The Apple Licensing Myth

Monday Note ^ | January 17, 2010 - 7:46 pm | John -Louis Gassée

[Swordmaker]

You can't both make hardware and license the software that makes it work. Wisdom from John-Louis Gassée PING!

The Apple Mac License Myth Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Leisler]

Who would know if Apple makes money, they never pay dividend. But, hey it’s quirky and it feels good.

[wita]

My son is an Apple fan. For the life of me, and can’t understand this article, so I won’t send it to him until I do. Is there a one sentence explanation as to whether the author has a clue.

[Yossarian]

Gasseé must be getting old - there's not a single sexual double-entendré in the article.

And yes, it is as rambling and nonsensical as Gasseé is himself. He is french, after all.

[SoftwareEngineer]

NO! The article does not make sense. It is typical Apple BS.

Apple lost in the 80s plain and simple because they were too expensive and wanted to keep themselves that way to make “more margin”

While the glitterati and other techno idiots are always willing to pay top dollar for items, that universe is limited.

Today Apple is making the same mistake again with the iPhone.

Just so that we are clear, the iPhone NEVER even had 20% of the total smartphone market and now its share is falling again.

I am a iPhone user. When it first came out, it had the best technology, no doubt.

However, once my contract is over, here is why I will NOT be an iPhone user again.

Here are dumb rules made by good old Steve Jobs that make no sense except to Apple fanboys

1. Worst camera EVER!! For a $600 phone, the iPhone 3Gs has a crappy 3 MP camera with no flash. Every competing device, even at half the price has 5 MP

2. No changeable battery! This is a DEAL killer for business travelers. Understand this, the iPhone is a MOBILE computer first and then a phone. If so, then you suck up the battery a lot using it for email or browsing. But, if you are traveling and do not have access to a power port (almost all foriegn airlines/airports) then you are out of luck. Because Lord Jobs has decreed from the Apple Heavens that a battery slot is “not sexy”

3. No haptic feedback. Since Lord Jobs has banned keyboards it would have been nice to have Haptic feedback on the screen. But no, it is not so

4. Keyboards. Talking about that, what about an option (a la Droid by Motorola) for a freaking keyboard. Would it kill you Jobs. You are already charging me $600 and idiotic AT&T is charging me another $100 a month

5. AT&T. Clearly a communist company because no capitalist company would want to alienate its customers like AT&T does. But, oh wait, the iPhone is ONLY available on AT&T in the US

6. Slow as Molasses. Ever tried to use your iPhone when it is downloading emails. About dead as a donkey. No surprise cause it has an old and slow processor. All the new phones have the 1 Ghz mobile processor

7. No multithreading. Talking about sloooooooow, there is no multi-tasking on this “computer”, something my Windows 3.1 PC had. So, now you can only run one app at a time. God forbid if you have to switch between apps.

8. No built in IM tool. There is NO instant messenger built in. Imagine that! In today's day and age where literally entire distributed companies live on IM, Apple discourages it as “it takes up battery time”. So you have to use sucky third party apps

9. About 100 other things. But why bother. Soon an Apple Fanboy will come and say inane things like “it is sexy”, “they invented it”, “Steve Jobs is God”. No, they did not invent the smart phone. Yeah, they did come up with a functional interface. So did Xerox back in the 70s with the first GUI. So, why don't you trash your Mac Book and work on a Xerox Book. Oh wait, there isn't any

Long term, Apple will continue the death spiral that it was on. It only revived because in the US, trendy people were willing to pay TWICE as much as a PC to buy a product that was the same. Now, with this recession, the number of people wanting “trendy” luxury PCs will come down

Mark my words

[SoftwareEngineer]

Just so that it is clear, I have no favorites in this space right now.

Android seems a capable Mobile OS. Windows 7 Mobile MAY turn out to be nice. Palm Pre, God rest their soul, seems dead. Blackberry, has not kept up at all with the iPhone. Nokia seems more content on suiing Apple than actually createing an OS that someone likes.

iPhone will soon have version 4.0 of their OS. It should be pretty interesting to watch, how that competes with both Android and Windows 7 Mobile

I have a feeling it will come down to the above 3. The only thing is that Windows 7 Mobile will die if they don’t make it free as they don’t have a captive customer (like Apple with its own hardware)

[Tribune7]

Is there a one sentence explanation as to whether the author has a clue.

Apple lost because it's hardware was worse than the first IBM PC, not because it didn't license its software as per Microsoft.

And that's also true when it almost died in the mid-90s. The package offered by the Windows/Intel clones was better than the one on the LC IIs and Quadras running System 7.

