“The unveiling of the iPhone almost four years ago stands as a pivotal moment in computing history. The elegant design not only ushered in the mobile computing revolution, it also ignited an entire billion-dollar business based on mobile apps,” Chris O’Brien reports for The Mercury News. “And, it is widely believed, this was all part of a master plan designed by Steve Jobs and Apple.”
“But in a recent conversation with former Apple insider Bob Borchers, a very different picture emerged, one that hasn’t been reported until now. What he told me is that the mobile app ecosystem developed far differently from what Apple originally envisioned. And it happened because Apple did two things: It listened to users. And it adapted,” O’Brien reports. “Those aren’t two qualities people usually associate with Apple. But according to Borchers, that’s wrong. ‘One of the things that Apple does very, very well is that they are flexible in their thinking,’ Borchers said. ‘And I don’t think they get enough credit for this.'”
O’Brien reports, “On the eve of Apple’s iCloud announcement Monday, this back story on iPhone apps offers a tantalizing peek at how the company manages the introduction of new products, and how its initial plans can change dramatically.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Kevin Reeder” for the heads up.]
Yet the clueless competitors that constantly copy Apple and rip off their IP are given far too much credit by the press.
Agreed!
I have a strong feeling iCloud will be a well-thought product. When Apple acquired Lala it does not rush out with a half-baked product. It waited. Apple also noticed the superb quality of DropBox in syncing and the mess of Google introducing half-baked products one after another. It invests in a multi-billion datacentre for its cloud services and after learning the fiasco of MobileMe, Apple is going to do this one right.
Yeah this still won’t convince the haters who insist the native apps thing was planned all along by SJ. Anyone who’s programmed for the iPhone at all would see the many changes in basic functions since the first SDK and realize that they didn’t intend it for public consumption.
Now if only Apple weren’t so thick skinned, and realized that perhaps not including flash or at least allowing it to be optional might actually also be a mistake. And perhaps if they also realized that not having a way to add non apple approved apps to the iphone using official apis instead of jailbreaking is also a mistake. Maybe one day we can hope…
Get an Android, punk!
Enjoy!
Seriously! The whole point of an in-house approval system is to make sure apps work within the entire system, without hang-ups that would DEFINITELY happen in a wide-open system; and disallowing a battery-draining, chip-heating software-intensive sub-program nightmare us the brilliance that defines Apple’s long-lasting and well-oiled machine of an operating system. Seriously… Android might be better suited to you…
Like!
Sounds like someone needs an Android phone….
Joe,
If you weren’t just a noob convert to Apple, I wouldn’t have taken the time to give you the benefit of an insight to reality.
FLASH is a big bag of hurt. It still doesn’t run on Android. It sucks up millions of watts of power every year as our notebooks and desk tops labor to try to work with it, it crashes our systems sooo often that many of us use some form of FLASH block.
Let go of your ‘Window’ think and try to imagine something that just works.
Flash on iOS would be a mistake. Android is living proof that SJ’s comments on Flash’s shortcomings were spot on. Apple is already winning this battle with HTML5. The Flash converters are simply a crutch until the transition away from Flash is complete.
I disagree with the headline. M$ listens to consumers. Apple anticipates consumer wants and desires. In most cases, the consumer doesn’t even know that they want it. How many Apple products have emerged because some consumer said, ‘gee, you know I wish that …” Nobody requested the iPod, or iTunes, or the App store.
Your argument is flawed, in that Microsoft’s customers are, for the most part, not the same as their users, while for Apple they’re one and the same.
Unlike Microsoft, Google or Facebook, Apple sells directly to the people who use their products, and is therefore highly motivated to listen to user feedback. Whereas Microsoft sells to resellers, and Google and Facebook sell to advertisers, so they have comparatively less incentive to listen to the people who use their products.
That being said, you are correct in that Apple is uniquely able to anticipate what people don’t even know what they want. What they don’t get enough credit for, however, is listening to user feedback afterwards, which they do indeed do well.
bang on!
I hope not!
I don’t want to have FLASH on my iStuff. It a complete hog.
Also, I don’t want to get flaky, virus ridden apps with no quality control from some web site flogging rip-off apps for free. Remember when you download these rip-off apps you are ripping off app developers the same way as you rip-off artists when you download music files from torrernt sites.
