“Apple has no plan to broadly compete in the online storage market, its recently-unveiled iCloud enhancements and new features notwithstanding, an analyst argued today,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld. “Instead, the moves — long called for by pundits and advanced users — are simply more of the same in Apple’s long-standing strategy to build a better experience on its own devices so it sells more hardware, said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research. ‘[The idea] is to add value to their own ecosystem,’ said Dawson.”
“Others agreed. ‘Everything Apple does is about selling more devices,’ Benedict Arnold, an analyst with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, echoed on his blog last week about Apple’s WWDC announcements, particularly those related to iCloud,” Keizer reports. “”
“‘Apple has never been about creating cross-platform services,’ Dawson wrote in a post-WWDC blog Thursday. ‘[iTunes and iMessage are] both products … [that] Apple developed to add more value to its hardware products, and should not be seen as products in their own right.’ Ditto with iCloud Drive,” Keizer reports. “‘To suggest that Apple needs to make… any product cross-platform in order to succeed is to get things exactly backwards,’ Dawson wrote last week on his blog. ‘Apple doesn’t make hardware to be successful in [say] messaging; it makes a messaging product to be successful in hardware. Apple isn’t fighting the messaging [or cloud] war. To the extent it’s fighting a war at all, it’s fighting an ecosystem war, and so far it’s winning.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Apple unveils new versions of OS X and iOS, major iCloud update with iCloud Drive – June 2, 2014
Yes. Exactly.
Benedict Arnold?! Next they’ll be citing analysts Vidkun Quisling and Marcus Junius Brutus.
Throw in Judas Iscariot and Eric Schmidt
Duh
The brilliance of analysts is ASTOUNDING. So great that we have them to help us understand everything. /s
Did you mean Ass-tounding?
It was what I saw as I glanced your post. Anal-ysts always seem to be……well, Anals.
I wonder which is the bigger more profitable company, Apple or Dropbox? Dropbox is great, but there just isn’t the scope for making money that there is in selling hardware to all the people who use it.
“Apple doesn’t make hardware to be successful in [say] messaging; it makes a messaging product to be successful in hardware. ” Almost all competitors are copying the piece that Apple has less interest in, then brag they have better specs, while A. continues to build out their ecosystem.
PSST… Note to competitors: you’re copying the wrong thing.
I hope someday the cost and economics for Apple for cloud storage are low enough that they could also offer Time Machine cloud services matched / appropriate to the size of the hard drive they sell with each Mac. In this scenario Time Machine could be dual-configured for a local external and a cloud virtual hard drive (at least until the speed and cost of cloud-based restoration makes it viable to not bother with a local drive). The cloud backup protects against loss of data in catastrophic situations such as fire, etc. Apple could do it in a smart way, so that duplication on the cloud servers is eliminated to save space (similar to iTunes Match) – for example, there would be no reason to have multiple copies of applications. The cloud backup would only need to know which applications/versions need to be reinstalled, and, of course, have all client preferences (library) and documents related to those applications backed up for restoration. It would be great if this was included with each Mac purchase.
Apple writes software to sell hardware. It’s been that way since the very early 80’s. Company philosophy.
Those were the good old days! Now everything Apple offers seems designed to hook users into the “cloud” of subscription-based computing. Almost all of Apple’s hardware is thoroughly stale on the MacRumors update charts. Apple seems to have forgotten that standalone _offline_ computing is still required and desired by a lot of people.
Makes you wonder why they make iTunes available to PCs mind if that is their sole purpose. Think its a bit more nuanced than they suggest.
well, maybe to sell ipods (in those ol’days). My first apple product was an ipod in 200?, and now i run a 20 people mac+ipad company using archicad, iWork’s, daylite and unfortunately for my purse adobe …
And they sell iPods to sell Macs. Macs lead to something else.
It’s the golden brick road. All the pieces are slowly coming together, in a multi generation effort to change the world.
iTunes for the PC was developed to sell iPods, later iPhones and iPads. This is why iTunes for Android makes no sense, despite the rumors.
What I love about iCloud is that it’s cross-platform on the recipient side. Meaning, you can access everything you want via browser. Additionally, one of the big things about iCloud is the integration with Mail. I don’t think many reviewers get the impact of this yet… the ability to take any file and just attach it to an email and send it. If it’s too big for the server, it automagically gets uploaded to iCloud and the email has a link to download it.
It doesn’t matter if you’re sending it to a Windows user or a friggin’ Chromebook. This is service that’s provides value… if you have a Mac.
iMessage isn’t quite there. If you have green blob friends, you’re still going to have to have a texting plan. All it takes is just one green blob co-worker or some other a-hole to make it so that you can’t just drop your texting plan. This is where opening up a service to other platforms adds value to the Apple platform.
The same goes for FaceTime.