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Analyzing Apple's iPhone Strategy
Galen Gruman submitted infoworld's summary of Apple's grand strategy for the iPhone. He points out that the real important part of the new iPhone is the software, not the hardware. He talks about the new SDK stuff, the ad-hoc app distribution, and other stuff. It's a reasonable read if you have been ignoring the iPhone and want to know what the hype is about over this release, but doesn't break any new ground if you've been paying attention.
The language is a serious turn off for most developers I know.
Well, in that case, why is it on the front page?
Surely if a
simon
What strategy?
1. Make glitzy 'must have' consumer gadget.
2. Lock everyone into your distribution network.
3. Profit.
Business as usual.
I've got your sig, right here.
Although it is "stuff", I guess. Apple has ALWAYS been about the software - there has only been one point at which buying their hardware was advisable on any level, in the age of the G4. The PC quickly whipped their ass and the Mac became a PC (in the x86 sense.) Irony.
However, Apple has always been pretty bad at the hardware, with the exception of the intel-based macbooks. It looked sexy, but had serious flaws. For example, macs didn't have accelerated graphics (not even ANY 2d accel) until late in the Mac II era. But we're talking about a machine designed to be used only graphically. This seems like a major oversight - and it is. If the Amiga had been competently marketed instead of the company being sucked dry, today it would be "Apple who?"
Apple has ALSO always tried to make you do things their way, and if you don't like it, you can fuck off. These days you can see that in the form of their latest bid to prevent people buying iPhones without a contract. You could also see it in the iPhone with the fact that originally there was to be NO user-developed software beyond webapps, and even today you have to run a special OS release that Apple can (and HAS) terminate at will, or accidentally.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Apple is, like Cisco, primarily a software company. It's Apple's software that sells its hardware, so while their revenue model is based on hardware sales, it's the software that makes them happen. No matter how nice Apple's hardware might be, without their software they'd sell no more than any other boutique hardware vendor, and once they burned through their cash reserves and liquid assets they'd just be another Alienware waiting to be bought by Dell or HP.
Focussing on their hardware, whether it's the iMac or iPhone, is definitely missing the point. This guy definitely gets it.
One thing that I would like to see more of is details of the ad-hoc licensing. My google-fu is failing me there.
A few years back, I would have thought MobileMe to be the perfect way to keep information on all my devices. (Or at least what "all my devices" would be if I had an iPhone.)
But after using Google Apps for my personal email for well over a year now, filing individual messages into folders just seems quaint. GMail allows me to apply labels to entire threads at once.
Furthermore, although it doesn't exist in GMail yet, there is the potential for Google Gears to allow browser-based offline access. In my opinion, this is the direction email, contact management, and calendaring should be moving toward.
PS. I do understand all the arguments against having Google control you're email; I'm just saying I like that direction.
I don't have the skills to be developer and maybe I'm don't know something you know but here is what I see: If I can develop an application for the iPhone, I can be an independent developer without having to go through anyone but Apple. Millions of users can buy my app easily. I don't have to worry about maintaining an infrastructure for a yearly $99 license. If I charge $10, I get to keep $7. If 14 people in the world buy it, I've broken even. If 10,000 people buy my app, I've made $70,000. That is why I think a lot of people are interested: the potential of it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
And if you're a PC developer, then you can be independent without having to go through anyone full stop. It's a crying shame, and a testament to the egregious and undue influence the telecom industry has over our government, that the cell phone market isn't like that too. This kind of shit -- that is, requiring apps to have the "blessing" of the device manufacturer or service provider to work -- ought to be illegal!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You forgot to include the value of your time to develop the application, any time it might take to market it (e.g., even if it's just posting to Slashdot), any support costs, taxes, etc. Also, if 10K people might buy your app for their iPhone, there might be 100K people who might buy it if had a wider cell phone base, or 1000K people who might buy it if it was available for PCs, etc., so you might be chasing a tiny "profit pool" anyway if you only target the iPhone.
Microsoft has a similar model going with MSDN and lesser licenses and so do thousands of other vendors with a proprietary platform and a paid SDK/API/dev environment.
The $99 is there basically to protect Apple from the total time-wasters; Apple would otherwise give this away free so they can get developers, developers, developers.
From a geek's standpoint, you don't want a smartphone without open source options. For an average consumer, do they really care? They just want things to work. When the iPod came out there was a lot of griping about technically inferior the iPod was, and that it would never flourish. Hundreds of millions of iPods later, I would say that it's been a success. Really, my grandma didn't/doesn't care that the iPod can't play ogg-vorbis. All she knows is that when she puts her new CD into her computer in iTunes and then plugs in her iPod, she gets her music. If she got an iPhone she'd only care about getting on eBay to see if she won that cute figurine. She doesn't need to see the source code.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You're pretty much right, but I think it's worth mentioning that although the software is really the keystone of Apple's success, they've also got the ability to make decent hardware if the need arises. They didn't have to wait for someone to release an mp3 player with a scroll wheel. They decided that that'd be the best interface for their iPod software(or more likely the two evolved together), and so they designed their own hardware. The same happened to a lesser extend with the iPhone. Apple didn't need to convince a phone manufacturer to build a handset that was basically just a big multi-touch capable screen, they went and designed their own.
