a platform that is far more flexible and Apple MUST be more flexible with it if it wants it to succeed. That means breaking their exclusive deal with AT&T and courting superior carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. It means loosening the reigns on the iOS SDK (maybe start by letting folks develop on OSes OTHER than OSX) and finally allowing Adobe Flash onto their devices (another reason Android has overtaken the iOS is FroYo with FULL Flash 10.1 support). Jobs may hate Flash, but you know…. for many years, Intel was his enemy too…. now they’ve made nice. Time for him to do so with Adobe again, considering how closely Adobe and Apple partnered for so many years, and considering that the Internet won’t let go of Flash just b/c Jobs wants it to. He’s not Al Gore, who can make sweeping claims and then get lots of support.
I say these things b/c maybe SOMEONE will read them and remember them for when needed at Apple. I want this company to succeed, but to do so, we can’t just be adoring fans who think that Steve Jobs can do no wrong. That’s not helpful and won’t help Apple learn from its mistakes.
Lets not kid ourselves on the antenna issue either. From a design standpoint, it is NOT a minor bug in the design; it’s a design flaw that could have been prevented (since its so easily solved by a cover). Apple can either recognize what it needs to in order to set itself back on track and swallow its pride, or Jobs can continue to plug his ears and prove that he’s now a harm to his company rather than visionary leader.
Good analysis. Take-away question: how is antennagate similar to the BP oil spill?
When the AT&T/Apple iPhone contract exclusivity ends, is the day iPhone users wake up and realize they have been fooling themselves all along. AT&T is *not* the biggest part of the problem in that relationship… and Apple knows it, which is why they are staying put for now.
Got my 4. Love it.
I can replicate the antenna problem if I hold the phone in a way that’s hard to do. Calls not dropping. Reception no different than before, maybe a little better (although I will confess that iPhone reception is mediocre compared to some other phones.)
Look. Here’s the deal. My iPhone is not a phone that can do other things. It’s a pocket computer that can make phone calls.
Apple is a techno-ecosystem. When you buy an iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc, you are not buying a separate product, but a piece of a larger product.
I agree with you that Apple’s next move is to pull the rug out from under Netflix. But it’s probably going to be something unexpected.
Love my 4. Love my iPad. Wish I could afford to buy a new iMac but the problem is that my 5 year old one is still working so damn well…
The simple fact of the matter is that Apple sets the standards, and everyone else plays catchup.
We have a term for this in Oz – the Tall Poppies Syndrome – as soon as anyone remotely becomes successful at anything, there those out there who want to cut down the Poppy because their own sense of inferiority cannot conceive of anyone being better than them. And if there is a slight problem with the Poppy they pounce despite how trivial it really is.
Jobs has issued a challenge to the industry to solve the problem that was amply proved by the videos shown at the press conference. The industry (and it commentators) should be mature enough to accept the challenge rather than to try an make cheap political point-scoreing out of it.
Nick, I don’t follow you. Jobs challenged the rest of the industry to fix a problem with his product for him?
The conceit, arrogance and dismissiveness I encountered in Apple stores convinced me to stop buying Apple products years ago. A single question would elicit a response of impatience, suggesting that I was needlessly taking up too much of the tech or sales person’s valuable time. This was in Australia, not the US. Is it the same everywhere? If it is common, perhaps it is because the rot started from the top a long time ago. Decline of Apple? No big loss to me.
Dyed in the wool Apple user. Sales personnel, tech support–everything exceptional. It’s obvious their concern is the customer’s satisfaction with their product, even when that means working on the phone to help find problems (though rare).
With a single exception, over the … what, 10 years? … that Apple has had a store here in Chicago, I have always had absolutely courteous service. Not only that, but for the most part, the staff was knowledgeable.
I will admit that I recently had a salesgirl who didn’t know much about sim cards. She gave me the wrong one for a 3GS. But she was nice.
Of course, I always came in as a person who already had Macs &c. Not a switcher, so maybe there was no chance for arrogance.
“resident entrepreneur at one of the largest high-tech companies”
Huh?
I don’t think the word entrepreneur means what you think it does.
Apple needs to return to costumer service and deliver quality programs rather than temporary fixes. The main reason why Apple became the company of the 2000′s was the innovation of great costumer service. Job’s ego is going to kill Apple the way things are going. It’s not bad now, but I agree with this article that Apple’s Golden Age is coming to an end. They should return to their roots.
And I didn’t even realize Apple was a factor in the costume industry! ;->
I’m not going to go into depth on the ways I disagree with this article (mainly that it’s thinly sourced, opinion-referencing and unproveably vague). I could mount a pretty good defense of Apple, but what’s the point? The more cogently one defends, the quicker one is accused of being a fanboy, so- yawn- I won’t go there.
