BLOG STARTUPS, VENTURE AND THE TECH BUSINESS
An Apple/iPhone Rant
I love Apple’s products, and choose them over competitors despite higher prices (the Apple Tax) because they are better by far. The iPhone is a great value. But Apple is beginning to screw up, as they always do, by controlling the experience too much. Here are three reasons they will, in five years, have handed most of the market to their competitors yet again…
1) The App Store is censored by Apple. If you create an App they deem unworthy, either for impropriety or competitiveness, then it won’t make it to the App Store.
2) The only way to get an App on the iPhone is through the App store. I want to buy Apps everywhere, from anyone, anytime I choose. From Amazon, from a random website, from within another app. Apple has no intention of unlocking their devices to enable this. This is a big enough hole in their strategy to drive a truck through, and one of our companies, TapNTap, is helping that happen by putting a nice windowed interface on top of Android for tablets.
3) They keep changing the @#$# cables & power cords, and charge a fortune for them, and DON”T EVEN APOLOGIZE. Here is a picture I took of an Apple connector basket in a conference room a few days ago. Why add needlessly to the already high Apple Tax.
So, I have a long list of things I love about the iPhone, but I didn’t pick Apple as my content filtering company, I picked them as my product design and user experience company, and they need to take a hard look at their history of creating markets and handing them over to standards-based competitors and choose the enlightened path this time. I sold my AAPL. We shall see if that was wise. Problem is, I have no good place to put the cash now. Maybe TSMC.
BTW, Apple, while you are at it, please buy a Blackberry, see how they make it easy to add a calendar event, and take careful notes. One of my CEOs said yesterday “I never add an event on the iPhone. I send myself an email to do it at my desk later.” I really can’t believe smart people didn’t realize tapping on the calendar time of day should create an event that STARTS AT THAT TIME, and that a multi-window, multi-”done” button, randomly chosen start time experience might not be optimal. There. Rant complete.
COMMENTS
February 5 2010
by NewAtlanticVentures
From the NAV Blog: An Apple/iPhone Rant http://bit.ly/bBshsQ
February 5 2010
by Mike Langford
Great Apple/iPhone rant by @VC_Scott on the @NAVFund blog http://is.gd/7Mg5L Similar to the @Cafe47 @NomX3 episode rant http://is.gd/7MgfR
February 6 2010
by Muthu Arumugam
I defer few things on your list. I am not a Mac addict but once I port back to Apple products, I worry about the content than the device itself.
We are a iPhone App Development company who is located right in CIC. Somehow Apple does the bossy job and keep some useless apps and battery draining apps for me to have the phone as a Phone. I got my first Android phone and overnight I started learning about removing apps to keep my battery in good shape.
There are few things in iPhone which they will definitely open up more especially any Calendar centric things. But I hope they have a different reason why it wasn’t open after all.