Apple, Microsoft, and openness
Summary: If you allow yourself to look at big corporations through the filter of conventional wisdom, all sorts of distortions emerge. Case in point: A couple of premier Web 2.0 sites this week praised Yahoo and Apple for "getting" what Google and Microsoft don't. But a closer look at the example they used shows that it's just business as usual.
If you allow yourself to look at big corporations through the filter of conventional wisdom, all sorts of strange distortions emerge.
Case in point: Tim O'Reilly approvingly quotes this snippet from a post by Michael Arrington about Apple's new .mac webmail service:
What users want is a rich internet interface for email. What they don’t want is four different interfaces for four different email accounts. What Yahoo and Apple get, and what Google and Microsoft don’t, is that to “own” the user you have to allow them to access competitor’s services as well as your own. Google has the best pure free email service on the Internet. But they don’t have the best interface. Yahoo does. And now Apple is combining the power of Yahoo’s open approach to email with the ability to sync their service to a desktop client. [emphasis in original]
To which I say, "Huh?"
Since when does Apple "allow [users] to access competitor's services as well as [their] own?" Does any version of iTunes allow a customer to purchase music from Real's Rhapsody service, or for that matter from Yahoo Music? (No.) Does Apple allow users of other software and portable devices to purchase music from its stores? (No.) Why can't you transfer Yahoo Music Unlimited purchases to your iPod? (Because Apple doesn't allow access to its own services by any competitors. It doesn't license its FairPlay DRM to anyone else, either.)
Is this wrong? Depends on your point of view, I guess. If I were an officer or shareholder of Apple, I would fiercely protect the monopoly I've created in the music business and would only open it up if forced to do so. Just as Microsoft does with its Windows monopoly. If I believed that openness was the Holy Grail of computing, I'd have a hard time with either company.
The partnership between Apple and Yahoo in their webmail clients is just that: a partnership. It's frankly not all that different from the deal that Microsoft and Yahoo have worked out to allow their instant messaging clients to interoperate with one another. Does that deal mean that Microsoft is suddenly committed to openness? Of course not, any more than this Apple-Yahoo deal implies a new spirit of openness in Cupertino.
A commitment to openness isn't compatible with the business model of any large publicly traded corporation, regardless of how cool its industrial designs may be. Opening up selective parts of your business is just smart business. Knowing when to keep them closed is also just smart business. If you want to convince me that Apple is suddenly becoming more open, let me know when they allow OS X to run on hardware they didn't build. Or even in virtual machines, the way every other modern OS does.
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Talkback
In the case of mail...
Eh, not really
You have to pay extra to access a Yahoo account via POP. Gmail allows POP access through any account. Hotmail doesn't support POP access at all although you can use an email client such as Outlook or Windows Live Mail Desktop that supports HTTP, or you can use any of several free third-party utilities to link the HTTP mail to your POP client.
But those are pretty much side issues.
It is another example of open-ness though
Yes, I agree
In general, I would agree with you that of the four companies mentioned in Arrington's article, Google is probably the most consistent at using open standards and making their products interoperate well. The exact opposite of Arrington's point.
Not true
Not true, I use multiple yahoo mail accounts which I collect using POP and have never paid Yahoo a penny. I do let them email me one advertising email a week for the privelege.
Maybe you have a special account
Don't know why yours is different, but I can't get that offer, nor can new subscribers.
There are various tools (Daemons/scripts) that gather Web based mail.....
I let my Hotmail accounts laps last year, and they were my oldest accounts pre-MS 95~96.
Anyway there was a daemon Hot~somthing? which allowed me to get my all my hotmail accounts in my favorite mail reader Kmail. (ther was another for yahoo)
I keep my business & casual mail separated now and leave web mail on the web...
But there are many such tools which do this if one has the need or interest... Like MrPostman & others
FreePOPS
Works with all popular OSes and works with most web based e-mails (click the modules link for a full list).