“…changing your mind is one of the best ways
of finding out whether or not you still have one.”
– Taylor Mali. “Like Lilly Like Wilson.”
http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=15
Brilliant poem by a great poet pointing out that too often, we believe it’s best to stand by our decisions, ideals, ideas even when they’re proved wrong. That’s not heroic or admirable. It’s stupid. Sure, perseverance and integrity are important, but in America, we loath “flip-floppers” who change their minds when new facts or information come to light instead of celebrating them. Sad.
Thanks for that link. That’s made my day
Wait a second……how could apple adapt so fast…..what with releasing a full fledged SDK and an App Store so soon after, if it wasn’t thinking along these lines in the first place?
“Your story rings true Bilbo, yes it ‘RINGS’ true!”, Gandalf once said. In this case I would say, “Your story rings false O’Brian, yes it rings FALSE”.
Original iPhone release date: June 29th 2007
8 months later after much complaining…
App store announcement: March 8 2008
4 months later it’s ready…
App store opening date : July 10 2008
That’s just over a year.
Then from OS 2.1 onward simple things like how to set the text in a text label changed. There’s huge swaths of deprecated APIs that make it clear it was a rush job. Your conspiracy story doesn’t match the facts. Now with iOS 4 things have mostly settled down but getting an app to run right over several iOS versions can be a real pain.
Even if it was a “rush job”, that doesn’t prove that Apple didn’t intend native apps from the start. All it proves is that the web apps were not the satisfactory stopgap they were intended to be, and Apple had to move up their timetable.
Look, you’re asking me to believe that Apple went from “no native apps, nope, none” to “native apps + SDK + App Store” in about a year. That would be one of the all-time record turnarounds in software development and deployment. I find that really hard to swallow.
The most logical explanation, as I see it, is that web apps were intended as a stopgap, allowing them to sell the iPhone and build up an installed base while they investigated the possibility of native apps and an App Store. But the users and developers all began screeching “we want native apps NOW”, so Apple sped up development.
We’ve all heard stories about how successful Apple products were developed, and invariably, the product in question turns out to have existed behind the scenes for one or more years before it was actually released. That’s S.O.P. for Apple. And instead you want me to believe that Apple just threw together the App Store in a year or less, with no intention prior to that of such a thing ever existing?
Nah, don’t buy it. Ain’t the way Apple works.
——RM
I’m not sure why there is this strange compulsion among some Apple fans to believe that Apple can see into the future and does everything in grand masterplans spanning decades. I suppose that works if you’re a fan of godlike future-seeing manipulator type characters (such as, say, the 1990s Virgin Novels version of Doctor Who), but here in the real world that sort of thing doesn’t really happen.
The whole point of this article is that Apple’s success comes, not only from having the vision to see beyond what exists today, but also from being willing to listen and adapt their plans to what people want. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone who understands how to sell to consumers – first you make your crazy idea into something real that people can buy, then temper its development based on the real-world customer response to it.
I remain baffled as to why people cling to their idea of an Apple who somehow has everything mapped out in advance.
Don & Spade, calm down dudes. Just saying I don’t believe this O’Brian geyser. Some (little bit of it) of it might be true. But to imply that Apple was completely clueless suggests that they may have struck it lucky with the iPod and lucky once again with the iPhone and lucky once again with the iPad and lucky once again with it’s Mac line of computers. Of course we all know these hot after hit products cannot be achieved by a clueless a company as he suggests.
Whoa Nelly! Talk about setting up a straw man and then knocking him down. NOBODY claims that Apple can see into the future. You just pulled that out of your big, fat a**.
@Joe,
What version of Flash did Apple refuse to allow on IOS? There has never been a version written successfully for IOS. Apple doesn’t prevent it. Adobe can’t do it. They haven’t successfully done it on Android either. Yes some stuff runs successfully but not all and it still has the same problems on Android as it does on Mac OS and IOS. It is an archaic piece of software that should have been retired several years ago.
Flexibility in thinking is the hallmark of successful companies, countries, and empires. The fall of Rome had nothing to do with those fictitious orgies, but rather their attitudes hardened. They lost the ability to adapt.
