iPad vs Flash

Apple employees are conditioned not to leak news, so when every Apple loving tech journalist reports how  Steve Jobs slams Flash at an Apple employee meeting, it is as obvious as when he puts on a presentation at Moscone Center. The reasons for whatever Apple does are undisclosed business reasons.  Sure, Flash can be buggy on the Mac. But the responsibility is between Adobe and Apple – not just Adobe. I am reminded of this every time I try to open some PDFs on Mac OS X just to have them crash Apple’s Preview, or when Apple Quicktime crashes Firefox when trying to play back videos in a browser.

iPad vs Netbooks

Netbooks are just one of a collection of low cost computer devices – one that gives you complete freedom in a computer that isn’t tied to the App Store walled garden experience. Steve clearly hates them because the Apple laptop is a premium product at a premium price. Netbooks as they are now are computers. The iPad isn’t a tablet Mac – it is a big iPhone that gives you a better visual experience because you can see more, making it a brand new channel for content. Of course a Mac tablet already exists – check out the Axiotron.

iPad vs Kindle

I don’t own a Kindle. I have tried out various readers though, and I can appreciate how a standard, reflective screen I look at when I am working isn’t going to give me the same sense of comfort as an optimized reader screen. But the reader screen really isn’t doing anything for me that my paper copy of a book doesn’t do. I applaud Amazon’s announcement of a Kindle SDK to provide additional value on these easier to read devices, but they are going to implement a Kindle App Store as equally walled off as the Apple App Store.

iPad vs Tablet PC

I replaced a truly awful Dell laptop almost two years ago with an HP laptop that converts to a tablet experience. The handwriting system is surprisingly good, and using it to work with Mirye Shade 3D is interesting. But decades of keyboarding have made me a blazingly fast typist in comparison with using a pen of any type. An attachable keyboard is apparently coming for the iPad; give me one that works with the iPhone, just like the collapseable keyboard I used to use with my Palm V and Ill be happy.

iPad vs Snakes on a Plane

Remember this terrible movie? Snakes on a Plane was infamous because it leveraged internet ad placement and the online community to build up hype, much as Sony has done more recently with the much better Paranormal Activity. The iPad could turn out to be a wonderful device, and given the love and attention it has received from Apple, I expect it to be a quality experience.  On the other hand, I think just as the ‘net press helped enable a stinker of a movie, the ‘net press is very effectively doing Apple’s marketing for them, and lionizing a consumer device that doesn’t really change anything.

Id like to be able to swear off the iPad entirely at this point. But like any controversy surrounding Apple, I can’t commit to not coming back with more iPad vs X. Thank you, Steve, for giving a lazy blogger a reason to write.

Let me preface by saying I wish this wasn’t happening. I am going to MacWorld 2009 myself this year after several years of not attending. There was a period where I attended all of the San Francisco and Tokyo (Mac Expo Tokyo) shows every year.

Consider the announcement – Apple considers its retail presence as a suitable replacement for reaching millions of customers – a replacement that is 100% under its control and increasingly a venue more for the iPhone and iPod than for the Mac.

Now consider the following:

• Apple placed retail outlets after leveraging the many years of data supplied by thousands of resellers about where their customers were, and their buying habits
• Apple’s Made for iPod logo system ensures that if its non-Apple hardware that attaches to iPod (or iPhone), those non-Apple makers are going to pay and submit to Apple’s review (hey, where’s my attachable full sized keyboard like I had for my Palm V?)
• How much of an Apple Store is devoted exclusively to the Mac? Apple has done a brilliant job in using the popularity of the iPhone and iPod to promote the Mac by placing an iPhone or iPod next to each computer – come on, isn’t the Mac now just a peripheral to the iPod?
• Apple has made it virtually impossible to sell any third party application for the iPhone except through the App Store; the iPhone itself is carefully distributed and only available unlocked in markets where its otherwise illegal not to provide an unlocked option
• In the last several years, how many new and innovative products appeared at MacWorld that were either 1) not from Apple itself, or 2) not something new for the iPhone or iPod?
• Of the products Apple does want you to buy for the Mac – well – it makes the only ones that really matter, except for a few applications that aren’t strategic for them. Ask yourself – how many Adobe or Microsoft Mac products do not have an Apple made equivalent now?

Back in the mid 1990’s, if you went to a MacWorld, you saw some large and impressive third party booths from both hardware and software makers. In San Francisco, they would fill two large halls to capacity.  Just filling one hall in the last few years has been a challenge. And this sums it up as to why -

Apple dropped the “Computer” from Apple Computer because they are a digital lifestyle company, not a computer company. The Mac is just another object in a chain of consumer electronic objects it wants to sell you. And end-to-end, it controls every aspect of its products: from manufacturing to end customer purchases.

