NEXUS ONE AND THE TABLET by Michael S. Malone
Whether the marketplace is ready or not, the Big Guns in consumer electronics are about to make their move at the dawn of the New Year.
Next Tuesday, Google is expected to announce its long-rumored Nexus One smartphone. It is undoubtedly designed to run the Google Android operating system for cellphones, which the search giant introduced more than a year ago. Android was envisioned as a major breakthrough in cellphones because it offered an ‘open’ operating system – i.e., one that other companies could use and design applications for. At the time, this strategy was compared to that of Microsoft Windows, which broke the market hegemony of Apple’s decidedly non-open OS in the mid-80s and within a decade turned Apple into a niche company. This time around, the new Android phones were supposed to break the hegemony of the Apple iPhone.
So far, it hasn’t quite worked out that way with Android. A number of cell phone companies – notably Motorola, HTC, and Samsung – have adopted Android and seen impressive sales. However, this time around, Apple, though still exhibiting much of its old ‘closed’ and proprietary ways, has learned some important lessons over the last twenty years.
For one thing, Apple understands, better perhaps than any company on the planet, the importance of being not only perpetually innovative, but – but with a vast and loyal army of Apple fanatics behind it – to regularly take category-busting risks. Thus, the amazing run, beginning a decade ago, of the iMac, MacBook, iPod and iPhone These landmark (and in the case of the iPod, historic) products not only were ambitious in their goals and beautifully designed, but they also exhibited multiple features that were so innovative that they forced the competition to spend years catching up – and by then, Apple had already moved on to the next breakthrough.
Military theorists like to say that the goal of combat is to get inside your opponents ‘decision horizon’ – that is, to move so quickly that the enemy can’t respond in time before you have moved on to the next victory. That’s exactly what Apple, at its best, has done to the consumer electronics world . . .and in the process has left competitors reeling, loyal customers thrilled, and not least, Apple regaining its lost market share and making its shareholders wealthy.
The Apple iPhone is a classic example of that. It has taken nearly two years for Apple’s competitors to field products that are even close to the iPhone; to identify weaknesses in the device (such as the lack of real keyboard for texters, its commitment to AT&T as service provider) and respond. Apple, meanwhile, has used that time to continuously improve the iPhone – the resulting being that the company now dominates the smartphone world to a degree Apple hasn’t enjoyed since the early years of the Macintosh.
If that was the sum of Apple’s advantage, the door might be wide open for Google and the rest to pull a Windows Redux strategy. Apple, after all, is still all about controlling the operating system and suing anyone who tries to copy it. This would seem to open the door for yet another Open Systems assault, pulling together the entire intellectual capital of the entire rest of the phone industry to simply overwhelm Apple’s defenses.
Big question, especially with Steve Jobs’ health the past couple of years, is what’s going to happen when he eventually departs? How will Apple change? Will it continue to be the innovator and continue on the upswing as it has since Jobs returned?
Two small points: The Kindle is not a netbook by any definition- even though it has been hacked to run a linux OS. Secondly, the Cube was not in the iMac line. It was the forerunner of the Mac Mini.
I think people are starting to get gadget fatigue.
This morning I wrote some thoughts on my GoldenSwamp.com blog based on this article. My post is called “Google and Apple innovations should be heads-up for educators” http://tinyurl.com/yj8jb6q Let’s hope that students toting 24/7 access to the internet cloud will at last clear the way to re-invent education. I hope Edgelings will be a leading voice in the handschooling era on the horizon. http://tinyurl.com/ya97snc Silicon Valley can spark real change in education. The ongoing avalanches of cash going into doing things the old way are not helping. (2 cents worth form an edgelings fan)
I’m tired of any device that shows me a tiny portion of a webpage with readable writing, or a full webpage with tiny writing.. The fact that webpages are presently designed for a laptop-sized screen is something small-screened devices have not and cannot overcome.. I already have a 12″ screen on my little laptop and that’s as small as I want to get.
My webphone (LG Touch – verizon) has a nice big screen for what it is, but signing in to my Yahoo mail is a torturous ordeal and it burns up my battery in less than a half hour of logged-in web browsing. Even 3G is slow compared to wireless laptop access.
That said, texting with the real keyboard is fast and easy. Can’t imagine it would be easier on a device with no keyboard, as I move faster when I Feel the keys clicking and know the input is good without looking at it..
but as a 50 yr old I don’t do that much texting.
Geez, how many platitudes, insults, and put downs can you put in one article? A lot, according to your journalistic skills. As I was reading I anticipated an interesting tidbit as a reward for suffering through the article, but, alas it never arrived. Good thing you don’t work for Apple or Google, then you’d have to insult yourself in your own article.
THIS…
“At the time, this strategy was compared to that of Microsoft Windows, which broke the market hegemony of Apple’s decidedly non-open OS in the mid-80s and within a decade turned Apple into a niche company.”
Is simply incorrect history.
It was IBM’s PC allowing 3rd party vendors, opening up a whole ecosystem almost from the beginning, culminating in 100% compatible ‘clone’ PCs (the origins of Compaq, Gateweay, Dell, Northgate — remember them?)
The role of Windows –on *top* of all that*, which BTW wasn’t dominant until Windows 3.1 in the early *90′s* — was to blunt the appeal of the closed system Mac GUI by having a ready-made, legacy-compatible GUI for the already *much* larger installed base of PCs.