I will say this, though (and this tends to torpedo most of the power of the article): who, then? If Mr. Malone wishes to see Apple dethroned as the R&D department for the entire computer industry, who would he propose take its place? Microsoft? Google? RIM? By your own admission these companies follow Apple’s lead. Take Jobs, Ives, et. al. away and we’re back to the bad old days of Clippy and the Palm Pilot. Or do you assert that we don’t really need a company like Apple. I mean, beige boxes were just fine, right?
“But a lot of people saw something else: contempt. His attitude seemed to be: Look at all that I’ve done for you people — and now you quibble about some trifle? Even his announcement of a giveaway of a free case to fix the antennae problem was presented almost as a dismissal.”
We see what we want to see. People who pile on to the scandal du jour like to see the winner stumble. People who like the iPhone (and most of those people do not have issues, if you dig into the numbers) see a company trying to manage an overhyped press uprising. Most people just go about their business. My wife called me from the Houston Apple store a few days ago and I couldn’t hear her- the place was too packed.
So I guess if Apple does indeed have trouble in the future you’ll always be able to point to this article as proof of you’re prescience. If the company keeps producing industry leading products that are snapped up by consumers, I’m sure this post will go right down the memory hole.
The term “drive by journalism” describes a phenomenon where a writer (I won’t say journalist) writes a story with made up facts in order to create a particular outcome. Drive By Journalism also involves more than just one “journalist” – it involves a “pack” (think hyenas) willing to spread and amplify and extend the life of the false story. The real story in “drive by journalism” is always NOT the story that is supposedly the story. In this case that would be Apple’s iPhone antennae. The iPhone has better reception than any other smartphone on the market based on user feedback – that is well documented in user stories. The real story here is the tech media obsession with knocking Apple down. Apple is simply too successful. And in America today we don’t like companies that succeed too much. We also don’t like companies that don’t respond to clear signals from their “media” overseers about what they should do when the hyenas decide they have misbehaved. Read Angelo Codevilla’s recent brilliant article on The Ruling Class, and you will get some idea of the sense of superiority and entitlement these “journalists” have. They are part of the Ruling Class. Apple is simply a profit seeking company and we know how those are perceived today. Apple’s success, its constant growth in profits and revenues and margins and its incredible $50 billion pile of cash, are all indicators to the “hyena journalists” who talk to one another secretly and in dark rooms, that Apple must be taught a lesson. Note that a class action suit against the iPhone was filed about 2 weeks after its introduction based on this supposed flaw. The class action suit occurred at a point in time when any unhappy user could simply return the phone for a refund. It also occurred simultaneously with the new iPhone setting world records for sales of a new tech product and universal positive acclaim from the actual buyers. But not universal acclaim among people like self annointed “tech journalists” who get peeved when the herd (the Country Class) does not do what the experts (tech journalist hyenas – Michael Malone) tell them to do. So here we are. We have one of the most successful product launches ever, with a product that simply excels in so many ways Apple can’t make them fast enough in an economy that is starting to look like the Great Depression, and we daily read stories about is this new product a sign of the Death of Apple. What complete BS.
Do not listen to the hyenas with their “ruling class” superiority whether in politics or those in the tech world like Michael Malone. I am not aware of any accomplishment of his that gives him greater credibility than the 3-4 million individuals who have bought and not returned their iPhones. Understand there is a hidden agenda – Apple is showing private industry how a real capitalist enterprise should work and they are succeeding way beyond anyone else. Watch the full press conference of Steve Jobs discussing, dissecting, and presenting Apple’s calm and rational response to the “drive by” story created out of nothing by people like Michael Malone. The press conference will show you how a CEO can use facts, reason, logic and common sense to forcefully defend his company against mailicious attack and also do the right thing. More executives and more individuals should display this behavior. And we should all stop listening the stories that the Hyenas tell us are important. Hyenas are not really that impressive.
AWESOME.
Thank you Kent, for nailing these sleazy drive-by web “writers” to the wall. If you don’t like Apple, then don’t buy their products and shut your pie hole while the rest of us enjoy and make our livings with Apple products every day.
excellent…….couldn’t have said it better myself………I mean with Charlie Rangel coming out an expressing the “lack of response” by Apple…..a US Senator……cmon…..yeah Apple may be knocked down with all the knockoff’s and all that crap…..but to me when I have a macbook, ipad, iphone and MobileMe…..it doesn’t get any better than that. the second I update a contact it is updated over the air instantly. I can never lose anything on my computer, or phone. Try that with a Android. It will take more than some drive by journalists to knock down Apple. And I’m sure “your friend” that worked at apple, you had the serious converstaion with, was probably fired and resents the company becuase he is probably unemployed now…….
Can’t agree with you about iPhone reception. My experience is that other phones get reception in elevators, when I don’t.
But aside from that, I think you are on the money.