All of Apple’s software development, business expansion and acquisitions since the return of Steve Jobs have been to remove the ability of third parties to influence the stock value of Apple, while at the same time expand into new and profitable markets.

Sadly, a third party run, Mac specific show is just another third party influencer outside its control. How much bad press gets generated when Apple doesn’t release – or even announce – something new at MacWorld? Why would a company allow itself to be influenced by a third party event in a way that could impact its valuation?

And that’s it, right there. I know when I go to a MacWorld Expo – dammit – I want something new and special to come out for the Mac. And if there’s nothing, I think bad thoughts about Apple. Why would Apple need that when they can reach me when they want to, through a local mall?

Given the fact that the pace of Apple product improvements is between two times and four times faster than PC-based products, Apple buyers will always have a higher degree of buyer’s remorse.

An interesting anthropological view of Apple’s product marketing and product lifecycle process – get used to buyer’s remorse because that’s the way Apple does things. Apple perfected this technique by making each product release – not about numerical performance – but perceived benefit or value. In my mind, this means every long time Mac user is a sort of incurable early adopter to the Apple ecosystem.

Early adopters jump aboard a new product platform because of perceived value – usually perceived value that gives them an order of magnitude advantage over near or competing solutions – and are happy to pay a premium for a first generation or near first generation solution. What they buy is usually not on any corporate sanctioned list, either. What is so different here?

I can predict the argument that Apple just delivers what people want – and everything – hardware and software – is beautifully integrated. And I agree. Because Apple depends only on Apple technologies for both hardware and software, they can take the time to ensure the newest releases of their end user software products and end user hardware products are highly optimized to work together – so highly optimized that the benefits of upgrading everything at once becomes even more desirable.

For example – consider an operating system upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Until Mac OS 7.x, operating system upgrades were essentially free. Then they became a fractional cost from the previous version. And now – you are effectively paying full retail of $129 or somewhere close to that. This upgrade is not optimized for your old hardware – the greater investment you have in old hardware (RAM, speed, etc) the more likely you will pay your $129 to get the upgrade. If you run a lower end consumer machine like the Mac Mini, are you better off paying the $600 to get a new Mac Mini which comes with not only the newest version of the operating system, but also newer versions of many Apple consumer applications – all running much faster than your old mini?

I wouldn’t argue with Nick’s premise here – but I would argue that the universe that Apple operates in is a pocket universe that has nothing to do with the computer industry of Microsoft.

Quicktime 7.2 automatically disables Quicktime Pro based on previous versions of Quicktime – Quicktime 5 and Quicktime 6. If you purchased Quicktime Pro and want to continue using its functionality, then you must pay for Quicktime Pro 7.x. Quicktime Pro allows you to import and export Quicktime movies in a variety of formats. While there are plenty of utilities out there that allow more and better conversions, there is a load of convenience to doing this within Quicktime itself.

From a software sales perspective – this release is interesting because of the forced upgrade requirement. Think about how Quicktime is implemented and how well this would be received if it was implemented differently:

Forced Upgrades for Components. Quicktime has application elements such as the player application. But in the end, it is a component that adds new capabilities to the operating system. In most cases, it makes sense not to have multiple component versions at the operating system level – who needs or wants a less stable operating system?

Forced Upgrades for Applications. This is where it gets more interesting. In the 3D content business, many content developers test content within multiple versions of an application, much like a web designer has to test their creation within several web browsers to ensure their web pages show correctly. They cannot give up a previous version until the market declares backward compatibility for that version is no longer relevant.

A terrible example of Force Upgrades by Application was Intuit forcing Quickbooks customers to upgrade to a more recent version of Quickbooks, just to use the Quickbooks Merchant Service. There are no inherent differences in the interfaces to this service from Quickbooks 2004 to Quickbooks 2007, and all information is passed in a standardized way. So in effect – no value is added at all by the upgrade in regards to the merchant service, and if you are otherwise happy with Quickbooks 2004 – you just have to suck up and pay for the upgrade or lose your merchant service.

In either case – Quicktime 7.x Pro forced upgrades or Intuit 2004 upgrades – neither company would be able to pull this off unless they were highly confident that the user base would find a transition to another solution more painful than paying up. And this is the lesson to be learned for software industry professionals – unless the total benefits plus pain avoidance clearly outweigh the cost and benefits of moving to a competitive solution, you should think again about employing this strategy.