“Why will Apple’s name as bastion of the information age last into the ages?” Michael Sinanian asks for VentureBeat.
“Because their ecosystem of software and services will keep everyone entrenched in their system, making it too costly and inconvenient to switch over to other providers,” Sinanian asks. “Each new purchase opportunity will yield to Apple, reinforcing their presence in consumers’ minds. These recurrent purchases are not only good to the public image but also to the bottom-line… To compete against this strategy, companies will need to fight over the consumer experience. Apple has understood this for a while (that’s why they don’t advertise detailed specs like RAM for iPhones and iPads). The entire battlefield has changed. Even the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs is quoted in his latest biography as saying that competitors like Microsoft and [Google] Android ‘just don’t get it’ (referring to the overall consumer experience).”
Sinanian asks, “Apple has built a vast playpen, locking in its customers with walls as high as the sky… [and] Apple is likely to extend this playpen to televisions soon… Thus, Apple is well-placed to re-revolutionize the TV market and be recognized for it through the ages.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If this is “lock-in,” please Apple lock us in even more! Our advantages and capabilities over those who don’t wield MacBook Airs, iPhone 4Ses, and iPad 2s are already immense.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dow C.” for the heads up.]
“… locking in its customers with walls as high as the sky…”
I can’t imagine a better prison.
Apple does not point a gun at your head to prevent you from getting out of the walled garden if you do not agree with what Apple does. In fact Apple keeps the competition out there fierce and and hungry for work. It’s just like a small country out there in a sea of resource-superior but hostile nations. If Apple is not vigilant it will driven into the sea. Customers stick with Apple because they like what Apple is doing.
The system only works as long as they deliver. Trust me if they screw up enough no amount of vendor lockin will matter and people will move to a better alternative.
Sure lockin blows from a tech idealist mindset but it also ends up being unavoidable if you want a seamless platform experience.
If what you say is correct, that the lock-in only lasts as long as the product meets or exceeds the expectations of the customer, then how do you explain the continuing success of Microsoft? If your theory holds, MS should have been dead and buried when the Vista debacle debuted. The correct answer is once you gain enough market share to be the dominant technology provider by default, it’s almost impossible to unseat you as the lock-in is due to factors such as inertia and mass (widespread use) rather than product satisfaction. That is not to say that high product dissatisfaction will still enable you to maintain your dominant position but you cannot discount the attribute of mass.
I think vista was exactly what opened peoplee’s eyes coupled with Apple delivering a superior product.
The shift wont be overnight but it is happening.
The only place MS apparently can’t be beat is in office suites but then again a lot of folks thought windows was unstoppable and that assumption was wrong
Personally I think Apple has already developed a full on Office Pages Suite that kicks ass and is ready to deploy in the event Microsoft shirks its duty to Macs. Maybe even developed for Windows too to complete Microsoft’s nightmare. No reason not to with the billions they have in reserve and an offensive/defensive move.
It’s quite simple, people by Apple products. With the XBox as an exception, IT weenies buy Microsoft products. IT weenies love Microsoft, not for the products but for the job security.
I hope you get it, you don’t seem too bright.
Microsoft had lock-in with the belief that you could constantly upgrade your hardware by changing RAM or hard drives or sound boards or video boards or modem cards or ethernet cards. Eventually this upgrade cycle build a wall called Windows XP. Even MS can’t easily knock it down to get acceptance of their latest debacle of an OS.
By the way BLN, it is very nice to see a post without a single expletive.
I find it amusing that people use the “lock-in” mentality to describe Apple as they type out their article on a Windows computer. There has been no greater lock-in than Windows. So much so that people are *scared* to try something different.
Agree. But with many people that I have met, they are just to clueless and lazy, to know that there is a difference..
The author says “Because their ecosystem of software and services will keep everyone entrenched in their system, making it too costly and inconvenient to switch over to other providers,””
What an idiot. My opinion. Most of us will figure out a way to move our music, etc if we really want to. Save as mp3, save as word, save as jpgs, It is not really that hard to move your stuff. It just takes a while. But why is Apple customer satisfaction at an all time high and constant…??? Cause they deliver. Once the avalanche starts, it will not stop. windows will crash and Microsoft will be just some cheap stock that no one wants. Just a thought.
en
Anything that locks me out from ever having to even smell that dog vomit called Windows is welcome to me!
Like Steve locked us into DRM-laden music… oh bother.
He did, for a time, thanks to the RIAA demanding it. But in doing so, the RIAA screwed themselves more than us–the lock-in tied us to iPods and iTunes, and none of the other vendors relying on Microsoft’s “PlaysForSure” and other crap could gain any traction. And when one by one they died, customers silly enough to try them lost tens or hundreds of dollars on digital files that were now useless without an authorization server.
It wasn’t until Amazon was allowed to provide DRM-free music that a serious competitor to iTunes existed. At that point Steve Jobs finally got the DRM-free files in iTunes that he originally wanted.
Your facts are wrong.
The music labels licensed the right to digital distribution to AAPL. It was very common for licensing deals of that era to detail the DRM that had to be used, and the bitrates digital tracks could be encoded to, among other restrictions.
If you wanted their content, you agreed to their tech specs and restrictions.
This wasn’t AAPL’s position that they pushed, this was the music labels.
I’m all for Apple, but this kind of talk always seems to precede a big splash of cold water. Trees don’t grow to the sky. Bubbles burst. Technologies are disrupted. It is always nice while it lasts, but then the next nice thing comes along.
Yeah Apple stops me from buying music on CDs and Amazon and loading it on my iPad, iPhone and iPod. Not!
They’ve locked me in.
It sure beats the windows prison of pain and torture trying to get their stuff to work is a nightmare. I can get nothing to work on a windows machine and it sure does not play nice with other equipment unless you hunt down the right driver. I look forward to the protection and convenience of the gated community of Apple.
A prison without windows!
Oh my god I’ve been locked in since the early nineties. And it’s warm an cozy.
I could switch to Ubuntu in a heartbeat. Lock-in my *ss.
Lock-in is preprietary APIs like Direct-X.
Lock-in is an application people have to use that only works on one specific operating system.
Lock-in is when the files you save can’t be loaded by other platforms.
Lock-in is what bad businesses do when consumers want to to flee from their products.
Lock-in is a concept Michael Sinanian apparently cannot grasp.
i think it happens about apple
People’s civil rights are being eroded on an almost daily basis and people are worried about being locked into a phone or computer platform?
Pardon me if I roll my eyes.