I call “bullshit” on this article. But let the reader be the judge. Job’s press conference on the problem is available at the Apple web site. If there was contempt in Job’s voice (and how does one ascertain such a thing anyway) it was for certain journalist, bloggers and web sites who have taken a rather trivial problem and blown it all out of proportion to its real significance. The problem apparently exists on most smart phones and has for some time. I don’t see these same critics attacking these other vendors with the same enthusiasm. Unfortunately, this kind of piece makes me wonder about Malone’s true abilities to objectively report on Silicon Valley and technology.
While I don’t own any Apple products, I’m certainly not a hater of the company. They make well engineered products and millions of people love them. Competition is a good thing and Apple is leading the way. They’re forcing everyone else to raise the quality of their products and that’s a very good thing for all of us.
What gets me is the often uncritical press Apple gets. It borders on the type of coverage the MSM continues to give Obama. Like any company, Apple does good things and some not so good. However, the level of hype seems vastly overdone.
Hi Jerry,
I wonder sometimes if stories like this are the media’s way of balancing out the hyperbolic coverage your refer to. Good coverage or bad, there’s little middle ground when it comes to Apple press. But then, I’m sure Dell would love to get SOME coverage, no?
There’s no such thing as bad press, right?
Ahh! I meant “Hi Larry” The LarryJ threw me.
There’s no such thing as bad press, right?
I doubt Exxon, Enron, Worldcom, or BP would agree with that statement, nor would most Republicans.
Or the GUI. In point of fact, Apple never “invented” anything of significance. All they have ever done is take other people’s ideas and polish them and market them.
That’s right, it was Xerox PARC that developed the GUI and the mouse to go with it. I almost forgot about that. Xerox never patented or copyrighted it, so Jobs was free to steal the idea when he (or was it Woz?) saw it there one day.
Apple did not steal the Xerox ideas about graphical user interfaces. Apple actually paid Xerox for them, I believe in Apple stock, which rewarded Xerox for more than they ever would have benefitted on their own because they had no way to commercialize the idea. Steve Jobs had solid relationships with the Xerox people and even hired some. He was the one initiated the investigation into the PARC project and saw the value. He did the same more recently when he pushed the idea of touchscreen technology for phones and computer tablets, against the wisdom of the entire tech industry which insisted that a physical keyboard must be built into every phone.
So it it typical ignorance that says Apple did not produce true innovation. That is what Apple has done since it’s inception. It is also ignorance to say Apple stole the ideas.
Thanks for correcting me on that point. I repeated that legend without checking it first.
Microsoft is no better, they bought a small os, tweaked it, and sold it to IBM. Is that innovative?
Did you ever hear of inovation? Few great products are invented, most are improved upon by men of intellignece and diligence.
The iphone4 hasn’t made it up to the Great White North yet so I can’t comment personally on its reception issues. However, as a user of Apple products for close to 25 years now, I continue to be amused at how its detractors have attacked it over the years. From the beginning (The Mac was a ‘toy’ not to be used for serious work) to the most recent sniping, Apple has always been dismissed as arrogant for not wanting to play by the Tech world rules. I have no crystal ball as to how all this will turn out. But as a pretty satisfied user I think Apple deserves its success for at least trying to make ‘insanely great’ products that people love to use. All the rest is, to quote a Mac journo, “A Colossal Waste of Bandwidth”.
Back in the early 2000s, John Gruber at The Daring Fireball had an Apple Death Knell Watch, a chronicle of all the tech pundits who were predicting that Apple was going away soon. Predicting Apple’s demise is an old game in the tech world. Every time the company misstepped, e.g. the Cube, some quarters can’t help jumping up and down and saying, “See? Apple is dead!” Michael Dell famously said that if he were in charge, he’d sell the company and give the money back to the investors. Ten years later, last I checked, Dell’s market value was about a tenth of Apple’s.
When the company started scoring its hits with the iPod and iTunes music store, and redesigned the iMac, and every quarter they beat analysts’ earnings expectations, the mantra became, “They won’t be able to do that next quarter,” and the stock would fall. This went on for a few years, until they finally gave up on it and just stood in awe every time Apple beat expectations.
So forgive me if I read Mr Malone’s hit piece with a rather jaundiced eye. Been there, done that. Seen it all before. Apple will not last forever, but they sure have outlasted some rather harsh criticism and critics, and if I were a betting woman, I’d put my money on them any time.
“The press conference will show you how a CEO can use facts, reason, logic and common sense to forcefully defend his company against mailicious attack and also do the right thing. More executives and more individuals should display this behavior.”
Most executives get their education in the school of hard knocks (the marketplace). The vast majority tend to be forward looking, conservative (business-philosopy-wise) people with the long term interest of their company at heart. Show me a CEO that’s publicly contemptible of their customers (in actuality, not in the view of a mere journalist) and I’ll show you an inexperienced and thin-skinned CEO. Jobs is neither of these.
