Apple iPhone is a Restaurant, Not a Super Market, and They Should Say So on the Sign
In light of today’s response by Apple to the FCC about the Google Voice rejection, and anticipating the likely, negative reaction it will engender, I’m again left thinking that Apple and their iPhone are closer akin to a restaurant, not a super market.
Steve Jobs is like one of those screaming, perfectionistic executive chefs concerned more with his haut cuisine than his customers, whose palettes he believes tempered by years of McRosoft (or whatever). He — and they — will serve you a beautiful, delicious, premium plate but will also decide every single ingredient that goes on it, if not tell you exactly how they want you to eat it. If you go to a restaurant, you know what you’re in for. You don’t go to Nobu and throw a fit because they refuse to serve you spaghetti, or let you run into the kitchen and whip up your own meal.
Other companies might be more like super markets, where you can indeed assemble your own meal from whatever they sell — though they’ll still stock the shelves with what they want, and not what they don’t want. More freedom, more work for the customer, and some will gladly take control over ease of use.
Typically, most of us go to restaurants AND shop at super markets, depending on what we feel like at the time. Likewise, some of us want that Apple-polished experience, others want more ability to roll their own.
With Google Voice specifically, Apple’s not letting that hot new sous-chef in the door, perhaps because they suspect he’s going to alter the menu in a profound way, then open up down the street and take all their customers. IBM learned that very painfully when they licensed DOS from Microsoft for the PC — sometimes you create your own killer.
Ultimately, the iPhone is Apple’s restaurant and Steve Jobs is the executive chef, and whether the lease with the booze supplier (AT&T) prohibits certain other cocktails (Skype, SlingPlayer), or Apple refused to let certain food in the place, it’s still their restaurant, and they control the menu.
Apple should just be honest about it and tell users and developers like it is — an iPhone is an appliance, no different than a Nintendo Wii or any other closed box. Right now, they’re feigning greater openness than they’re actually providing, causing prolonged confusion and ill-will. Say it straight, it’s our iPhone point finale, take the hit from users and developers who’ll leave, and then everyone else knows what it is when they pick it up and sign the contract, and it’s their responsibility.
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It must hurt to bend that much to justify clearly wrong behavior on the part of a favorite company.
1) As mentioned in other threads now, the Apple/Nintendo analogy is horribly flawed. Nintendo no longer runs the “Seal” program BECAUSE IT HURT NINTENDO IN THE LONG RUN, and, even when they did, they applied clear rules. Moreover, Nintendo never went so far as to keep “side scrollers” off the platform to protect their Mario franchise, the closest analogue to the standard Apple is applying here.
2) An Executive Chef picks the ingredients, prepares the food, and leaves you in piece. They should; it is their name on the marque. Gordon Ramsay screams at his Sous Chefs, fine. Apple screams at the diner who dares to want to mix their mashed potatoes with their chicken. Once you’ve sold me a plate of food, back off and let me eat it how I want to eat it. Otherwise, you are neither supermarket nor restaurant; you are an overbearing mother lecturing children at the table.
3) “Sometimes you create your own killer.” I’ll see your aphorism and raise you one. “Sometimes a man meets his destiny on the path he took to avoid it.” The ONLY way to avoid that restaurant down the street from stealing your customers is to make better food. If your food is better than Sous Chef Schmidt’s, nobody will order off his list. Chef Jobs apparently will not let his food go toe-to-toe with another’s; that is telling.
4) For further support, you link to your own earlier post that puts Android in a bad light. Oh, wait — the main thrust of that article was debunked, and several commenters have pointed it out and politely requested the article be updated, but it has not.
You nailed it 100%.
So Apple and Steve Jobs is the Soup Nazi, eh?
dev, it’s Richie’s blog, he can print whatever the hell he wants to print, pro Apple or not. Give it a rest. You want fairness? Start your own blog!
Of course he can say whatever he wants. I WANT him to keep saying what he wants to say. I find his blog, his thoughts, and his perspective valuable, and if he censored his opinion (particularly in a story tagged “Editorial”), we would all be worse off. Does that render me unable to disagree with him? Must all iPhone users march in lockstep with identical opinions? I would assume not, or there would not be a comments section.
Care to address the actual points?
Do I care to address the actual points? No, I could give a shit… really. Doesn’t affect my life in one iota. Just because you contest the man on certain things he may not get exactly correct, don’t expect him to edit his blog every time. A blog isn’t factual news reporting, it’s a blog… geez!
Android story updated, thanks for pointing it out I hadn’t had a chance yet to go back and read through all the comments.