I don't like it when they give you a lack of choice either, but when a small, low-overhead daemon like this gives me that choice right back I don't lose too much sleep over it.
Thank you!
RE: Apple, Microsoft, and openness
Accessing accounts
Also, the Yahoo and Hotmail interfaces are not that much different. The author quoted seems to be making much of a distinction without a difference here as well.
If he wanted to complain about any company, I think he should have chosen AOL and IM.
But maybe complaining about AOL is too easy, fish in the barrel these days.
You're right about the importance of proprietary information to a public company. But communications software is valued for communicating. It's an advantage, a feature for it to be able to connect with other software. The product can be distinguished on some other basis, I think.
Mail gets stretched to music? i don't think so
First, has the iTunes Music Store made back the money they had
to invest in it? Probably but it is not nearly as mature a market
as email, which, goes back to before Windows 95 if I remember
correctly and has always been free.
iTunes Music Store is a profit center for Apple. Email is
not. .Mac is and it has many products.
The entire Apple operating system is open source. Safari started
life as an open source product but had to go private.
I think people should stop comparing MS and Apple. They don't
compete on software because OS X isn't useable on hardware
sold by other vendors.
Compare Apple to Dell, HP, Compaq or Acer and all you will find
the others have to offer is a price differential. But they all run
Windows.
Computer-computer comparison is apples to apples. Computer
to Software comparison is apples to oranges. As is comparing
mail to music selling and listening.
Just a reminder, you don't have to buy music from the iTunes
Music Store to listen to it on your iPod. But you do have to
either download the music illegally without any DRM or load it
from a CD. That includes music burned to a CD from
competitors.
This should be fun...
Get yourself a good seat, folks. I'm expecting some fireworks.
Can't buy from other stores?
Huh?
Of course you can download music from Magnatune or eMusic or anywhere else that sells non-DRMed tracks and transfer them to your iPod. You can do the same with any music device. But that's not the same as Apple opening up its services so customers can access services of competitors.
All I care about
What I'd like to know, what do the companies that licensed PlayForSure are feeling now that they're locked out of Zune.
Companies have a choice
a) Sell un-DRM'ed, portable music
b) Sell DRM'ed, and if it's licensed instead of home grown, hope like hell the provider doesn't decide it doesn't like you anymore.
You are at the whim of the DRM provider, and open DRM is impossible (to be pedantic, so is real DRM for that matter); not a very tenable position.
Store no, iTunes yes
Apple does allow you to import your Magnatune purchases to iTunes. And, many of the artists selling music through Magnatune can also be found for sale in the iTunes store.
---Does Apple allow any other software or device maker to access ITMS?---
A few directly, mainly Motorola phones. Others indirectly through cd burns.
---But that's not the same as Apple opening up its services so customers can access services of competitors.---
I'm not sure I agree with what you're proposing here. Should the local Dell store be forced to allow Apple reps into the store to sell Apple computers? Should the local Jiffy-Lube have to allow Sears Auto Center to sell services through their stores as well? Should Microsoft have to let Linux users have access to their devices (Zune is Windows only, for example, as are all the PFS stores)? Is it okay to build a business around your own products and exclude those of your competitors?
I'm not proposing anything
They did no such thing. I think I made it pretty darn clear what my thoughts are in the column.
Again, this isn't about Apple, it's about Web 2.0 cheerleading that reinforces corporate stereotypes when the reality is exactly the opposite.
Thanks
Don't know if I agree with that
I don't think that's a correct analogy. It's more like should DELL refuse to sell to me because I own a IPOD and took it into thier store.
I-Tunes is software that links to an online store. I'm assuming I got that right but feel free to correct me. So that store is kind of saying leave your non-Apple music at the door before entering. Hmm where do you hear that? Theatres maybe? They don't allow you to bring any food or drink in and if you don't like Coke and want Pepsi instead it's tough cookies. So if it's fair for theatres to do why isn't it fair for Apple to do?