“And we should all stop listening the stories that the Hyenas tell us are important. Hyenas are not really that impressive.”
The great thing about this here internet thingie is that the gatekeepers have been overrun. The readership can now contribute, and if history and the wisdom of crowds has taught us anything, it’s this: just because someone has a journalist degree does not confer on him all knowledge or the ability to See Things Correctly. The masses are smarter than the Mr. Malone’s of the world. They don’t like it when we prove it, but that toothpaste is out of the tubes.
As to the Apple thing: what possible reason is there to claim (or infer) that the new iPhone is a failure? The sales numbers don’t support it. The customer reactions (the vast majority anyway) don’t support it. The financials don’t support it. Yes, there are some customers with issues, and the issue needs to be looked into (I’m not saying otherwise). But the problems certainly don’t rise to the level of failure that they are being portrayed as.
Good grief, did I see the same press conference as our writer? Contempt? I didn’t hear it. I heard facts, the admission of a limitation, perspective on that limitation, ways to work around it and an attempt to do what was needed to make it right.
How can the writer assume that Apple has reached the end of innovation? How does he know what will or will not be invented/innovated in the future? Maybe this inability to imagine the future is what blinds him to what makes Apple unique.
And trust me, when I’m sitting at work, no one is pulling out their Droid or their Blackberry to compare apps. No one gathers around to watch videos on a Nokia smartphone.
And the only people looked at with pity are the ones who have to reboot their computer yet again because their Windows-based computer has crashed. Again. I can’t count the number of people I know who have converted to Macs and then wondered what took them so long.
I bought my first Performa 575 in 1994. Sixteen years later, I now work on a MacBookPro. I’ve never regretted a single Apple purchase, ever.
Snork says — “Or the GUI. In point of fact, Apple never “invented” anything of significance. All they have ever done is take other people’s ideas and polish them and market them.”
You are right Snork. Apple has never innovated anything. It’s so simple what Steve Jobs has done. You could do it, right. Create a company out of garage, commercialize a product that never existed before, create a company that spawned an industry, grow that company (which innovated nothing) past Microsoft in market value, change the entire cell phone industry (with no innovation).
You should do this. You could make a lot of money. Or do you just make snarky comments on blogs.
Thank you for demonstrating Michael’s point about Apple being a cult. Show me any other company that gets this schoolgirl-like swooning. Anywhere in the economy.
Show me any other company with less that 10% of the market share of Microsoft and Dell that has a greater market capitalization, has greater revenues than Dell by leaps and bounds, that produces massive profits by selling to happy, repeat customers. You have a strange dislike for a company that is simply highly successful. And for some bizarre reason, you think there success is due to their getting undue positive coverage. Have you not read about AntennaGate, a totally fabricated hit piece. Have you not read all the articles that explain why Apple OSX has zero viruses only because it is not as popular as Windows, not because Steve Jobs had the foresight to move the OS to a Unix base, which has inherent security and programming advantages? Have you not read all the negative stories about Steve Jobs control freak personality? You are pretty uninformed for a reader of Pajamas Media.
Apple is successful because the consumer loves the products, which constantly shake up non-innovative product areas (like the MP3, like the SmartPhone, like the netbook). That is is – pure and simple.
That wasn’t the question. This isn’t about succesful. There are lots of successful companies. Usually, when they become too successful, congress breaks them up. Standard Oil was such a successful corporation. Walmart is another example of a successful corporation. But neither ever had a cultlike following and devotion like Apple. The only thing that I can think of thats even remotely similar is the pickup truck market, where the devotees of [fill in the blank; Ford, Chevy, Dodge] owners have stickers of Calvin peeing on the competition. There’s something psychologically unbalanced about the Apple cultists.
Snork says “There are lots of successful companies. Usually, when they become too successful, congress breaks them up. Standard Oil was such a successful corporation. Walmart is another example of a successful corporation. But neither ever had a cultlike following and devotion like Apple.” Let see – Standard Oil was broken up 100 years ago. What other successful company has Congress broken up. Apple has a tiny fraction of the PC market and a tiny fraction of the cell phone market. So you want them broken up because they have about 10% market share in their markets? That makes a lot of sense. I think YOU are showing signs of mental illness, not the people who happen to like Apple because they make great products.
Oh, how ’bout Ma Bell?
I’m not sure you understand the criticism. “Valley of the Dolls” is the bestselling novel of all time, according to some sources. I have no desire to emulate Jacqueline Susann and I feel free to criticize the taste of people who made her what she was.
I have a long-standing distaste of Apple and Apple products, going back to the Apple IIe I had to use at work. One word applies to each and every one of their products: hype. Oh, and another word: hubris.