Nintendo addressed in other thread.
Competing food to food, iPhone is still killing Android (though that may change this time next year). However, if Google takes over the phone system like they have the search system, it’s a different game.
And I’m not saying Apple is right in their behavior, I’m saying if they intend to run things the way they intend to run things, just tell us up front so that if we still choose to buy them, it’s on us.
(And it’s not my blog, it’s SmartPhone Expert’s blog. I’m just the editor
)
Well, Ritchie, let’s just say SmartPhone Experts are the Commodores and you’re Lionel… Hello!
Apple may have touched my last nerve with their insistence that iPhone users will confuse GV functionality with the native phone capabilities. thanks for telling me I’m too stupid to figure it out.
I’m done. I’m selling my 3GS and getting a Pre. ETF be damned.
“Typically, most of us go to restaurants AND shop at super markets, depending on what we feel like at the time. Likewise, some of us want that Apple-polished experience, others want more ability to roll their own.”
i want both the apple polished experience AND the ability to roll my own.
this already exists. i enjoy my apple laptop running OS X very much, the apple apps i run on it as well as many unrestricted 3rd party apps.
but i don’t think apple needs to go even that far on the iphone. the AT&T 3G bandwidth restrictions placed on certain apps are annoying but understandable. tethering restrictions are annoying but understandable. they are understandable because bandwidth hogging apps could negatively impact other customers on the network, and limiting such apps is understandable.
but this anti-competitive, anti-google garbage isn’t understandable. it just makes me want to switch phones when my contract is up.
sometimes you create your own killer, but sometimes you get so scared – paranoid that everyone is out to get you – that you create a boring, closed platform that everyone moves away from because there’s more fun and utility elsewhere.
Your Nintendo comment in the other thread addressed in the other thread
FWIW, I agree with Rene’s main point here — Apple has the right to be restrictive, even draconian, but that if they so choose, they owe it to their customers to be up front about it. The whole “There’s an App for That” campaign emphasizes (or at least implies) an openness that clearly is not there.
Any arguments that seem anti-Apple (or anti-Rene, for that matter*), are only that — the voice of a user (and yes, frustrated developer) who dearly wants Apple to allow this platform to grow to its full potential, and who sees Apple’s corporate culture threatening to strangle it just as it did the Mac a couple decades past. I just love my iPhone, remember the bitterness of trading in my old Quadra for a PC, and I fear Apple is making the same set of mistakes, dooming them to being a marginal player in the market they created and ruled in its early years.
dev makes a great point. if apple is a restaurant and not a supermarket, the “there’s an app for that” campaign signals exactly the opposite.
iPhone is still the one to beat even with all their hold backs. That what they are too, hold backs. I’m okay with that too because even with them, everyone is still playing catch-up. Apple is controlling what gets released and when. Just as it’s getting it’s nearest competitor to up their game, they raise the bar by releasing the smallest and simplest of things and everyone’s playing catchup again. All the haters here need to stop whining about how unfair Apple is and start whining on all the othe blogs asking when their product is going to give Apple something to really raise the bar by miles to keep ahead of everyone instead of inches.
@Dev, no worries. I appreciate argument (in the classic sense) and think the different opinions (or points of view even on similar opinions) are part of TiPb’s strength
@Striatic:
I agree with your sentiment.
I made that point in the other thread, but realistically, I only half believe it myself.
Just because Apple lets SOME apps in does not mean they are obligated to let all apps in.
The right thing to do is get rid of the whimsy, and they IMPLY that there are clear standards in their response to FCC questions 5 and 6: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/
But careful reading of the answers shows that they don’t follow their own standards, and there remain several unwritten rules, which Apple danced around and didn’t answer at all. There is nothing in their response to #5 which mentions “duplication of functionality”, an often used rejection reason.
I think Rene’s point is, that if Apple can not, or will not state the rules clearly then they should just flat out state that each app is a judgement call and all decisions are final.
He’s not advocating that policy.
He is throwing his hands up in despair.
Think about the “There’s an App for That” campaign in the mind of a consumer, though. I’m pretty sure that – just by virtue of reading this blog – we know more about our wonderful little devices than the vast, vast majority of other users. Whenever I meet people on the Metro, on planes, whatever, they always seem amazed by things as simple as the benm.at tethering hack. TiPB’s readership in general, I would think, consists of people that know a lot about the inner workings of the iPhone and about Apple in general. I venture to say that Joe or Jane iPhoneuser on the subway do not.
