The announcement of iPhone 3G caused the uproar in the cult of the Mac that was expected. I find myself defending the cheaper, better and much more attractive phone from Apple more and more often now from people who say it’s just a marketing ploy and Jobs’ reality distortion field makes us think that the phone is superior when it’s actually not.

I had almost but given up debating Apple vs. the World about a year back, choosing to take the high road and just sit back and watch people argue their hearts out on a topic that will not put a scar on the bigger picture — that it doesn’t matter.

I defend the iPhone from sceptics because I believe that Apple is doing an excellent job of promoting a device that has true potential to change the way we work with phones today. Sure, the iPhone has spawned many clones, and pushed the competition to add whatever they saw in the device to their own devices (like every Apple competitor does at some point). But Apple has a knack of getting things “mostly” right the first time out. I really don’t care what people say about Apple’s prices or limitations. If the product is good enough, who cares if you can break it open and fiddle around with the internals. Or if the features and usability are high enough, how does it matter if the service provider lock down charges you a little more money. Apple has always been higher on the cost, but they’ve more than balanced it out with excellent support and performance of their products and software. If you’re not willing to pay a premium for superiority, maybe you’re better off not owning a superior device.

The debate isn’t for or against Apple. The debate is for what the particular device in question brings to the table. It’s not co-incidence that many award winning and people popular devices come out of the one company most people love to hate. And people love to hate Apple on the case that they don’t have the freedom to do what they want with it once they own it. They believe that if they’ve paid for it, it is theirs to do whatever they want. They hate the fanboy-ism that follows Apple around everywhere, and some have even admitted to not making the switch to avoid being stereotyped as a fanboy just because they use an Apple. They would be right, but that’s not how Apple works, is it?

Apple’s lock down is to protect their work, their intellectual property, and the secrets that keep them ahead of the game. Apple is a small company, that has to squeeze out revenue from every little corner that they can muster. It is not a luxury, it is a survival tactic. If Apple opened itself up, their maintenance and development costs would shoot up. Not to mention customer support. Being closed has worked for Apple all these years, and probably will way into the future.

As SwitchingToMac clearly puts it:

It’s mostly about control, Apple has control of the entire computing experience, Hardware, Operating System and much of the core Software. Windows PCs are a conglomeration of a bunch of companies working independently all competing against each other but trying to make product that are harmonious at the same time.

Does Apple use its loyalists?

Apple thrives off the loyalists, the ‘cult of the Mac’ as they’re called. They depend on this small but extremely loyal group for their revenue. While the market leaders like Microsoft bank on the long tail to get their money, Apple does the exact opposite. In fact, you could say that Apple actually uses this “cult”, fuelling their emotions and egging them on by doing things like presenting the Mac vs. PC ads that have become so notoriously popular. Tom Krazit at One More Thing traces this back to an active strategy by Apple and Guy Kawasaki:

Kawasaki recalled signing up 44,000 hardcore Mac users in 1995 on a listserv named, quite appropriately, “EvangeList.” “All I would do is disseminate good news,” Kawasaki said. He wanted his listserv to be a counterpoint to the torrents of bad news about the Mac, exemplified by a 1996 BusinessWeek cover story about Apple titled, “The Fall of an American Icon.” For its cover art, the magazine placed an Apple icon in front of a black, funereal background.

If you’ve read any book on Steve Jobs or watched any of the documentaries, you would have seen how he treats the entire company as one big family¹. The same feeling resonates among the Apple enthusiasts. If any blogger/journalist makes the slightest mistake of saying anything remotely bad about an Apple product, or Apple in general, you can almost foresee the impending reaction. The wrath of the cult is ruthless. It’s almost like every Apple enthusiast takes it as a personal attack whenever the company is spoken ill of.

