MacDailyNews Take: Our iCal is havin’ a par-tay!
Dainow continues, “Hardware manufacturers make their money by selling new phones. They have no interest in making phones that last forever, or that can be upgraded via software.”
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Dainow, they do if their customers expect upgradeable devices, as nearly 100 million iPhone OS users do. Android settlers, not so much.
Dainow continues, “Smartphones, like all other computers, sell on the basis of what you can do with them. People buy IT equipment (laptop, PC, or mobile) on the basis of the applications they can run on it. The item purchased needs to be able to do what the customer wants it to. There are so many programs around for PCs today that this is rarely a consideration — almost every conceivable application you could want is available. As a result we have largely forgotten that capabilities are central to sales. However, there are many instances in which purchasing a Mac is not an option because the required software does not exist, which shows that applications still control purchases.”
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Dainow seems to not know, or has forgotten, that Apple Macs run everything, including Windows and Windows apps natively and/or via fast virtualization. Fact: Apple Macs run the world’s largest software library, of which software written for Windows is but a subset.
Dainow continues, “So an operating system’s success is dependent on being an attractive platform for developers. In order to be attractive, the operating system must have (or promise) a large installed base.”
MacDailyNews Take: Wrong again, Mr. Dainow. In order to be attractive to developers, an operating system, or, more accurately, a platform, must be profitable. Period. Taken to an extreme, imagine Steve Jobs is the world’s only Mac user. However, he spends $200 million on software per year. Guess what? Even with one Mac user, there would be Mac developers. Now, in reality,Apple Mac users are better educated and have more disposable income than Windows PC sufferers on average and Mac users buy significantly more software than their PC suffering counterparts. Therefore, Mr. Dainow’s argument is flawed from the outset.
Dainow continues, “Apple’s desire to control its marketplace has made it a poor choice for developers, even when it offers a large market. Having a large base of customers makes Apple initially attractive, but its poor support for the developer community eventually forces smaller niche players out. The long term result is easy to see — Macintosh now runs Microsoft Office because no one else was interested in providing a compatible office suite. Apple’s restrictive policies over the Mac almost caused the death of the Apple Corporation, and it was only by opening the environment to its arch-enemy Microsoft that Apple was able to survive.”
MacDailyNews Take: Not this again. The iPod/iPhone/iPad is not the Mac, so stop comparing them:
iPhone isn’t the Mac, so stop comparing them. To draw an analogy between the Mac and iPhone platforms simply highlights the writer’s ignorance of the vast differences between the two business situations. Look at the iPod, not the Mac, to see how this will play out.
Google Android offers the same messy, inconsistent Windows PC “experience,” but without any cost savings, real or perceived. Windows only thrived back in the mid-90s because PCs (and Macs) were so expensive; the upfront cost advantage roped in a lot of people, who were, frankly, ignorant followers who did what their similarly-ignorant co-workers and friends told them to do. Microsoft still coasts along on that momentum today.
The fact is: Apple’s iPhone 3G costs just $99 and the 3GS goes for only $199 in the U.S. with a 2-year plan. I’d call any Android device the “Poor Man’s iPhone,” but you have to spend just as much, if not more, to partake in an increasingly fragmented and inferior platform. There’s no real reason to choose Android, people settle for Android. “I’d have bought an iPhone if Verizon offered them.” Just look what’s happening in any country where iPhone is offered on multiple carriers. It’s a bloodbath.
Apple offers consistency to developers of both software and hardware. Just look at the vibrant thrid-party accessories market for iPhone vs. the Zune-like handful of oddball items for Android. If you make a case or a vehicle mount, does it pay to make 14 different Android devices that number under 1 million each, or to make one or two for what’s rapidly approaching 100 million iPhone/iPod touch devices? As Apple’s iPhone expands onto more and more carriers, Android’s only real selling point (“I’m stuck on Verizon or some other carrier that doesn’t offer the iPhone”) evaporates. – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, December 23, 2009
And Microsoft introduced Office for Macintosh in 1989. Before any Windows version existed.
Dainow plods on, “Apple never joined in the universal move to PC compatibility. Based on the Motorola chip, Apple chose to cater to niche market players with hobby computers such as the Apple II. Apple’s day came later when it copied the GUI operating system being developed by Xerox and created the first Mac. The GUI posed a threat to Microsoft’s survival and the dominance of the PC, until Microsoft got its own GUI right with Windows 3.0. Microsoft’s strategy was always to open its platform to the widest possible developer community, while Apple’s was always to restrict and control. In many ways, Steve Jobs continued to think in terms of the world he grew up in, a pre-PC world — each computer manufacturer producing its own operating system and strongly controlling developer access.”
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Dainow, Apple did not “copy” the GUI from Xerox. To state so only highlights your ignorance. You might just as well have written, “I do not know what I’m talking about, so here are five pages of my disjointed, illogical theories.” For anyone who cares, the real story, as told by the people who lived it, is right here.
Dainow continues, “Right now the iPhone has a dominating position in the U.S. smartphone marketplace. However, we must recognize this is a global village. Apple cannot sustain the iPhone as a purely U.S. phenomena.”
