miless wrote:
davidch wrote:
miless wrote:
You are comparing open with close.
Google and Apple
Google does things openly ...
Apple is always closed....
google by far has the largest closed propreitary software systems on the internet. google search, location services, gmail, maps, google+, google analytics, google adware are all extremely closed proprietary and limted interfacing
apple, on the other hand, is one of the largest comercial contributors to opensource including bonjor, webkit, darwin and many quicktime technologies.
in sum, both companies have very closed and open technolgies. the big difference is that one company is much more hypocritcial about it then the other...
Voila... that's another way of looking at things.
When i said google is opened, what i meant was Android, their open moat as a strategy to defend their closed proprietary search, ads cash cow fortress.
When i said apple is closed, what i meant is their sandbox approach... to prevend 3rd party from "destroying" their beautiful creation (Jobs' ideal) and distort mainstream users' ability to use the product out of the box, which of course many so call "power users" and hackers hate.... myself include sometimes.
I like both their approaches, and dislike (but live with) both their idiosyncracies. ... hypocritical or not.
Jobs way of running Apple is such that, it has always given users, customers or their partners, an air of snobbishness about them, coupled with its super cool design, zero learning curve usability and fantastic quality of their product; created this ultra desirability which no other product could match. Not BMW, not Flos, not Leica.
I think this is his style and his way of doing things. Its like, you dont need to know how it works. We'll figure it out for you, and it just works for you. Feels like arrogance to many people. That's why many first time customer feel that they are being snobbed at with a problem they cant solve, yet Apple is keeping quiet about it, and refuse to participate in any form of open dialogue like how Google did and/or any other company would have done.
I guess i have learnt a lot more about Job's brilliance as well as his narcissistic nature (tho not entirely true description of him) from Isaacson's book, than i have ever before, that i have come to understand the way how Apple, as a company, works.
Fair enough. davidch also rightfully noted the open/closed nature of both companies, but in terms of OS, there is no doubt which is more open. The rationale for closed at this level is weak in my opinion - I have never seen an android phone user saying his phone was not usable out of the box, although there are degrees of usability, I concede. For me the real rationale is simply money and distribution. I believe Apple's advantage has to do with integration within the OS and scaling and leveraging of the user base (Ipod). I believe ICS has done an amazing job at closing the gap and offers and far superior polish than honeycomb, and ICS is being backported as we speak, which yields further value for cheaper devices. This "ultra desirability" you speak of truly exists, and has been used often to justify the price tag associated with their latest offerings. Yet it shouldn't be confused with value, for it is not, and the vast majority of people cannot justify such a price tag for what amounts to a glorified gadget and have hence not tasted the piece of magic experience, so they cannot envy it or use it as a reference when they try cheaper devices. Whether the devices yield fair value is debatable, although the quality and design of Apple's tech is acknowledged. Yet a side effect of this desirability is worship, cult like behavior, phone in the pocket clichéd lifestyle, which was reinforced through guru-like authoritarian management and stance on technology. Fashion comes and goes, and what was hip a little time ago is now pretty much the laughingstock. Going a bridge too far was dropping the gloves with Samsung and patent litigation - which in the end simply attracts attention to the competitor's product line. Pick your battles. Samsung is the "Apple of Asia" and Apple is now reaping the lights of the all-out war they triggered. As the fairytale segment of Apple's user base are closed to innovation outside Apple's tech, the world is changing. 4-4"3 is a valid form factor for mobiles, and 7'' is valid for tablets, despite what Steve used to believe. The ereader segment is offering cheap platforms with lesser functions but more focus on their content - and an acceptable browsing experience with a long battery life and Mirasol displays are out - the former and the latter will yield lots of value. Furthermore, who would have thought so but MS/Nokia's alliance might prove fruitful for mobiles. Apple doesn't have many friends. The Apple "experience" might have proved successful, but some of their latest choices in terms of functions with the 4S have coumpounded the battery issue at hand - in my opinion. Maybe a longer leash for the user base is required. I think there is room for further choice within the "experience" and a new breed of intelligent and educated Apple users who actually have something to say and know what are the actual strenght of their own device beyond branding... Maybe you're right and these are fascinating times
Scarface.
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Jason L
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