And that is what Apple wants. That is what they need. Because these are the people who will buy the next product to come out their doors without question. These are the people that through repeated persuasion and coaxing, “convert” others and make them switch. I myself have converted about 7 to 8 people over to Macs ever since I began to take interest in this sort of thing, and I’m proud of that. It is my little contribution to the company I’ve come to appreciate and respect. And I know, that the people who’ve switched, are happy they did so. So happy, that soon they will be showing their Macs to their friends, asking them to give it a shot. And that’s how Apple has grown, and will continue to grow.

So argue and debate all you want. If you’re not a part of the “cult”, you don’t have anything to win. Apple-ers will never listen to your attempts to sway them away, but they’ve gotten better and more efficient at turning people from your side to theirs. It’s like getting soldiers to defect by promising them more vacations. What will you pick?

While I’m inclined to say I’m not surprised, seeing as how the iPhone 3G has faced the same axe, and I believe the iPod Touch will be treated the same if it has to survive in the new scenario, the Air price cut (by a respectable $500) might be to push people to buy more of the SSD Airs. I’m sure everybody who has “bought” an Air has the $1799 one, while all those $3098 ones are going to waste.

They could also be trying to compete with new “thin” computers hitting the market (like the Lenovo X300), but this wouldn’t be the proper way to do that. Lack of an optical drive and more connectors is the problem people have, not the price (or actually, for that price). I’m convinced this is a part of the reason, because a price cut has a psychologically harder impact than adding features at the same price when the product has existed for a certain amount. This will make more sense if Apple introduces a third Air with all the missing features for that $500.

Another reason could be the reason iPhone 3G had such a big price cut - cheaper parts. Apple has been slowly and steadily moving towards lowering their cost of production as a sustainable manufacturing model. This might be the latest avatar of that move. Maybe the remaining Mac lineup is next. This seems the most likely because it makes business sense.

If the Mac lineup sees an upgrade or refresh in the next month or so, we’ll know exactly which way Apple is going.

The big stink that came out of the Leander Kahney article about “How Apple Got Everything Right …” got some of the most prominent writers scrambling for their keyboards. Some were against the comparison between Google and Apple, and some were against the people against the comparison. A simple search on Google reveals exactly how many people had how much say about it. Personally, I couldn’t care less about any comparisons being made inside the Silicon Valley, but when two of my favourite software companies came under scrutiny from two extreme ends of the mob, I just had to have a look and see what the big fuss was about. While I am not going to do a Gruber on anybody’s write-up with an extended “Jackass” version, I will take the neutral stance from a consumers point of view who doesn’t go into the history of companies, and just judges them by their present status.

Don’t compare Google and Apple to anyone

There, I said it. You cannot compare Google and Apple, simply because they are completely different companies. Heck, if you’re going to keep Google as the standard by which you’re going to judge successful companies, your theory will start hitting snags the moment somebody dissects them. The simplest example is Microsoft. Fine, we don’t like the Redmond vampires, but by no limit of imagination are they an un-successful company. Like it was once said, “Every move that Microsoft makes is like a tidal wave, the ripples of which reach out to the various niches and broad segments of the computer industry.” But everything they do has the stench of “evil” by Google’s definition. In fact, I can count 4 points that they shamelessly break. But has that made them stop and rework their strategy? Na-huh!

You cannot compare Google and Apple to any company in the market today, simply because they have guiding philosophies that have evolved from the way they have been treated by the industry. Google has hit gold wherever they’ve gone. Even their worst product has millions of users. They made searching what it is today (even if Yahoo! started it), and is the undisputed market leader. When you are the top of the mountain with breathing space, the way you tackle the people still climbing is completely different than you would if you were climbing too.

Apple is on the other end of the spectrum, having seen the best and worst the industry can offer. From almost going bankrupt, to fraternising with the enemy to keep themselves alive. The firing of one of the foremost visionaries of our time and their biggest advantage, and then the slow and hard walk uphill to gain what they lost, Apple has literally seen it all. Whatever it does today is born out of how Steve Jobs perceives the industry — unforgiving, unrelenting and most of all, unreliable. He knows that you cannot sit on your past laurels and expect everybody to keep gushing over what you’ve done. That explains his commitment to quality, and to provide updates upon upgrades to his existing arsenal.

