Warning lights on the Apple control panel
As I was laying up last week avoiding the impulse to pick up my pen and write a blog post (not that I use pens when writing any of these things), it was hard to avoid the sea of red lights popping up across the technology news landscape. Erick Schonfeld told Apple to stop thinking like a phone company. A hidden camera video showed an Apple store "Genius Bar" employee telling a customer that Apple would not help him after he put third party software on his iPhone (choice quote: "it's a PC," implying that the user had the expectation that a smartphone should be customizable like a PC). Apple forums started serving as locations to discuss a possible class action lawsuit before Apple shut the discussion threads down. An LA times columnist noted the similarities between arguments Jobs made regarding keeping the iPhone closed to those made by AT&T in the bad ol' antitrust days. To top it all off, the fuss has served as basis for a new ad campaign from Nokia encouraging consumers to favor systems open to customization.
Quite a shift from a few months ago when the iPhone could do very little wrong.
Apple seemed to believe that its experience with the iPod could inform its approach to a the "smartphone" market, but that was always something of a stretch. Few demand the ability to customize their iPod, because expectations have already been set regarding the customizability of music playback devices. Most view such devices as the modern day equivalent of Sony "Walkman" devices. I never felt the need to customize a portable CD player, mostly because it wasn't possible. That builds certain consumption habits that persist because music players still feel and act like the task-specific hardware devices with which most of us are familiar even if, in reality, these days they are capable of so much more (which would imply moves to support browsing in iPod's might lead to changed expectations).
Once a computing product crosses into computer territory - as an iPhone clearly does - the restraints start to bite because expectations have already been set regarding what consumers should expect from a multi-purpose computer platform, portable or otherwise.
Can Apple get past this resistance? Apple certainly has a different notion of what is possible from a customizability standpoint than, say, Microsoft. Apple creates products that are designed to be easy to use, and I'm sure they would argue that tightly controlling what runs on their products is part and parcel of making things stable and predictable.
On the other hand, the market didn't consolidate around the hardware / software integrated model exemplified by Apple. It consolidated around a model that assumes high levels of customizability by unbundling hardware sales from the software necessary to run it. Markets chose that approach, which says something about what most people expect from computing products.
I think Apple would be wise to apply the lessons from that LA Times opinion piece I mentioned previously:
The market for mobile devices is a highly competitive one, and Apple shouldn't be compelled to accept third-party software on its shiny new phone. Yet it's swimming against the tide here. As devices such as the iPhone blur the lines between cellphones and computers, software developers and service providers are flooding into the mobile arena. Companies that help those developers build on their products will benefit first from their innovations. That's why Nokia, whose sales dwarf Apple's, takes that approach. In a sense, Apple is fighting its own success: It sells a compelling phone that people want to write programs for. Rather than trying to thwart those enthusiasts, the company should give them a platform on which to work.