Daring Fireball’s John Gruber “came to Macworld Expo 2010, however, not to praise the company but to probe its vulnerabilities,” Phillip Elmer-Dewitt reports for Fortune.
The problems, in the order he delivered them:
1. Steve Jobs: The pessimistic dig on Apple, says Gruber, is that it’s a supremely well-organized company organized around one irreplaceable guy. The optimistic view is that Jobs has structured it to run like his other company, Pixar, which manages to turn out hit after hit, year after year, without a charismatic celebrity leader.
2. AT&T: [Apple sticks with them because] AT&T so desperately needs the iPhone that Apple can extract far better terms from them than it ever could from Verizon. Meanwhile, however, AT&T’s service problems are draining Apple’s good will.
3. Computers: Gruber thinks he’s seen the future of computers, and it is the iPad. “It’s really, really good,” he gushed. If you are sitting on a couch and you need a computer, most people are going to reach for the iPad, not the MacBook Pro. And that puts Apple into uncharted territory. For the first time since the original Mac replaced the Apple II, it has two overlapping computer products. And although it took a few years for the corpse to grow cold, the Apple II basically died the day the Mac arrived.
4. The App Store
5. Security
6. Mobile Me: It’s great for syncing your iPhone to your Mac, but what’s the point of Mobile Me’s Web apps?
7. Back Ups: Time Capsule is the right idea, but it’s not really a solution for all those people who don’t even know they’re supposed sync their iPhones to their Macs.
8. Apple TV: Gruber is not one of those who talks about Apple TV as Steve Jobs’ one dud. He likes Apple TV, but says it has a fundamental problem: [Content or the relative lack thereof]. Hulu is a wonderful solution but when Boxee figured out a way to put it on TV, the Hulu guys freaked out. They have “this crazy brick wall in their heads,” Gruber explains, that perceives computers and TVs and two fundamentally different things. They worry about ad-supported Hulu getting on TVs when they should be worried about people bootlegging their content for free and watching it with no ads. “I don’t see,” Gruber concludes, “how Apple can get from where they are to where they need to be when they are negotiating with people that stupid.”
9. Arch Rivals: A company needs direct rivals to stay hungry, but when they get big enough they tend to run out of them… Apple’s closest rival in smartphones, Gruber maintains, is not Google (which will rake in the Web ad riches whether Android succeeds or fails), but Palm, whose WebOS he admires.
10. About Box Credits: If software is a form of art, as Apple insists it is, “artists should get to sign their work.”
Full article, with full explanations of each of the 10 points above, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Some of these are a stretch. Number 10 is seemingly there only to fulfill the promise of ten points. As for number 9, Apple has plenty of arch rivals and self-motivation; they don’t require a floundering group of castoffs with chips on their shoulders in order to motivate them. There is plainly no need for Palm’s webOS; it’s superfluous in the current marketplace; a redundancy. Unless some other company decides to junk their current OS and snaps up what’s left of the company for webOS (which we strongly suspect is the real dream of Elevation Partners), Palm has no reason to be. If not saved via a buyout, Palm is dead. Number 6 isn’t really a vulnerability on the order of, say, how the company will someday run without Steve Jobs. Number 3 is many years off. It certainly won’t happen as quickly as Mac took over from Apple II because Mac had greater capabilities than what it succeeded, not less. Unless and until iPad evolves to do everything a Mac can do and more, the Mac will not only survive, it will thrive. All that said, it’s still an interesting, thought-provoking list and therefore a recommended read.
The Apple haters were out in force in the comments section.
You Know What To Do.™
@ RicMac
Nah – the site is covered up with snow right now – nothing’s happening there. Meanwhile, the NC Dept of Public Instruction is doing it’s best to eliminate content-knowledge requirements for teachers. So Apple will have to import workers as NC turns into a third-world state.
BUT when spring finally comes to NC, then it’ll be fascinating to watch what Apple unveils as the purpose for the center. Cloud based apps for iPads? (Dr.) Who knows‽
Here’s the point on MobileMe. At work I’m held captive in Lotus Notes by Windows XP. The MobileMe web apps let me sync to the outside world.
Let’s see how big a mountain each of these points can be raised to become by the blogospere..
The Microsoft Taliban are going to have a field day…
Gruber often has interesting things to add to the Apple-related blogosphere, but rather than focusing upon the glass being 99% full, he froths and hisses about the 1% he believes is missing or is not good enough. That’s just how he is.
If this is all there is to worry about? Apple really has no problems. This is a Nick picking list, because there really isn’t much you can list that apple is doing wrong.
Either he used to work for Apple as a developer, or he intimately knows someone who works for Apple as a developer. Hence, No. 10.
When you look at many major software packages (and most prominent one that comes to mind is Adobe CS), go to “About” box (in the app menu, right below the App’s name); you will often see dozens of names of developers who worked on the application.
Apple never ever does that. There is not a single name on any of Apple’s applications; not even a group. Just copyright and “all rights reserved” statement.