Comparing these two companies to each other is showing idiocity beyond imagination. Not the same market, not the same philosophies, not the same yard-stick. If Apple is doing well today, it is because of the months and years of hard work coupled with “evil” planning of products and strategies. I say it is okay to be evil today, because the climber at the top of that mountain is not going to step aside and let you plant your flag where his stood a second ago. If a company is not being aggressive, it is not taking itself seriously enough.

Apple’s wrongs

All that said, Kahney’s jibes at how “evil” Apple actually is, are nothing but shots at Jobs’ management ethics and practices. Kahney writes:

Everybody is familiar with Google’s famous catchphrase, “Don’t be evil.” It has become a shorthand mission statement for Silicon Valley, encompassing a variety of ideals that — proponents say — are good for business and good for the world: Embrace open platforms. Trust decisions to the wisdom of crowds. Treat your employees like gods.

It has become a mission statement for the Valley? Sure, it is cited in a lot of write-ups, but nowhere in recent memory have I actually seen a company follow the rules. Come to think of it, I remember even Google breaking its own rules. From censoring searches in China, plugging their own products to users who search for related information, Google has done its fair share of “evil”. Did we break out into a frenzy? Yes we did. Did that deter Google? Of course not, because even Google knows that being a goody-goody never paid bills. What should be noted however is that Google did all those while it was the market leader.

Apple never held the market. Their boat has always moved upstream. How on Earth does it matter what their way of working is? If (to quote Kahney) “by locking the doors and sweating and bleeding until something emerges perfectly formed” is the method that works for Apple, then so be it. Even now, with 91% of the operating system market, Microsoft “leaks” alphas and betas of their new systems. It works for them. Let them be! Jobs realised that trying to push a new product into a dead market (for new players) was not going to help. He took a backdoor. By playing to his strengths and heavily promoting the iPod, he brought Apple’s name back. He correctly realised that the problem wasn’t having a presence. It was having an identity. The moment one product from a heard-of company became a bestseller, the effects would ripple back to the main company, which Apple could then use to pitch its other products. “Like the iPod? Look what else we make! We know what you like, so why don’t you give these a try?” You can call the backdoor an illegal route, but now that people have been woken up to the Mac, do you feel Jobs shouldn’t have done it? Just because something isn’t the ‘right’ way to do something, doesn’t make it wrong. Either way, right and wrong are subjective. I say right, you’re welcome to say wrong.

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No other company in the history of this industry will ever be able to pull off an Apple. Let’s be serious. Jobs = Apple. Just like there will no second Jobs, there will be no second Apple. And that is not just because of what they’ve achieved, but also because of what they are doing, and will continue to do. In a cut-throat world, it matters little how you reached where you have reached, because when you do get there, people just look at you for what you are and what you are doing, not what and where you have been, or what you have done.

In the past, I’ve heard both sides of the argument — which has usually involved the Apple side blaming Microsoft and the Microsoft side blaming Apple — and after at least 3 years of being a part of that crowd, I’ve taken the high road the past year (while still doing my part to convert people over to the light side; Apple’s). When you look past the petty fights and ‘fanboy’ arguments, you can see the bigger picture.

I bumped into Paul Thurott’s post about Apple copying (he didn’t thankfully use the word ‘stole’) features from Microsoft’s Vista. Then, I ran into Dwight Silverman’s rebuttal post, where he looks into the past of those said features. Read carefully, we see that many of those features have existed in Unix based OSs (I rather not carry out an investigation of an investigation, I just believe him), which gave me a few thoughts.

The non-Mac, Mac community

With Leopard, Apple finally has a fully compliant Unix OS. The interesting thing is that we know one more platform which has a decently big but creative community — Linux. Many features which turn up in these distros is thought up and implemented by the community, which makes licensing and patenting much less of a pain. The Unix base makes implementing them easier. And the fact that un-pressed developers are more creative than the ones who are being pushed to come up with new features, should give Apple ideas. The only problem will be name-calling and arguments with the Linux community, but hey, at least they have a perfect repository of ideas if they ever need them.

