Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures (Foursquare), recently called Apple an evil company. The reason? “They believe they know what is best for you and me. And I think that is evil.”
It’s a definition of evil I think most of us would not agree with. On the other side of Wilson’s argument, you’ll find a few light-weight thinkers such as Socrates (see Plato’s Republic). So … doctors are evil because they claim to know what’s best for us. Add to the list accountants, plumbers, carpenters, and architects.
I think Wilson has a different gripe with Apple. Apple has successfully shown that the America consumer has an appetite for quality products, even though they’re based on walled-off hardware and software. While passing Wilson’s test for goodness, Google’s open-source Android platform is not necessarily a path to quality and may actually do some evil.
Apple is a mass producer of quality products that are intended to last. Yes, they’ve found ways to get a continuing revenue stream from this approach—some would say gouge for upgrades and battery replacements—but the underlying product is superior.
With the bankruptcy of General Motors last year, we can now say that mass production based on low quality and obsolescence is not a formula for success. Has anyone ever waited in line for the latest Buick, as they do for iPhone models?
Apple, on the other hand, delivers premium-priced products that people are deeply attached to because the products—really, stylish appliances—are good and useful.
Developers interested in designing apps for the iPhone know they have to go through a real approval process. The gripes and rants that Apple has been receiving from its development community—roughly, “they are difficult partner to work with because they make it hard to change the apps we’ve developed”—partially stem from obsessive quality control behaviors honed as a hardware manufacturer.
Apple also wants their software to be “insanely great.” Third-party developers for the App Store may not be accustomed to this philosophy.
Google’s Android is by all accounts a very good operating system. And Google has a reputation for engineering their software—it shows. However, Android is an open-source OS intended for multiple hardware platforms.
This open-door policy may produce very good results for devices, but there are already early signs of quality-control problems. Wired’s Priya Ganapati has written in Ars Technica about the rise of bloatware on Android-powered smartphones.
Some of the bloatware (calendars, social media feeds) are added by the cell phone manufacturers. However, the prime bloatware violators are the cell phone carriers, who have pre-loaded trial games and video streaming apps for which they hope they’re subscribers will sign up. As it has in the PC world, bloatware often results in degraded performance and enraged customers.
But a bigger issue for Android is some of the sloppy apps that are making their way into the Android marketplace (see reference below). Recently Google has extended the development franchise to include lay folks. With Google App Inventor, non-developers are allowed to build Android apps in Google’s new drag-and-drop creation environment.
This is not a strategy that would ever cross Steve Jobs’ mind. App Inventor, I think, may generate its own kind of evil.
Apple’s demand for high-quality may eventually transform them into Montgomery Burns-style monopolists. But I think Fred Wilson is wrong at this point to accuse Apple of being evil for demanding quality.
And perhaps, in an indirect way, prevent a few ill-conceived startups from making it to the marketplace.
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I generally agree with everything in your article. Having spent weeks with my new supersmart phone running Android 2.1 let me expand on your comments related to Android and Google.
Android as you say is a very well engineered OS. It’s robust, powerful and very customizable. In three weeks of using it, the OS has not crashed on me even once, despite individual apps behaving badly or crashing including Google’s stock browser (when I changed the UAString to desktop). I love the integration of speech through out the OS (however, I wish they were as good as Nuance but they are far off) and the overall Google ecosystem like Navigation, gmail, voice etc. There are a lot of other things I like but I’ll leave that aside for now because this is not an Android review.
Android 2.1 is a characteristic google product. Despite the robustness, it feels like a beta product. Many loose ends, no integrated help (what option does what), lack of proper documentation even online and nowhere to seek help except in forums. If you send an email to google with a question, you just don’t hear back. In a way Google has outsourced customer support to the carriers and handset makers who are generally totally inept. Both the App market and the Android OS has become fragmented. Certain apps like Skype work for certain Android phones only; certain OS features like keyboard (Swype) or camera app are carrier specific. Even Swype comes in different flavors — with a microphone button and without one — depending on your Android phone. While you can surely say that Swype is not part of the OS, it nevertheless leads to a very unseamless experience. Then there’s the carrier specific bloatware or crapware, carrier specific customizations of many Google apps… sometimes I cannot figure out if a feature is carrier specific or part of native Android.
Moreover, at times I cannot even figure out easily if a feature that doesn’t work is a bug or it’s simply not there in 2.1 but probably works in 2.2. That brings me to another point about frustrating fragmentation of Android. Even if your phone completely meets the hardware specs of the latest version of Android, you are completely (unless you hack it) at the mercy of the manufacturer and carrier for an upgrade. I cannot be sure if I will see ver 2.2 or 3.0 ever on my phone. Google is seemingly willing to compromise on overall user experience and quality control to gain a larger market share quickly.
That leaves space for Microsoft to come in. After my Android experience I have to say that if Softee executes well, it may not be too late for them. I still like Android overall, but it’s just too difficult for me to recommend it to my less tech savvy sister or even my brother.
Thanks for your comments. I was rereading this piece and realized that some of my perspectives instinctively came from the …. PC vs Mac wars. We all know how that worked out. But a recent article in Ars Technica points out how the mobile market may play out differently for a closed,high-quality OS+ specialized hardware (iPhone playing the Mac role) versus a multi-platform OS (Android, playing the Windows part). This time around with carriers subsidizing the cost of devices, Apple _doesn’t_ have a price disadvantage. I score Apple with better hardware (though, as I said, the lead is diminishing) and wider selection and better tested and integrated apps. That is probably enough to give them the mobile market, but for the problem of the carriers, who control distribution. As Android gets on more carriers list of approved devices, that could tilt the scales back to Google (=Microsoft), regardless of the fact that there’s all that crapware and the OS still feels like it should be back in the lab (do you remember early Windows 3.0 and even Windows 95?)
Ars Technica reference: http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2010/08/can-you-buy-me-now.ars
Apple’s about to be unleashed from the shackles of AT&T by all guesstimates (this time there are many reasons to believe it’s real) by end of this year. There timing is perfect — just when Android’s gaining momentum and Windows phone 7 is coming out. Android’s gain in market share can somewhat be attributed to Apples monogamy with AT&T. It will be really interesting to see how the playing field shifts when they are all on equal grounds(carrier agnostic).
PS: Apple needs to show some flexibility in form factor. I often wish my 4″ phone screen had atleast a 300 dpi or Apple’s Retina Display was on a 4″ form factor. The 3.5″ is like the ladies’ size for a phone 😉