No thanks.
I’ve just bought a MacBook Pro. For me the thing is it is a thing of beauty. Even the power plug is elegant.
Michael – I don’t want to upset your happiness, but there is no innovation in that device you just bought. It is just like a Dell running Windows VIsta. Just ask Snork.
I didn’t say there was any innovation – just that the plug was elegant. Like the whole machine really. Like Kim I bought my first Apple, a 475, in 1994. I joined the main Apple mailing list and discovered it was infested with Americans who thought it was a religion. To me its just a machine, but why shouldn’t a machine be elegant?
I must say the description of the psychology of and contract between Jobs and his devotees is interesting. I’ve always sensed and observed the contract, but never seen it admitted to, nor so clearly spelled out. It seems like I vaguely recall, Jobs going though a similar incident years ago when he left Apple the first time. Friends of mine who were Jobs devotees described him then as “not a very nice guy”. Well, if not Jobs, I look forward to whoever the next bright bulb mght be.
You need to go on Youtube and find the Taiwan news animation of Steve Jobs and his light saber solution to the antenna problem…Brilliant… Sure sign Apple is now doing a Microsoft…
Cheers
Jobs is creepy.
“Six years ago, I got just such a sense about Microsoft. My subsequent ABC column suggesting that the company had begun a long, slow decline into inconsequence, was heavily disputed at the time — but I suspect few people today would disagree with my prediction.”
Count me as one who would totally disagree with your prediction. Microsoft had their first annual sales drop in history in 2009. We are in the worst recession in years so they are hardly the only company affected. We are also talking about an industry that has been brutally competitive. I remember Scott McNealy at Sun telling 60 minutes that Microsoft was irrelevant several years ago. Where is Sun today? A small division of Oracle. Where is Mr. McNealy? A forgotten failure.
Microsoft’s installed user base is so enormous that a slow decline is not likely any time soon. Consumers and corporations have invested heavily in Microsoft technology, to think they are going to throw that away is asinine. For them to do that something better will have to come along. As of now, I am not seeing it. Linux is not the answer, it basically ate into Unix market share more than Windows.
Cloud computing from Google? Are you going to trust THAT company with all of your personal data given recent events? No. The feature set for online applications just plain sucks. The internet was never intended for that purpose and the gyrations you have to go through to even approximate a desktop experience makes them a non-starter, unless an entirely new protocol and paradigm comes along. Again, nothing likely soon.
So that leaves Apple, Microsoft’s only real competitor in the consumer desktop O/S space. They are nice, but are overpriced and a Windows box runs THOUSANDS of more applications than an Apple ever will, and there are also hundreds or thousands of hardware platforms to run it in. This brings up another point, do you think the people who BOUGHT those Windows apps and those who develop them are going to throw away that investment overnight? Ain’t gonna happen. You are not going to do Photoshop in a web browser any time soon if ever. The day comes when you do, Microsoft will be there too.
For sure the company is maturing, vast markets have been penetrated so the sales increases will be harder to come by. But the thing to remember about MS is that even though they are slow and their first releases of new products are clunky, they plod along and eventually win out. I remember people thinking xBox was going to fail and early on it looked like it would. But with their enormous cash flow they kept improving it and eventually dominated. I haven’t even mentioned their server products which is a whole other story.
“[D]o you think the people who BOUGHT those Windows apps and those who develop them are going to throw away that investment overnight?”
Two words: Parallels and VMWare.
Um VMWare replaces the hardware, what results is more Microsoft Servers.
After Commodore, Packard-Bell and Acer, no more, I repeat, no more proprietary hardware. Sorry Steve-O, but this dog ain’t hunting.
If I had a dollar for every time some snot nosed know-it-all wrote an opinion piece declaring the death of Apple I’d have had more money than Bill Gates by the mid 1990′s….
My family and I only (presently) own 2 Apple products (iPods) so I’m no crazed fanboy… but geeze, I’ve been reading this same column for 20 years. (At least he didn’t use the word ‘beleaguered’(You old fart tech watchers will get that one))
The kicker is, after writing the same dopey article for 20 years if Apple ever does decline all the idiots will claim they called it. (ahem ditto the folks who um now claim they called Microsoft’s demise)
Bottom line? Get over yourself. Write something other than “Um, you know I got a hunch Apple has peaked.” — It’s mindless conjecture and frankly… freaking boring.
Apple tweaks Linux, Open Office and Shops for Intel PC Computer & phone hardware in China. In other words, Apple Does Not Really Make Anything Except The Image of Cool. Any questions? At some point Foxconn, HTC et al start to package their gear with the same sort of marketing promo and flash as Apple does now so at that point why buy it from Apple who just buys it from them? Hmm, in Apples court is the fact they work much harder to make it all work seamlessly but that only goes so far and only buys so much time. They are pioneers but as with the ipods eventually there is no where to go. (Yeah, my phone already does all that) In the big leagues Google (US intel)just keeps on getting bigger and bigger with only Amazon showing surprising gains in Virtual Cloud Computing & on-line retailing, music and eBooks. I expect one more hit from Apple in a few months with an awesome new Apple TV Home Theater PC. After that, lights out. Steve retires on top and its Wang computers all over again.
