Trainspotting
Apple, the consumer electronics company formerly known as Apple Computer, has been taking a bit of a public relations pounding lately. Long known for obsessive secrecy and tight control, Apple first pissed off Adobe when they refused to support that company’s Flash program on its new iPad. This really came as no surprise to most people; Flash has never been supported on the iPhone or iPod Touch. But there were grumblings from the usual suspects, including Adobe’s CEO.
Then an unfortunate Apple engineer went out for a few brews at his local bierstube and left a prototype iPhone behind. It quickly found its way to the techie tabloid site Gizmodo (part of the Gawker Media group), who quickly took it apart, took pictures, and blabbed it to the world.
Apple’s response was, “Please return our property.” Oh, and the person who lost it, along with Apple’s outside counsel, told police that a theft had occurred and they wanted it investigated. Next thing, the Gizmodo editor who revealed it had his front door broken down and his computers seized under a rather dicey warrant. It made Apple look like jackbooted thugs.
Jon Stewart roasted Apple until very well done. Apple lost a whole bunch of coolth points overnight. This may put a pall over the whole rollout of the next iPhone generation, and the controversy is unlikely to go away any time soon. The Gizmodo editor has lawyered up, and they may sue.
And you know, I don’t much care. I like the fact that Flash doesn’t work on my iPhone and iPad. It’s buggy as hell on my MacBook, and my work-mates who use Windows tell me it’s the quickest way to kill Internet Explorer, too. Apple may operate a very controlled environment, but HTML5 and H.264 are open standards. Flash isn’t. Besides, Flash doesn’t work with a touch interface anyway.
It’s the iPhone debacle that’s the real blow to Apple’s reputation. And yet, there’s no denying they have a perfect right, and indeed a fiduciary responsibility, to protect their intellectual property. Apple’s products are some of the most watched and copied on the planet. Just yesterday, we learned that HP had cancelled production of its Slate tablet computer (the one Steve Ballmer showed off to great acclaim at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last January), and Microsoft had shelved its Courier touch-screen computer. The iPad is selling quite well, and it’s changing the marketplace. Beside the sleek and intuitive iPad, the Slate looks like a complicated kludge designed in a Soviet tractor factory. Things might have been a good deal different if they’d had several months’ advance information about Apple’s product.
Simply put, Apple’s products work for me. Sure, Steve Jobs is, by all accounts, a nit-picking, micromanaging, insensitive tyrant to work for. That’s fine by me - I’m not his employee, I’m his customer. His obsessive devotion to a Zen-like simplicity of form and function has resulted in products that I don’t have to work with; they work for me. I don’t have to think about how to do what I’m doing, I can just do it. OK, it would be swell if Steve Jobs were a nice man who was sweet to little old ladies and gave wide-eyed kittens to wide-eyed waifs, but how many CEOs do you know who are like that? How many CEOs of two separate high-powered creative companies at the same time are like that? There aren’t any to compare him to - he’s in a class by himself. Is he an asshole? Sure he’s an asshole. But he makes the trains run on time.
Then an unfortunate Apple engineer went out for a few brews at his local bierstube and left a prototype iPhone behind. It quickly found its way to the techie tabloid site Gizmodo (part of the Gawker Media group), who quickly took it apart, took pictures, and blabbed it to the world.
Apple’s response was, “Please return our property.” Oh, and the person who lost it, along with Apple’s outside counsel, told police that a theft had occurred and they wanted it investigated. Next thing, the Gizmodo editor who revealed it had his front door broken down and his computers seized under a rather dicey warrant. It made Apple look like jackbooted thugs.
Jon Stewart roasted Apple until very well done. Apple lost a whole bunch of coolth points overnight. This may put a pall over the whole rollout of the next iPhone generation, and the controversy is unlikely to go away any time soon. The Gizmodo editor has lawyered up, and they may sue.
And you know, I don’t much care. I like the fact that Flash doesn’t work on my iPhone and iPad. It’s buggy as hell on my MacBook, and my work-mates who use Windows tell me it’s the quickest way to kill Internet Explorer, too. Apple may operate a very controlled environment, but HTML5 and H.264 are open standards. Flash isn’t. Besides, Flash doesn’t work with a touch interface anyway.
It’s the iPhone debacle that’s the real blow to Apple’s reputation. And yet, there’s no denying they have a perfect right, and indeed a fiduciary responsibility, to protect their intellectual property. Apple’s products are some of the most watched and copied on the planet. Just yesterday, we learned that HP had cancelled production of its Slate tablet computer (the one Steve Ballmer showed off to great acclaim at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last January), and Microsoft had shelved its Courier touch-screen computer. The iPad is selling quite well, and it’s changing the marketplace. Beside the sleek and intuitive iPad, the Slate looks like a complicated kludge designed in a Soviet tractor factory. Things might have been a good deal different if they’d had several months’ advance information about Apple’s product.
Simply put, Apple’s products work for me. Sure, Steve Jobs is, by all accounts, a nit-picking, micromanaging, insensitive tyrant to work for. That’s fine by me - I’m not his employee, I’m his customer. His obsessive devotion to a Zen-like simplicity of form and function has resulted in products that I don’t have to work with; they work for me. I don’t have to think about how to do what I’m doing, I can just do it. OK, it would be swell if Steve Jobs were a nice man who was sweet to little old ladies and gave wide-eyed kittens to wide-eyed waifs, but how many CEOs do you know who are like that? How many CEOs of two separate high-powered creative companies at the same time are like that? There aren’t any to compare him to - he’s in a class by himself. Is he an asshole? Sure he’s an asshole. But he makes the trains run on time.