When one works for Apple, one develops this unique love-hate relationship with their employer. There is always that immense satisfaction for working on an extremely rewarding project, but there is also always this feeling that your employer never acknowledges your contribution in a meaningful way. When they see their colleagues’ (and competitors’) names in Photoshop or InDesign, they only get that feeling reinforced just a little bit more.
As long as they don’t have Dells problem of not been able to make money, they should be ok.
Apple will succeed or fail without any input from Gruber and so-called media gurus/bloggers like him. THAT is their #1 problem and what bugs them the most.
On 1 point I half-agree with him – the iPad is the future of computing. Imagine the original Mac. Then flatten it, give it touch screen. That’s the iPad. The other night when I wanted to read something online in bed I thought an iPad would be much easier to handle than my MBP. But the Mac won’t go away anytime soon, because? Just like the iPad is NOT just a bigger iPhone, screen real estate and power do matter.
I agree with HueyLong. It’s amazing how so many Americans still this miss this important point. I don’t believe an exclusivity agreement is still in place, it doesn’t make sense. Apple is waiting for your other networks to catch up with the rest of the world. I’m not saying GSM is better than CDMA, but the latter is pretty much unique to the USA (and some pockets of Asia). I can’t comment on AT&T;’s network performance, but it’s clearly not as bad as people would like us to believe or the iPhone wouldn’t still be selling so well in the US after 3 years.
John Gruber has nothing to say that I want to hear. I really don’t understand why so many people are impressed by him.
On another note, I just finished watching this weeks Cranky Geeks (episode #205) in which John C. Dvorak and guests were trashing the iPad. These schmucks just don’t get it. But eventually they will, whether they like it or not. The show was worth watching just to see them ripping on each other, especially when they ganged up on J.C. Very entertaining.
My new iPad will be used as #3; I already have built a shelf under the coffee table for it. It will be used when we want to check mail; want to look up info on films we’re watching; want to access any other information with a very low footprint device. I can see it as an “information appliance” and suspect it will be in constant use. Probably remain in the same location. I think it is a brilliant – and actually not so ‘niche’ – product. Rather it will once again simplify getting information, as Apple has done so brilliantly in the past.
The iPad is a replacement for at least 90% of consumer computers including all but a small percentage of rabid gamers.
It’s just that consumers don’t know it yet.
I can’t believe the guy who writes The Daring Fireball said this.
Guber is a goober. By which to say, he is an ass.
Regarding AT&T;. I never have problems with AT&T;. I think the fact that the media are centered in New York and a lot of the tech types are based in San Francisco skew the impressions of AT&T;’s service levels. I’d wager that the majority of iPhone users actually don’t have the problems the media types do. Just like the media to believe the world revolves around them…
Cripes, there’s a lot of hate here for Gruber. I don’t read him that often, but when I do I find him to be smart, fair, and articulate. My favorite column of his is from back in ’04 when people were just discovering that, what-do-ya-know, Macs were virus-free while Windows had tens of thousands of pieces of malware. It’s a great explanation of why that is.
You can read it here:
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/broken_windows
Lol well said. Stevee and CRAPPLE is so stubborn and ignorant. Face the CRAPPLE this isn’t your world and you will lose in the end.
http://www.bing.com When it comes to decisions that matter, Bing & Decide
I think John Lassater is Pixar’s charismatic leader. He defined the philosophy and is managing all of Disney Animation today. That being said, I think the directors there are pretty autonomous – we would still get Brad Bird films if Lassater quit or was incapacitated.
Steve’s product vision would be succeeded by Jonathan Ive’s. Tim Cook looks like he was quite capable at handling general management, and for all we know he has actually done that job (as opposed to product development) for some time. So a Tim Cook-managed company with Johnathan Ive doing product development seems like the natural succession and one where great products would still be developed.
I like WebOS, but it just doesn’t seem to have gotten any traction …
D
Just what we need, some one who has all the answers?
Gruber is smoking his lib hippie crack.
MDN, I agree that #3 is probably a few years off, but Gruber’s observation nails it in my opinion that given the choice, “If you are sitting on a couch and you need a computer, most people are going to reach for the iPad, not the [laptop]”.
No company is perfect – even MDN prints knee-jerk rubbish takes on stories.
I really wish pundits would make up their minds about whether or not the iPad is supposed to be a computer replacement or not. One day you read how it’s a “specialty Internet appliance”, the next day you’re reading how it’s going to replace the personal computer altogether.
Is anyone with half a brain in their skull actually planning to use this thing without a Mac or PC to sync it to? How would you back up your data? I would never use an iPod or iPhone without iTunes. The iPad is basically the same device with more screen real estate. Who in their right mind would use it without iTunes?
——RM
My iPhone is normally docked at home, both for charging and for sync. But if I could sync completely via the cloud then iTunes sync would not be as important. I would like to see a full implementation of iTunes sync in MobileMe which would add a lot of value to the subscription.