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Dainow, please explain this: Apple dominates Japan’s smartphone market with 72% market share; sales tripled in latest quarter – May 19, 2010. Hello, Mr. Dainow? Paging Mr. Dainow…
Dainow continues, “If the smartphone goes the way of previous computers, and the way of the internet, Apple’s strategy will eventually lead to the iPhone occupying a similar niche to the Mac — a miniscule market share sustained only by the fanatical loyalty of dedicated followers.”
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Dainow, the operative word in your statement is “if.” And it won’t, for the reasons we’ve explained above; not to mention that, four pages in, you haven’t yet been right about anything.
Dainow continues, “Steve Jobs says he hates Adobe Flash and will not support it on iPhone. The reason is clear — Flash provides a cross-platform development system. Build an app in Flash and it runs on every operating system that supports Flash.”
MacDailyNews Take: For the umpteenth time: We do not want ported software on our iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. The type of “write once, deploy everywhere” software that lazy Adobe wants to “help” developers to excrete results in lowest common denominator apps that fail to take advantage of individual platforms’ strengths. Rather than see developers create great experiences by playing to the strengths of individual platforms, lazy Adobe, and Mr. Dainow it seems, instead want mediocrity everywhere. Adobe just wants to control the tools developers use to poop out cookie-cutter apps that fail to inspire users because they fail to take advantage of each platform’s unique hardware and operating system features.
Dainow continues, “Locking Flash out is unsustainable if you want to retain market share.”
MacDailyNews Take: Is this guy serious?
Dainow continues, “When I look at the lessons of history, Apple’s own past, and how things work out, it seems to me inevitable that within 5-10 years the iPhone will hold around 5 percent of the smartphone market at best.”
MacDailyNews Take: Seriously, our iCal might have just audibly sighed. Not sure if it was satisfaction, consternation, or something else.
Dainow continues, “iAd is just a second-rate widget. Calling iAd creations ‘advertisements’ is misleading. iAd advertisements are, in reality, widgets… The iAd is a symptom of Apple’s inability to come to terms with the way computing has been for the last 30 years. While designing innovative products, as a business Apple still strategizes like it’s the 1970s — trying to create isolated ecosystems when everyone else knows the world wants one big open inter-connected system.”
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Dainow offers no proof of that statement either. At least he’s consistent. We have about 100 million reasons and rapidly growing that proves that Dainow’s wrongly-described “isolated ecosystem” hasn’t dissuaded “the world” from accepting the iPhone platform. Really, how can you call a platform “isolated” when it’s connected to the Web, has over 200,000 apps made and supported by tens of thousands of developers and supports a flourishing ecosystem of third-party accessories, including mass market vehicle and electronics makers? Mr. Dainow’s arguments are illogical and incoherent.
Dainow continues, “Apple seems wedded to the idea that it can own all aspects of its customer experience, even though its own corporate history shows this is unsustainable. The smartphone environment is a mirror of the early days of personal computing, yet Apple shows no sign of having learned from this experience.”
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Dainow, you’re wrong and your attempt to compare two dissimilar things in order to try to predict the future is just plain silly.
Full article — click away, as we’ve linked to Dainow’s “print article” page that not only has his five rambling pages combined into one, but (whoopsie Mr. Marketing Consultant!) also has no ads 
— here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “David M.,” “Chris,” “DifferentVoice,” “Chas,” “Ampar,” “zmarc,” “iWill,” and “jax44” for the heads up.]
Is this guy the Enderly, the M$ paid shill, of google?
Apple and they’re products have now become the Golden Gate Bridge of Tech Opinion/Marketing Guru’s:
The most sought after target for committing career suicide.
Jump! I tells ya, jump!
I wonder if he can spell “I D I O T”?
iCal this fool!
“Macintosh now runs Microsoft Office because no one else was interested in providing a compatible office suite.
Google Docs, OpenOffice, iWork, Omni, NeoOffice, Nisus, MarinerPak, ShareOffice, StarOffice, ThinkFree Office, Zoho, KOffice, and for frak’s sake, even LOTUS!!!!
Dainow sounds remarkably like USPTO Commissioner Charles H. Duell: “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
Hey, this is one guys opinion. His opinion is as valid as any other, even if he thinks with his head up his rectum. So iCal it and lets revisit him in a few years and see what he has to say. Of course, we won’t know because no one calls these morons (can we say Michael Dell) later on and makes them eat their words. I have an idea for a new reality show: “I Eat My Words” where participants are made to hear their absurd utterances over and over again in a stark room with only a bright light high in the center and then have to apologize to the entire world for being idiots.
MDN: seriously you paid the guy just to make fun of him!!!
This guy is a plain joke. It’s too way too easy to name yourself a consultant nowadays. Anyhow if the guy is a marketing consultant, he is no computer consultant, no mobile phone consultant.
The guy is a troll or an avatar of Ballmer…
The thing is that Apple can, will, and does control their own destiny.
