.. Or should I just say Apple’s Strategy?
None of the following is new, but I just feel I want to share my opinion with the world about this.
The latest news about the iPhone’s internationalization is the pure result of Apple’s “closed” marketing strategy, or should I say karma to make a profit?
There has been a lot of controversy about the iPhone, for instance China’s telecoms do not support “locked SIMs”, and there was a rival war between Vodafone and T-Mobile in Germany for the release of the iPhone. As some of you may recall, a few months ago, there were also problems with French law which prohibits locked phones. All of this is a direct result of Apple’s “closed” strategy to make a profit. Is Apple becoming like Microsoft as it gains popularity? Well, we all know the answer.
Most of us, or “geeks with Macs”, came from a Linux background or from an Open Source background. Whether we want it or not, Apple’s “closed” strategy is against our nature, period. We are just too blind or we just want to be blind to admit that because Macs are cool and because MacOSX is cool (it’s Unix and it provides you with an experience you were not used to using Linux on a desktop).
Although I wanted to be blind with Apple’s MacOSX strategy, I can’t be blind with their strategy for the iPhone. I am a happy iPhone user (product-wise), but I am unhappy with their “closed” strategy. I am glad that they are releasing the SDK for iPhone in February, but they should have done that in the beginning instead of sending out lame excuses for not providing such openness in their product. Their closed/arrogant/$$$$$/control freak attitude is still there. They only decided to release SDK because they were forced to do so, not because they are cool and believe in openness.
Meanwhile, and since I’m talking about it, a bigger giant than Apple released android with a completely different attitude. Open for everyone! hack hack hack! experiment, develop, do whatever you want to, “I even give you money for doing so” -type-of-attitude ($10M).
Android is there, soon in a phone next to you. It’s open and it’s cool and Apple will see the impact of their first choice soon, even though they have the best phone on earth (so far).
I don’t foresee shining days for Apple as I used to see in the past and if they don’t change their strategy (maybe they’re starting to change it with the release of iPhone’s SDK), I would not be surprised if another giant does something on top of Linux as they did on top of FreeBSD and I am pretty sure that they will kick Apple where it hurts.