[Dr. Sivana]

The author of the article speaks authoritatively while the article is full of false facts, premises and conclusions. When the author claimed that except for the processor, the IBM PC was basically an Apple II clone, because it had slots and a tape port. You may as well say a Buick is a clone of a Studebaker because they both have four wheels and a place to pump gas.

By far the biggest problem with the Apple Macintosh was Jobs unwillingness in the mid to late ‘80’s to let the then successful software vendors (Satellite Software/WordPerfect Corp., Ashton-Tate, Lotus) make software that could play nice with their PC counterparts. I am not just talking about having a Mac style interface. Jobs did not even want direct data level compatibility.

On the PC side, the software was able to load the data files, and sometimes completely emulate the significant CPM base already in existence (especially WordStar and DBase II).

In my opinion, Apple had the biggest margin when it had faultless 8 MB+ (Mac II, SE/30) machines that could run pre-emptive multitasking via multi-finder, and PCs were still playing games with 640K limitys, Sidekick and Desqview. Apple’s base configurations were awful.

Jobs learned a lot during his sojourns with NeXT and Pixar, but a bit too late. Even so, it was Spindler and Amelio who almost killed the company. Jobs, and oddly enough, Sculley, weren’t so bad.

[Dr. Sivana]

I just noticed that the author of the article was Jean-Louis Gassee, one of the original Mac guys. He should have known better to make so many misleading and erroneous statements, He also should know better than to recycle articles he was writing 20 years ago in Mac User. I can only fear that he is old and senile now. I bet John Dvorak could beat him in shuffleboard.

He Jean-Louis, the BeBox was the wrong product at the wrong time.

[nevergore]

I got out of it that I don’t have to eat spinach any more!

[Yo-Yo]

2. No changeable battery! This is a DEAL killer for business travelers.

Not an iPhone user here, but there are solutions to that problem:

Mophie iPhone External battery

[SoftwareEngineer]

I know there are third party solutions to many of the problems I outlined. However, that is insane asking your customers to buy MORE devices to do the job that your device at $600 should have done.

None of this is rocket science. Any business traveller worth his/her salt carries spare batteries for his/her cellphone or smartphone. This is predictable and commonplace behavior.

To cock a nook at the needs of people so that you can have a “sexy” design is the ultimate definition of an elitist

[SoftwareEngineer]

typo..sorry typing too fast

snook.. not nook

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Lotus 1-2-3 is called an “integrated application”, the rage at the time, as it incorporated a spreadsheet, a word processor and a database"

Way wrong.

1-2-3 was a spreadsheet only. Absolutly no word-processing or database. Lotus' Symphony was their first stab at an integrated app. And it didn't exactly set the market on fire. There were others by that time, including the rather nice Frameworks.

[Yo-Yo]

To cock a nook at the needs of people so that you can have a “sexy” design is the ultimate definition of an elitist

(Pssst. You've just nailed Apple's core market...)

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Every competing device, even at half the price has 5 MP"

There's more to photography than pixel-counts. Many (even most) A:B reviews of 3GS and Droid (for example) grudgingly admit that the 3GS produces better pictures. And its tap-to-focus focusing technique is superior to that of even the Nexus One.

Besides, the 3GS is coming up on its one-year anniversary. The next rev will have the pixel-count that seems to put the starch in your noodle, together with the basic quality that has earned the 3GS a lot of respect, and probably a flash too (like the Nexus One).

Competition is a good thing.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"But, if you are traveling and do not have access to a power port (almost all foriegn airlines/airports) then you are out of luck."

I just got one of these: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=108&cp_id=10831&cs_id=1083110&p_id=5866&seq=1&format=2. Can't say enough about monoprice.com, incidentally-- I've bought stuff from them in the past and it's always been of decent quality at a jaw-droppingly good price, and with good customer service too. Recommended.

You might want to look into it... in my extensive international travel, I'm finding it a marvelous thing to keep in your briefcase.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

See my post 18 for a way-cheaper alternative.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"No multithreading."

Jailbreak. It's there, just shut off by the lords of battery-preservation in Cupertino.

The rest of your rant is being addressed pretty quickly. For example, Apple isn't about to let the Nexus One retain the processor-speed crown for long. Seems to me that your complaints relate to Apple being the first-mover in its marketplace. The AT&T exclusivity, for example, was the price they had to pay to get into the game. It'll go away soon. Meanwhile, things like backgrounding will come, probably with the next generation. I reluctantly agree with Apple: backgrounding made no sense for the original iPhone, is useful but risky to the user experience with the 3G, is better when used on the 3GS, and I predict it will be in full flower in what comes next. This is in part from competitive pressure but mostly just the natural evolution of technology.

Likening backgrounding to what your Windows 3.1 PC could do is just silly; that machine didn't fit into your pocket, for starters. Spouting such hysteria undermines your case.