This is a thing most of humanity strives for, attributing the lack thereof to a piehole in the sky.
This more than anything, the jealousy, makes people psychotically hate Apple.
Just too much wrong with this guy to even post a comment. Seems like he should find another line of work given how seriously ignorant he is about what he writes.
Fun to see him torn apart by MDN though.
This Dainow is a feakin’ moron! will someone take away his license for worse than amateur analysis? Oh, I forgot, he is a freelance analyist and doesn’t have a license to do anything…
This chap makes Enderle, Dvorak, and Thurrot look like unabashed Apple/Mac admirers!
Is Dainow for real???
Apple “copied” its GUI, M$ got its GUI “right” with Windoze 3.0! Everything in that POS-article shows why Mr D is “independent marketing consultant”: nobody wants him! Cuz he couldn’t feel a marketing hit even if it bit him in the ass.
Clearly some shorties have there undies in bunch or this guy is living a delusion.
What really got me in the article is that he stated that the trend is always towards open software. I can’t think of a single consumer electronic category that is dominated by the open source alternative.
@Caution ahead
Yes it’s the same theory Ballmer likes to spread. Let’s enumerate some of the trolls against Apple we can read here and there just to laugh at those idiots.
The virus theory. That mac will have viruses the day it reaches a bigger market share.
The old pattern, mac brings innovation to market, Microsoft makes the money. Like Apple is now the same it was 25 years ago and Steve Jobs didn’t learn from its mistakes.
Apple is a closed system liek we could find in the 70s. Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, GPS, Pro cameras, … just to name a few. Each tech company has its own closed system.
Apple doesn’t take care of its developers. That’s a funny one Apple provide for free a top notch environment like Xcode no one else has. And not to name WWDC and Apple developer programs.
The main reason the App store is so successful is that it is an easier route to profitability. Look at all the stories we’ve seen about some programmer that created a small app for $2 and sells a million copies in 4 months. The app store allows this small guy to have his product next to and competitive with giants like EA.
Under traditional software distribution, this would never happen. That same software creator would have to create the software, find a publisher and distributor (if he’s lucky). That software would have to be mass produced onto CDs, have professional packaging, and be warehoused and shipped to retail locations. Because of this, the $2 would now retail for $20-$40 and only sell 100,000 copies with a majority of the money going to the retailer, distributor, publisher, graphic designer, trucking company, etc.
In 1983 I received a grant from Apple’s Corporate Grants program to put Apple //e’s into several Ministries of Health in Latin America and connect them with the Pan American Ministry of Health. We added Macs when they came out. Our efforts led to organizing the IIA’87, an international informatics conference for organizations working in developing counties. We had to use email accounts on at least 10, and I think closer to 15, different private data networks to coordinate the program. I would have loved to have this one big interconnected Eco-system in the 70’s he talks about. What a hoot…this guy talks about history he doesn’t even know about. As an aside, a really creative friend and colleague figured out how to use GEisco’s text email commands to create a BBS on their system. This is one of the two means Apple Grantees used to communicate. The BBS was called ECONet because it initially supported several ecology groups in the US.
Every time I get worried about ever having to go out into the job market one day (I’ve run my own business for my entire career), I am always cheered up reading something like this.
Clearly, you don’t have to know jack s**t to be paid to be a “consultant”.
It’s very effortless to find out any topic on net as compared to textbooks, as I found this piece of writing at this site.
“Hey, this is one guys opinion. His opinion is as valid as any other . . . .”
Yeah, right. Your observation is clearly the product of a public school education in this country. “All cultures are equal.” “All opinions are valid.” Bullcrap.
Some cultures and some opinions areni’t worth the toilet paper I’d wipe my butt on. And that’s a fact. Ask your mother or sister if she’d like to live in a Taliban-dominated society. Still believe the earth is flat? In the “opinion” of the flat-earthers, it is.
Man. Sometimes I wonder.
“Build an app in Tool XYZ and it runs on every operating system that supports Tool XYZ.” Sounds realistic.
The historical market trend of both the Mac and the iPhone/Pod/Pad sales plus the one week sold out WWDC 2010 all look to me like this guy can’t read. If Apple treats their developers so poorly why did WWDC 2010 sell out in record time this year? Looks to me like this guy’s article is an invitation to his clients to fire him for incompetence.
@Grumbler, ‘I wonder if he can spell “I D I O T”?’
Actually he spells better than many on this site. He IS an idiot though.
Wow its like going through a time warp, has he been locked in a padded cell this last 5 years. I seriously haven’t heard anyone using this old argument for years, and surely anyone who has actually looked at the new World wouldn’t be doing so. This is the World where Apple is the only computer maker who is making really good money on each computer it sells, the World where the largest computer maker has become so disillusioned with this reality he speaks of that they have bought an operating system of their own so that they can better compete with Apple. The irony is that if the World he did speak of did occur it would be Google that dominated it and that would only speed the collapse of the Microsoft universe he seems to think is permanently entrenched.
Simply another delusional analyst at work and play.
Wow he sure likes to hear himself talk, or type….