Apple’s run during the past decade has been impressive. But there is a problem looming on the horizon that not even Apple’s designers and engineers can solve… government bureaucratic thuggishness. Specifically, the EU’s bureaucratic thuggishness.
Eventually, the EU will grow tired of poking MS and Intel with their sharp stick… it will have yielded as much money as it can, and they will turn their tender mercies upon the next target — Apple.
I can see the EU ruling that Apple cannot be both a hardware and a software company, and that their standard operating procedure of controlling all the software that goes on their systems (the key to their quality) is in fact “anticonsumer”. The fact that few Apple users complain about Apple is of no importance to a bureaucracy, they will insert themselves into Apple anyway in the name of the public. Never underestimate the self-importance of a bureaucrat — it is infinite.
Apple can delay this for a while by staying relatively small, but they can’t delay it forever. They will eventually become the prime target on the EU’s radar screen, and it remains to be seen if they can continue turning out slick gadgets when a million fingers are stuck into their pie.
The perfect mix, let Apple adopt and sell to the status-conscious at exorbitant prices and then let Microsoft and now Google come in and refine and open the technology and sell to the masses at earth-bound prices.
What’s not to like?
“… iMac cubes…”
Ack. The Cube was a G4 machine that came as 450 or 500 MHz, and had user upgradable RAM and video cards, as well as upgradable HD’s and optical drives. Aftermarket even provided upgraded processors up to dual 1.5 GHz! I still have one as the TV/DVD/iTunes entertainment system and backup computer in my bedroom to this day (Running a 23″ Cinema HD Display, Digidesign ProTools LE, and networked wirelessly along with my other three Macs, thank you very much). It’s not just the coolest computer Apple ever made, it’s the coolest computer anyone ever made.
What a dilettante error.
Otherwise, though, a great column. lol.
I bought the original iPod, the video iPod, the original iPhone, and now have a 32GB iPhone 3G-S. I’ve been waiting for this tablet since Apple gave up on my trusty Newton (Which I also still have, and which still works as well as the day I got it). If they don’t include handwriting recognition, I may cry.
“At the time, this strategy was compared to that of Microsoft Windows, which broke the market hegemony of Apple’s decidedly non-open OS in the mid-80s and within a decade turned Apple into a niche company.”
That’s a weird take on history. IBM offered the relatively open PC spec, which turned Apple from a niche company to an even niche-ier company in 1981. MS basically piggybacked on the PC’s success. Their strategy consisted mainly of breaking competitors’ compatibility.
The Mac carved out another niche in the mid-’80s, but MS didn’t really take that on until Windows ’95. And even then, their “strategy” consisted of keeping competitors (DR-DOS, OS/2) from working with them.
Beware of Android. As a mobile developer, Android has developer appeal. Why is Windows dominant? Developers, developers, developers. My bet is 5 years from now, iPhone compared to Android will look like OSX compared to Windows. Android is easier to develop for (I can write apps on Mac, Linux or Windows) and I don’t have to submit to the Apple gods for app approval. Apple needs to be less dictatorial in its app store policies and needs to push a cross platform developer platform. Otherwise, they’re digging their own niche.
Apple’s logo fits so well with the end of the world how can you possibly ever count them out?
Question: Will developers of apps for Android be able to charge for them? And must these apps be open source, and thus vulnerable to free copying if successful? It seems to me that this is a crucial issue; Apple brilliantly blended proprietorship with openness — as, indeed, has Microsoft, in its focus on encouraging developers for Windows apps.
blake #16 — MS basically piggybacked on the PC’s success. Their strategy consisted mainly of breaking competitors’ compatibility.
In the 80′s my company went from building our own mini-computer to control our equipment with to off-the-shelf computers. We chose the PC, of course, and mainly because Apple was closed and would barely acknowledge your existence whereas Microsoft was falling all over themselves handing us every possible bit of information they thought we could use. Boxes and boxes of manuals, etc. just for asking. The new Borland Turbo Pascal at $49.95 iced the deal.
Microsoft/IBM won due to making their stuff open so that anyone could develop for it, add boards, etc. We were not unique. The PC won because it was accessible by everyone.
Don’t know if anybody has already made this point, but I would imagine that EVERY APP DEVELOPER for the iPhone will also be PORTING their app to the Android so I cannot agree that this will be a competitive advantage for the iPhone.
And as already noted, the Android apps don’t need Google approval – though that might prove very problematic – especially with all the free apps that will probably be offered similar to the Windows environment. I hope the Android phones have a RESET to initial configuration button.
There is no way that Apple creativity can keep up with an open source environment backed by Google’s money and technocrats.
I agree with you wholeheartedly in your disappointment over the prospect that the Nexus One will be introduced as simply another Android smartphone. While I agree with a few of the commenters here that Android’s developer love will spark a wave of software advancement over the next few years that may manage to challenge Apple’s proud App catalog, I really don’t think that is the key battle. The key battle (and the crucial missed opportunity of not taking a risk with the Nexus One) is hammering at the hegemony of Big Telecom. Creating a device / network / system that potentially liberates users from the brutality of anachronistic pay-per-minute enslavement would be a true David vs. Goliath breakthrough. If Google wants to beat Apple at it’s own game, this aggressive, outside-the-box risk (and admittedly, a huge and dangerous one) is exactly the one they should be taking. So the question is: does Google really want to change the game, or just get a firm grasp on Apple’s coattails?