Just another arrogant “journalist.” Malone’s obviously got a pretty blown up image of himself. This piece is mostly just projection.
Linux is way better than both Windoze and OSucks, anyhow. QED.
One other interesting thing is Iphone versus Android. It’s basically Mac versus PC 2.0, with pretty much all the same issues from 1985 or so of tight control versus open architecture. Jobs wanted Apple to completely “own” the Mac environment, including initially writing all the software in-house, versus IBM/clones/Microsoft, which had a messier, but much more open, flexible, and cheaper environment.
The open environment in PC land allowed innovation on all fronts without coordination by the all-powerful marketing department, while bypassing Jobs’ odd hangups (no multi-button mice, no color screen for a long time, etc).
Android looks like it may repeat this cycle, which is why I’d bet on it in the longer term.
All he needed to say was: “we’ve fixed it in the next version”. Instead of admitting they were wrong, he would have confirmed something people already knew. First movers know perfectly well there is a risk to it.
I think the proof is in the financial reporting announced a bit after this article came on line, unfortunately.
Apple continues to please its growing legion of customers.
That is the point.
Put a plane on a climb. Then stop the engines. It continues climbing. For a while.
Why go to war with an American success story. This guy is an OBama light, but he creates jobs and wonderful products
I think your connection of Jobs with Obama is very insightful – they are both arrogant narcissists. But Jobs is a productive arrogant narcissist. Obama, a destructive one.
I don’t think I’d care to work for – or even know – either one of them.
Thing about Jobs is that if he had never come back to Apple, he’d still have Pixar. Amazing.
Maybe the tech writers should report on the problems surrounding the flaws of upgrading the 3G and 3GS to the latest version (4) of the phone OS. Since updating, my 3G phone experience has been worse. Than ever. I know the mew phone is the story of the day and backward compatibility is hard to execute; but talk to any owner or visit the tech forum at apple if you want to see customer dissatisfaction.
Bill Gates saved Apple corporation with his $500 M loan.
Then he got assimilated and is now saving the world,er, his fortunes
Nothing like the strawman of Apple fanboys. Listen, with the retail stores Apple long ago left behind its dependence on the “cult” – if that ever really existed. I bought my Apple stock years ago when I overheard a girl and her mom talking about iPods in a little run-down Mac shop – the first sign that Apple was selling to people outside the so-called “cult”
No viruses, as easy to buy on-line as Amazon, the only decent retail shops for digital lifestyle products (compare BestBuy!), halo effects with their products in the music, phone, computer, gaming, and tablet spaces.
The nice products are only part of it. Apple has systematically figured out the ways they were blocked in the past and eliminated those as factors. Microsoft used the corporate market to kill Apple, but that market is no longer significant compared to the consumer market.
Articles like this are just silly. Is Apple going to hit a home run with every product? No. Has Apple been on an incredible run? Yes. Will they be able to sustain this for a while? All indicators say yes. Their opposition is in complete disarray. Android exists almost solely because of Verizon giving away devices because they don’t have the iPhone.
Talk about cults – see the average Linux / Android user – if you can get close enough in spite of the do-it-yourself smell.
“Talk about cults – see the average Linux / Android user – if you can get close enough in spite of the do-it-yourself smell.”
I was with you until this. This kind of statement is what brings the calls of “fanboy.” Completely uncalled-for snark.
I use Linux, Android, AND Apple. Each has its advantages for me–Linux because I like to tinker and customize, Android because it’s on VZ and not the execrable AT&T (a multitasking OS is nice too), and Apple because I love the iPod Touch and Apple does usability and user interface better than anyone.
But I can assure you, I shower daily and do not “smell.” And I’m certainly no Linux cultist, I still use Windows much of the time. It’s like with cars, Windows is my daily driver and Linux is the fix-it-up project that spends most of its time in the garage.
As far as “Antennagate,” I don’t see it as an indication of some pending decline of Apple. It was a screw-up, certainly, but I am sure they will recover. It just shows that companies, even great ones, are run by humans. I certainly won’t hold that against them.
For the first time in a generation, it’s kind of embarrassing to own the latest Apple product.
Are you high? Seriously?
The Newton might have been embarrassing (or a little ridiculous). The Pippin, not that anyone bought one or even had a chance to. The eMate, possibly.
But the iPhone 4? Nobody’s embarrassed by owning it, which is why the return rate is still lower than that of the 3GS (which was equally not embarrassing).