It's also important to notice that those hardware specifics are generally tied to hardware requirements to make the user-interface work. That is to say, it ties really directly and clearly back into the software. At the same time that Apple is designing new hardware features to interface with their software, they've been generally moving towards more commodity hardware for the guts of their stuff. While the iMac has a history of the outside looking rather unusual compared to most computers, the components inside the shell are usually pretty standard stuff that'd be just as at home in a PC as in a Mac. The recent-ish switch to Intel being one of the most obvious examples.
It's a pretty reasonable strategy for product design, especially considering the consumer market.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Make stuff that looks a certain way on the basis that you are appealing to the fact that some people are prepared to pay for exclusivity, rather than functionality, first.
Charge a premium price to keep it exclusive and pump the additional money into the overall design and look of the product so that the device can be worn or carried as a fashion accessory, thus appealing to those people that need to make open displays of allegiances to certain product brands.
In this respect, Apple are no different to Ferrari, Chanel or Gucci - in other words, fine for some but if you just need something to make phone calls, drop the kids off to school in, smell nice or keep your feet dry, there are probably a lot more economical ways of doing it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Their strategy is pretty easy to decode:
1. make money.
2. make money.
3. make money, so that we can
4. make even more money.
I think they are doing great. Just for kicks (and to kick myself), I looked at how much I could have made if I had just invested $1000 in Apple in 1985. Taking the stock splits into account, that stock would be worth more than $500,000.
Apple is a great example of how you can take a fanatical fan base, show them nothing but contempt, charge outrageous amounts of money for everything connected with your products... and be adored all the more for it. THAT'S the kind of stock worth investing in, but it's a shame that setup is so difficult to replicate.
And... best of all, they are eating Linux's lunch. If someone hates Microsoft SO much, they aren't going to get Linux. They are going to buy a Mac, of course, and get locked in to that money sink (at least $150 in El Jobso's pocket every time they make a point release is great for Apple's bottom line!).
While Linux likewise has the fanatical user base... they just have no way of monetizing it. Linux users like being locked into that platform, but not enough to actually pay for anything. They are happy to use hardware two generations out of date, happy with being completely locked into FOSS (since extremely few companies will write for Linux), etc, but not happy enough to actually spend any money supporting what they supposedly believe in. Look at Red Hat- they've been doing poorly for years now, and that's not going to change (although their dropping the failed "Linux on the Desktop" project will undoubtedly help them a great deal).
While Apple has been gaining market share (up to 4-5%)... Linux's has remained flat for the past ten years (always around 0.65%, even as the size of the market has virtually exploded). Meaning... every Apple sold is coming from Linux's share of the market (either actual or potential). Which is good, since Linux has no chance of succeeding in competition with Microsoft, while Apple can do quite well with a tiny market share.
I don't envision a place where carrriers will allow anybody to download and install Android on any device. They will try to lock it down as much as possible by customizing to their liking then pass the fee to the consumers
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I think the point he's trying to make is that he doesn't have to worry about any infrastructure. He doesn't need a hosting account, he doesn't have to create a license scheme, he doesn't have to worry that if he gets popular his server goes down. All he has to do is pay Apple the $99 and he's good to go. That actually seems like it might be worth the tradeoff of having to go through Apple.
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
The hardware has been capable for quite some time. It's just windows CE is so crap at what it does that everyone blamed the hardware for being underpowered. Point in case, the hx4700 ipaq has been available for several years, clocks at 627mhz and has the same ram as the iphone. Even an apparently decent 2d+mpeg accelerated gpu, yet totally fails at media playback for anything encoded at a quality resolution. That is, until you reflash it with a real operating system. I'm glad apple's set the bar higher though, maybe Microsoft's CE department will wake up and realize people want _real_ features right _now_ instead of slowly bleeding out miniscule advancements that are intentionally crippled. Although having said that, CE's poor performance has until now been the driving force in making the hardware better, so it's only fair to give them credit for that at least.
See, here's the thing: there's a huge fucking difference between having this service be available, and having it be mandatory. Having it available is good; I agree that it would be very convenient for small proprietary developers. Having it mandatory is bad, because it locks out Free Software and hobbyists.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
As a long-time Linux user, I appreciate being able to tweak, but over time I've also come to like things that "just work". I've spent so much time tweaking window managers, for instance, fortunately the defaults on current window managers are very close to what I want.
The interface on the iPhone is really delicious, more so than I've *ever* seen on anything open-source. It's all well and good to be able to tweak things, but on a small gadget, a well-thought-out interface can make the difference between another piece of uselessness and something that's helpful in your everyday life.
No, I'm not happy about the closedness either, and I'm starting to get worried about how Apple uses proprietary things all over, but for a "secondary" computer, it's a price I'm willing to pay.
-Lars
It works far better as an embedded OS that Windows does as a Desktop OS
Seriously? I mean, have you used a Windows Mobile device? I have one I use every day, and I have had to reboot it about as often as Windows 95. One of the (many) reasons I will be picking up an iPhone this July.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Didn't the Newton come out before the Palm Pilot? The iPhone is a do-over of the Newton in a sense with modern technology. Apple has become expert in determining when Moore's Law catches up to an application to make it worth while. On the iPhone you could say they jumped the gun by releasing the first one without 3G and they should have waited another year. Or it was a warm up to get the 'impossible to see ahead of time' bugs out. Before lowering the price making it appealing to the general population. Either way, I think they know what they are doing. Another example, they did this with the ipod too. The very first version only worked with Mac.
Just set me up a basic sig... 10 PRINT "Gordon Aplin" : GOTO 10