THE DREAM IN ACTION

Typically I leave this Apple fan boy banter to others. To me the “found iPhone” saga is about as interesting as an afternoon of pontificating my navel. Yawn. It was dumb (legally) for GIZMODO to pay money for a lost/stolen device (although they definitely made back the $5k they paid for it). And Apple will always have problems with “the press” revealing their secrets, this isn’t the first or the last time that this will happen.

What’s more interesting to me is the shift from the Apple that we knew and loved…you know the trendy hipster guy that wears vans and t-shirts…to the Apple that attacks the very nerds that CRAVE their products so dearly (see gizmodo editor ejaculating over lost phone.) My thought is that this event was hugely beneficial to both parties. Obviously GIZMODO killed it with 8.6 million + hits on the release post, and Apple’s product will seemingly always kill it whether leaked early (new iphone) or kept relatively quiet until the release day (iPad).

What I’m most curious to see is something we presumably won’t know until looking back on these series of events, whether Apple’s shift from the startup friendly, open-ish platform, F’ the man mentality, towards the Microsoft-esk corporate persona will hurt their overall brand and thus their dominance on the very market they are fighting to control. There has been so much talk about this topic. One interesting perspective is from Jason Calacanis, a tech entrepreneur who is extremely opinionated about such topics. He writes…

Years and years after Microsoft’s antitrust headlines, Apple is now the anti-competitive monster that Jobs rallied us against in the infamous 1984 commercial. Steve Jobs is the oppressive man on the jumbotron and the Olympian carrying the hammer is the open-source movement…

…Steve Jobs is on the cusp of devolving from the visionary radical we all love to a sad, old hypocrite and control freak–a sellout of epic proportions.

Side note: I was 1 yrs old when that commercial first aired. I only know of it because of Youtube.

So with these events that have now proven that Apple is a control freak…

• forcing you to upgrade to a worse version of iTunes
• not letting any other mp3 device sync w/ iTunes
• cutting an exclusive iPhone deal with AT&T (which sucks)
• overly strict app store approval processes (I’m in this right now with UberCab…nightmare)
• closing off competitive apps
  • not allowing Google voice to have a native app
  • until very recently keeping Opera mini a great mobile browser out

…my guess is that in order to keep it’s dominance they will become the big corporate company they fought of in their early days, the corporate, closed, company that nobody wants them to become. The reality is, they may have to become that to keep their lead for a longer period of time. That’s the blessing and curse of huge growth and success in a capitalistic world. In order to keep their success they have to fight for it and that very fighting is what is killing them. It’s like a drowning child in a swimming pool. The very flailing to stay above water is what causes her to drown. Sad, but true.

For now I’ll continue to love and evangelize their products, just like the early Windows users did. I’m sure, eventually that will change.