(Foobar: Interesting how now Apple only sells a mouse that is not only “multibutton” (effectively; despite having only one phyiscal button) but a multitouch panel… and OSX supported multi-button mice from the start. Odd hangup, that. And remember that in 1984, being monochrome was simply not a big deal… and the Macintosh system had better color than PCs in the Mac II, and native multi-monitor support. In 1987.)
(Steve: OSX has no Linux in it, and the entire UI layer is custom Apple proprietary code. Which is why it doesn’t suck, unlike the X and KDE/Gnome stack. So, uh, maybe if you actually had any idea about the difference between “cool image” and “best user experience in a consumer OS”, or “linux” and “anything using any form of Unix”, you’d have a much stronger point. Because it would be a completely different and actually accurate one.)
(Ken: Photoshop’s been on Macintoshes since the beginning. Indeed, before it was on Windows. But to your larger point, as others have pointed out, Macs can run Windows natively. Or in virtualization, at absolutely usable speeds, unlike the old days of emulation.
As for the “overpriced” thing, well… sometimes you get what you pay for. Yes, a Mac Mini is more expensive than a Dell Zino HD – and far more powerful. Yeah, they don’t sell a traditional tower desktop to the bottom end market. True. And irrelevant. Comparing identical spec* hardware shows a relatively small premium … which gets you excellent fit and finish and industrial design.
I build PCs, and I own Macs. I run Windows, OSX, and linux, and like all three. I choose to “pay more” for an iMac, because it provides tangible benefit over Some Generic PC Tower, like being completely silent in normal operation.
* Not “similar” spec with a different CPU at the same clock rate, slower RAM, etc.)
One quick point: I disagree that the buzz on the iPad is fading.
After careful deliberation, I finally bought a (bottom of the rung, WiFi 16 GB) iPad. Love it. I’m an adjunct college teacher, and need careful lists to keep track of everything. I just finished several hours creating my fall “to-do” list on Numbers for iPad. My gradesheets and presentations are on the iPad. No more dragging my laptop around.
There are little problems, this technology will have a very long curve to grow.
>>>>”And then, of course, there’s that rubber band you have to put around the phone…”
Sorry, but that’s nonsense. I have zero issues using my iPhone 4 as is, and the people I know who have one, love it.
And comparing this to the Intel Pentium Bug? Please.
Plus, what did Steve Jobs do, if not “swallow his pride, and make amends to the public”? Free $30 cases for everyone?
I’ve been in the tech industry for 20 years, and have followed Apple closely. Michael Malone’s article is nonsense, and does no credit to PJTV.
Long time Apple user.Apple II in 1982 to a MacBook Pro now. I have also tried other products. I have an ASUS netbook and love it with Windows 7. I suffered with Vista. I had Motorola phones which were ok, until I got the I Phone 3G. It changed my life, as much as the personal computer did. I looked at the I Pad, and except for the screen, see it as unimpressive and crippled. I got the I Phone 4, and it is better,especially screen and build. As long as Apple makes what works for me it’s fine. This was sent from the I Phone.
I agree with most of Malone’s basic arguments. But I would add that he ignores an important aspect:
**Innovation happens by deep/agile engineers as much as innovative CEOs**
In other words, a CEO matters rather less than how many deeply committed, intelligent, innovative, and “fast” (able to execute rapidly) engineers who care passionately about pushing into new technologies and forms, factors, and functions, exist at a company.
Its fine to have a visionary executive, but execution matters. It matters and depends on the people who actually execute the vision. Which is the line engineers.
Apple’s problem is the same as Microsoft’s after options stopped being part of a big payout. Apple depends like most of silicon valley on cheap, disposable H1-B engineers and/or outsourced engineers even cheaper in China, Vietnam, and Taiwan.
That gives Apple a cheap labor advantage, with engineering right there alongside production lines. But it makes technical goofs and shoddy quality and lack of innovation, basically guaranteed.
Only designers are paid well, and consist of basically, middle class, traditional Americans. Design is not surprisingly the only thing Apple does well. At other companies, they don’t even have that — highly paid, traditionally American designers.
No, a guy from India, even spending a great deal of time in the US, will not understand American culture, “deeply” enough to push forward new ideas of technical innovation to solve real world problems Americans face in daily life, creating an “indespensible” and must-have gadget. “Diverse” (read: cheap H1-B visa folks, outsourced teams, and so on) lack the trust that the early guys at Microsoft had (look at the pictures of the founding Microsoft employees) or at Apple, or at HP. Trust from a shared background, mono-ethnic culture, that allowed free ranging discussion without the cost of diversity (basically, mistrust and constant hedging).
