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Netgear CEO Says Jobs's Ego Will Bite Apple
AcidAUS writes "The global chairman and CEO of home networking giant Netgear has launched into a scathing attack on Apple and its founder Steve Jobs, criticising Jobs's 'ego' and Apple's closed up products. At a lunch in Sydney today, Patrick Lo said Apple's success was centred on closed and proprietary products that would soon be overtaken by open platforms like Google's Android."
There's nothing like kicking a man when he's down is there. Seriously, why complain about his influence just when he's left to "focus on his health"?
Same ol', same ol'.
Steve Jobs isn't even at Apple at the moment.
Apple's closed model attracts a highly profitable minority of the market. Open (read: cheaper) platforms will "dominate" the market, Apple will skim off the cream, the world will continue to turn, Slashdot will continue to try to apply a geek-centric perspective to it.
JOBS vision to create "cool" Macs instead of the old beige/bland Macs/MP3s, basically saved Apple from the same fate that hit Atari and Commodore. Plus he had the vision to create the sleek, easy-to-use iPod.
Else we'd all be talking about the bankrupt former company called Apple, instead of today's thriving near-number 1 company. Jobs is still leading the company in the right direction and giving it that cool factor which appeals to consumers.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
I don't usually respond to AC's... but Mac market share is not increasing. MacBook market share is a bit, but not at any sort of alarming rate, and the iPhone is barely big enough to be considered a contender for top spot and isn't moving upwards.
Netgear's stock has increased in price by 100% since it went public. Apple's stock, over the same time period, has increased in price by over 3100%.
Now stock price isn't everything, but it is to these people...
I don't care much for Apple or it's products for exactly the reasons stated in TFA. The closed nature of the offerings usually locks me out of doing something I considered basic, that I wanted to do. Little or no reprieve from this is often offered. It's Apple's way, or the highway.
But the fact is, this attitude has been nothing but good for them from a business standpoint. Most consumers don't need or WANT options that they consider complex or confusing. Time and again it has been proven through sales that people want simple. People want 1 click, 1 button, no chance of screwing up. When people are more confident with their product right out of the box, they like it more. And Apple is great at giving people something they feel comfortable using the moment they turn it on.
Why would Apple change this? It feels like sour grapes to me. Developers have a hard time, but consumers are happy. In the end, Apple cares more about it's customers than it's partners, which is the right choice to make from a business standpoint. The only way Patrick Lo is going to be proven right, is if people stop buying Apple products. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
In the practical sense, I don't see why Android is considered more "open" than iOS. I realize more of the OS components for Android are fully open source. However, developers are still subject to the rules of the Android store. The phone manufacturers are carriers still have the final say on which features of the OS are actually shipped intact. Users still have to jailbreak Android phones to side-step these artificial limitations. Maybe I'm missing some critical bit of information -- and if so, I'd love to be corrected -- but I don't see much of a difference between the "openness" of the two platforms when it comes to practical usage.
From the article:
"Ultimately a closed system just can't go that far ... If they continue to close it and let Android continue to creep up then it's pretty difficult as I see it."
Lo said the industry had "seen this movie play several times", pointing to the Betamax vs. VHS video format war, Mac vs. Windows and various proprietary networking protocols that at one stage tried to compete with the now dominant TCP/IP.
In each of the above cases, the more open platforms won more market share. However, Apple has bucked this trend so far with its closed ecosystems for the iPhone and iPad.
"Right now the closed platform has been successful for Apple because they've been so far ahead as thought leaders because of Steve Jobs," said Lo.
"Eventually they've got to find a way to open up iTunes without giving too much away on their revenue generation model."
The author is positing that the closed model you are so impressed with needs to change if they want to survive Android. Unfortunately, Jobs' ego will not allow this and they'll most likely end up in the same realm as Microsoft -- financially great but viewed as a 'has been' and opportunist by the community.
My work here is dung.
Michael Dell (10/6/1997): ""What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," Michael Dell said before a crowd of several thousand IT executives. [http://news.cnet.com/Dell-Apple-should-close-shop/2100-1001_3-203937.html#ixzz1CccaByog]
And just because it is too easy, another one from the oracle of all that is IT, Dell. This time from CEO Kevin Rollins (1/17/2005):
"It is interesting: the iPod has been out for three years and it is only this past year [2004] it [has] become a raging success. Well those things that become fads rage and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman – a rage, everyone had to have one. Well you don't hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one product wonders come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy."
So, now the venerable Netgear, whose footsteps make all in the industry tremble, has announced the demise of Apple. Projecting just a tad, perhaps? :)
YEP. Most people don't actually care if the devices are open or closed, they don't even notice it until they need to migrate their data (contacts etc..) to a new device. Things like having special incompatible cables and software for each device is also perfectly normal for them, it has been like that since forever so people is somewhat used to it.
As I see it, the only difference now is that Apple provides polished products that actually work with minimal effort. It is a big win for everybody except for us, hackers, that want control over every piece of hardware and software.
Here's the problem I have with Mr. Lo's argument. He ignores a lot of things. He's correct, but he's really only talking about iOS when it comes to more proprietary. OS X, under Jobs, has actually gotten more open as it is based on OpenStep which is based on NextStep. It is essentially BSD with a proprietary UI and extensions. You can get the BSD part (Darwin) for free. But remember the previous Mac OS was completely proprietary. Under the BSD license, Apple is under no obligations to release anything to the community.
As for the iPods, remember very few MP3 players (or consumer electronic gadgets) are essentially open. You can't exactly customize them with your own apps, UI, etc.. It played MP3s (which isn''t really open as a standard) and AAC. The proprietary format Fairplay (AAC with DRM) was only if you bought iTunes music. This was exactly the same as WindowsPlayForSure model. Apple just made the MP3 player accessible to the masses
Apple currently supports a lot of open source software. They forked KHTML and released it as WebKit. They bought CUPS is keeping up with development on it. Bonjour, Grand Central Dispatch, etc. The problem Mr. Lo has is that for one product line, Apple has decided on a closed ecosystem. Apple has stated the reasons why it did so. The history of Apple suggests that they support open standards though they may not open up their hardware and some of their software.
Before Mr. Lo complains about Apple's closed up products, he should look at his own company too. Netgear has limited support of Linux on their products so calling Apple closed is pot calling the kettle black.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm not an apple fanboy in the least, but I own a slew of Apple products. I straight up despise a lot of the business practices of Apple.
The fact of the matter is that while Apple is dirty and selfish, they make better consumer tech products (in their categories) than just about any other company out there. They're also constantly at the bleeding edge, releasing things that no other company has been able to do, or at least "do right." People are willing to pay a premium for a product that's worth it.
Don't confuse fanboyism with common sense. Steve Jobs fanboyism (as a cult following) ended a long time ago. Everyone recognizes that Jobs really only cares about money and power. He just happens to make and release good products as a method to get both.
Your first link is an App that requires that you jailbreak your phone to install it...and even then there are significant limitations. The second is a computer-side app that attempts to hack around Apple's proprietary protocols.
These are your example of Apple being "open"? Really?
My