Wrong, our keg of beer ran out.
Julius Caesar
Well listen to consumers hasn’t been Apple’s strong suite.
I reallllllly hope there is going to be a list view of my 400 apps on my iPad in iOS 5…..
Listening to consumers is something Apple actually does extremely well – in fact, they have to, since they sell directly to them, unlike Microsoft, Google or Facebook.
Note, however, that “listening” is not the same thing as “we’ll take suggestions from anyone who flaps their lips”. Sometimes, “listening” still results in a “thanks, but no thanks” outcome.
But they do indeed listen and respond to customer feedback – witness the return of a Firewire port to the low-end aluminum MacBook, the option for matte screens on laptops, and the return of the iPod shuffle to its previous button design. All of these are instances where Apple both listened and changed course.
So, just because Apple hasn’t acted on your pet issue doesn’t mean they don’t listen. If enough of their customers felt strongly about something to stop buying their products, you can bet they’d change course right quick. (Which is very likely what happened with the Firewire, matte screen & buttonless shuffle situations noted above.) Out of all of the major tech companies on the landscape today, they’re the one we as users actually have the most control over. So it baffles me why people seem to think the opposite.
The author of this article will have you believe that Apple, “all of a sudden” realized that people would want to build native apps for the iPhone/iPad. Ahh- no- Apple, didn’t just decide to create an SDK with complex APIs and Frameworks overnight. It’s called planning, anticipation, proper rollout and precise deployment. I’m sick of people writing articles like this that “think” they get Apple. If they really get Apple- then they would know that this was Apple’s vision from long before June 29th, 2007. I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t refine their ideas- but the core products and technology is never an afterthought.
Uh, did you read the part of the article where it mentioned why Bob Borchers was being quoted on this story?
Borchers is currently a general partner at Opus Capital. Before that, he was senior director of worldwide product marketing for the iPhone until June 2009, and was part of the original iPhone team. [emphasis mine]
So this isn’t speculation by someone who “thinks” they get Apple. This is information from someone who was there!
We all know Apple is great at planning ahead, but let’s not pretend they have godlike future-seeing powers they don’t have, mkay? Apple’s success is made of both foresight and flexibility.
I don’t completely buy this article either. Steve Jobs was very clear during the 2007 iPhone launch about how the iPhone was a game changer because essentially it’s got OS X on it, making it a real computer.
He talked about how hard keyboards can’t change so this way with a proper OS and large screen, it could turn into whatever you want with software.
In addition, the Newton they were well aware of. There was an SDK for that and tons of Apps ended up being spit out by independent developers.
Plus other mobile operating systems and APP stores like Symbian that they knew of well before the iPhone came out.
And gaming… From portable gaming devices Apple surely saw the potential.
From all of this and more, I don’t believe this guy shooting his mouth off. It’s likely Apple did know exactly how things were going to role out.
I facepalm every single time Leo Laporte says, “Steve Jobs wanted us to use Web Apps!!!!”… Obviously this was planned from the beginning. They just needed time to build the SDK.
“One of the interesting things about this was that it was an admission that Apple got it wrong,” said Carl Howe, an analyst at the Yankee Group. “And that’s amazing, because Apple doesn’t like to say it didn’t get it right.”
Apple didn’t necessarily get it wrong, stability was (and still is) the most important part of IOS. That’s like saying Mac System 1.0 got it wrong because it didn’t include a web browser. You have to have a 1.0 before version 2 and 3 can be built.
Yes, native apps may not have been part of the original road map, but the simple introduction of apps and the app store was only part of the story.
While the jail breaker community only took a couple of weeks to throw together an SDK, Apple took it’s time and created an elegant tool set for the iPhone that made it easer to write quality apps. It also introduced a lot of programers to the way applications were written for the Mac.
Just another revolution ah uh ahaha!
If Flash should be banned, Springboard also should. Its a CPU eating pain in the ass.
The iPad and iPhone were under development for many years. If Apple had always intended an App Store it would have launched simultaneously.
I believe that the world will eventually move to web apps, as per Apple’s original vision. Then Apple can no longer be accused of a walled-garden approach.