A mono-ethnic Apple, with nearly all its engineers employed on site, and production lines here, could and would have mocked up a prototype of an antenna inside and outside, and shown Jobs conclusively the folly of an antenna “outside” no matter how “cool” it looked design-wise. He’d have seen for himself that half his calls would have been dropped. You’d have a cheap, but reliable, Apple Netbook, just a bit upwards of price of the Ipad. You’d have an Apple TV device, able to browse and for a modest fee, download off Hulu or what have you daily shows for watching.
You’d have a solution to the problem of “I’d like to watch my favorite TV shows on a portable device, later, even if I have no network connectivity. At a time and place of my choosing. At Starbucks or on a plane, or a train, or on my lunch hour.”
Because well paid, traditional American engineers could see the problem and devise, very fast, an elegant solution to it, one that Apple could sell quickly before anyone else for more money.
All we have now is “cheap diversity” where lowest labor costs equal shoddy workmanship, not caring, and mistrust all around.
And so, again, we have a simple treatment: fanboys watch the video and see Jobs’ speech as heroic and responsible; the rest of the planet watches it and sees the arrogance not only of the individual, but the way he put his words together. As a linguist, I’m particularly offended by his inability to simply take responsibility, admit that he put design over function, and move on. This whole thing could have been over with long ago… but for Steve Jobs’ inability to take criticism, or to admit an error in judgment.
Instead, we get a long-winded diatribe about how everyone else’s phones have these problems — well, no, not really, in his own video showing one competitor’s phone, he points to the tiny round hole near the top of the phone (the antannae location) and says blocking that will do the same thing, as though that excuses his own design error. Well, hm, let’s think: since one doesn’t hold the phone where your hand is ON THE TOP OF THE PHONE, it’s unlikely anyone’s going to block that particular antennae. Now, let’s take Apple’s, which wraps around the frame of the phone and therefore is exactly where people NORMALLY hold the phone. One is design that avoids the problem — placing the antennae only at the top of the phone — and the other, Apple’s, is not. Mr. Jobs is completely incorrect when he asserts that his competitors also design their phones with the same antennae problems that his phone does — they all quite blatantly hire engineers (and actually listen to them, as opposed to Mr. Jobs) to design their phones to minimize human contact with the antennae.
That fact is unalterable: no one else has put forth a smart-phone with an antennae that deliberately, by design, puts the antennae precisely where the normal user puts their hand while holding the phone. Apple is the only one who would do such a thing, because the put the design (how cool) as more important than the function. And this time, it has bit them in the butt…
Anyone other than Mr. Jobs would have looked at this, realised how stupid spending 2/3 of your speech bad-mouthing other people would be, realise how dumb saying “don’t hold it that way” (what way, sir? The natural way a human being holds a phone, so they can see the screen correctly?)… and would just have held a press conference, admitted that their desire to bring a cool-looking and -sounding product to their customers got away from them, and told the world how they were going to fix it (here’s some free covers, and we’ll take the phones back if you really hate them that much). Done. End of story. But Apple has never in its history shown anything that would say they would act so sensibly and so simply — right up to and including last week’s speech.
“And the iPad is mainly a great, big iPod Touch — and have you noticed how quickly the buzz faded on it?”
Um…faded? Geez Louise, where do you live? Things are buzzing away from what I can tell.
But anyway, the iPad is NOT a big iPod Touch. The iPod Touch is a downsized, stripped iPad.
What’s the difference? Well, for me, the Touch (in my case, an iPhone) is my portable iPad. I don’t haul my iPad around on a day to day basis. Rather, I have my iPhone. When I go on a trip, I take my iPad. When I’m at home, I use my iPad, usually in preference to my laptop or desktop. I NEVER use my iPhone in preference to my iPad.
The iPhone is my iPad in my pocket.
I don’t think Apple has lost the plot. When Microsoft lost it, there was a serious question as to whether they could still execute on new products–whether they had lost control of their software development process. That isn’t the case with Apple. They’ve got a PR problem, not a product development problem.
I don’t think the iPad is “just” a big iPod Touch, either. It uses the same (or very similar) software, but it’s not the same product category at all, any more than server boxes and laptops are the same category. It has the potential to develop an entire media consumption ecosystem around it.
Mostly I’m indifferent to apple. I buy a few products on occasion, but not brand loyal anywhere. So take this link as it’s meant to be: just plain amusing regardless of your opinions of Apple, Jobs, or the iphone.
http://judasphone.com/
History honors the winners, so it is easy to forget that Apple neither invented the MP3 player, the smartphone,
OTOH it’s also easy to forget it was the one that invented the PDA
(and under Sculley no less)
The type of person obsessed with Apple products (typically, a Leftist idiot) are obsessed with fads and appearance – both the Leftist and Apple products are nothing but show.
Furthermore, for those familiar with the Apple Store in NYC, you wil notice how much it has in common with a church…it really is quite creepy