Microsoft’s development cycles have been something of a joke. Also, their need for backwards compatibility forces them to reuse much of their code, which ultimately ends up causing a source code muddle. I’ve heard that the reason Vista took so long because they started with the XP code, decided it was crap and they would need something better if they wanted to achieve the level of security they were aiming for, and finally ended up starting from scratch. All this keeps them from properly implementing a lot of features which they might or might not ‘borrow’. They plan to change it with Windows 7¹, but we’ll keep that discussion for a future day.

My point is that Apple can innovate and implement faster. Jobs will make sure the implementation is the best for that time, and it doesn’t matter if they copy features or not. What matters is that the feature is being main-streamed, and is something that more people (a whole 8% more) will get to use and enjoy it.

We know that ultimately a feature that becomes popular will show up in all operating systems. So the whole argument of copying features doesn’t really matter. For my part, I am glad Apple has stepped up their advertising (even if it does involve some Vista bashing), and saying that Microsoft ‘copied’ their ideas is a good way to discredit them. They have copied things in the past.

Finally, it’s the Linux community which will lose out, but meh, open source is dead² anyway.

My favourite television character of all time holding my favourite device—for the time being.

If you don’t watch the show already, you should. It’s the best! ‘Nuff said.

As for the iPhone, I got to use one of these on my way back to Delhi for my holidays. Although severely crippled due to lack of services like wide area wi-fi spots and visual voice-mail in India, the phone itself made any other phone I had seen (and used) obsolete in a matter of seconds.

What’s great is that I see Apple promoting the iPhone in one of the smarter ways. And the fact that it’s now finally “advertising” the iPhone. More and more people should be introduced to this beautiful little thing. We, unfortunately, might not see an official launch anytime soon¹. There are reports of a June date however.

With survey results showing the iPhone having taken second place in the US smart-phone market, it’s easy to see how the hype might permeate down to countries where it’s not there yet. Three visits to the local Apple reseller showed me that the first question people asked on entering was if they had the iPhone (I laughed to myself everytime someone confused the iPod Touch for the phone), which proves that people want to see it, try it out, most probably even own one; that they are intrigued.

Last year was awesome for Apple and the iPhone in many ways. Analysts are saying that that strong surge will not last, and we’ll see a drop in demand as competitors come out with their versions of iPhone-like smart-phones. I say those analysts are idiots. We know Apple has never been for numbers. They generate enough revenue from their current sales to sustain and turnover profits. They don’t need the numbers. And in a way, that’s how it should be. I might sound fanboy-ish, but I have and always will regard Apple as the luxury brand … products of which are best reserved for the ones who truly appreciate them. If you rather save money and get a third-rate phone, you deserve it. It just makes us Apple lovers and owners all the more elite.

Off-topic

“House” stars supporting Writer’s Guild strike

I guess the rumour mill was right for once. The Macbook Air was revealed, filling up the much needed gap between the high end Macbook Pro and the basic Macbook. But at $1799, it seems a little too steep, especially because the features are pretty much the same as your basic Macbook, and the lack of an optical drive.

It’s all about wireless, this one. With abilities such as ‘Remote disk’ that lets you ‘borrow’ someone else’s drive, it’s a technological wonder. Stunningly beautiful. But so is the Optimus Maximus. We’re excited, but not exactly rushing to buy one, are we?

The problem I see at the moment is the phenomenal drop in Apple’s share as the news unfolded. Shares (literally) fell (they’re slowly coming back up while writing this). I guess people don’t like the Air as much as Apple hoped.

I don’t like it a lot right now, and my personal opinion is that they made a mistake with it. Apple has clearly gone for the sleek factor, trying to make its presence felt in the ‘thin’ category. Its only competitor being Sony (I’m taking looks into account as well), those who want a visually breath-taking computer should go with this. But, you gotsta have the pockets for this one.