That consumer is who the “App for That” campaign is trying to reach. We are the minority. Walk up to an average teenage kid with an iPhone on the street and ask him what he thinks of the App Store approval process – he will probably respond, “App Store? Isn’t that the thing on my phone? I didn’t have to get approved for that…”
The truth is that the App Store, by Apple’s and the average user’s standards, is very open. You can do all kinds of neat stuff – calculate tips, call taxis, surf the Internet, go on YouTube – and it all works very well. There is, in fact, an “App for That”.
My overlying point here is that Apple really doesn’t really care that SlingPlayer is crippled, that Skype is WiFi only, and that Google Voice was rejected. It hasn’t made CNN, their profits are not suffering (even withstanding the supposed legions of bloggers and technoristocracy switching to the Pre or Tour or whatever) and there is no mass outcry from their user base. Just from us, the minority.
In these tough times Apple should be more open to apps that will attract more customers. There is going to be another phone that will compete and put the Iphone out of business, Fads like this don’t last very long. As for AT&T, they have never learned their lesson. They went from being a TOP media company to hit rock bottom and now that they are back on top, guess what? they are sliding back down. Let the customers have a say on what they want on their phone and however they want to use it and they will stay faithfully with you.
Tony Patron, i really disagree with you. that may have been the case one year ago, but the smart phone landscape has radically changed in the past year and will change even more in the next. by this time next year, i expect that hardware and rough OS parity will be at hand. some of these other OSes are even going to do certain things better than the iPhone.
that leaves the app marketplaces are the primary differentiator between these phones. apple is clearly way ahead here, but if they screw up their app marketplace by rejecting the most interesting, powerful and useful apps, people will start to switch.
@striatic
See, that all depends on whether people know about apps getting rejected or not – the biggest outlets for that kind of news are the blogs, like TiPB and TechCrunch.
However, what I can see happening is a switch based on experience comparison – that is, Jane iPhoneuser sees Jimmy Crackberry using full Slingplayer on his Bold (i.e. “How are you watching TV on your phone?!”). Jane iPhoneuser asks Jimmy to get her iPhone to do that, to which Mr. Crackberry replies, “Sorry, Apple won’t let you.” If Jane wants that functionality, she will switch.
“Just from us, the minority.”
you know, that minority happens to include the developers who make all the nifty apps that make the iphone so whiz-bang-special, and the early adopters who bring in new customers with good word of mouth.
of course it is a minority, it just happens to be the same minority that lined up in front of apple stores which helped get the iphone on CNN in the first place.
“However, what I can see happening is a switch based on experience comparison – that is, Jane iPhoneuser sees Jimmy Crackberry using full Slingplayer on his Bold (i.e. “How are you watching TV on your phone?!”). Jane iPhoneuser asks Jimmy to get her iPhone to do that, to which Mr. Crackberry replies, “Sorry, Apple won’t let you.” If Jane wants that functionality, she will switch.”
that’s what i was thinking as well, i just didn’t explain it in as much detail.
the root reason is app rejection, but you’re absolutely correct that this is how the switching would happen on a per person basis.
Thoroughly enjoyed the article. It didn’t seem bias or anti-apple, just the truth really. Any smart consumer should be able to see that, right dev.
This was definitely a great comparison! I enjoyed the article and the thoughtful comments.
I think that the Android buffet place is starting to whet people’s appetites.
I actually strongly agree with Dev’s 1st point on how nintendo never stopped other types of games on the console. Well said.
Striatic. You miss my point. I think Apple is already prepared for a year from now. They know what to release and when to do it. You’re talking like Apple can’t already do what other phones and OS are just now striving to do. I’ve been patient, just watching as things unfold and I’ve already got most of what I need and want in the phone. This parity in hardware you mention will only be at hand a year from now if Apple makes no improvements. Have you held some of the competition in your hand and actually demonstrated or even used them on a daily basis? They feel like plastic toys and hold up to use like one. I have a version of each iPhone running in my household because every other phone we’ve used was junk. iPhone is the first phone that was worth the purchase.
Tony Patron makes good points as do a few others. I left iphone thinking the grass was greener in pre land and it wasn’t it was a mess phone was a piece of misassembled junk and was slow and sluggish because of its multi tasking. Pre lasted a week so then i decided let me go see what all the android buzz is about, well it was an epic fail the android os is buggy and looks cartoonish compared to iphone os. The mytouch 3G was a little plastic toy. now after all is said and done , I decided to go back to BB being that it’s crack and all, well right away I remembered how horrible the os and browser were and nothing has really changed. Crap there memory for apps is laughable and there site rendering is horrendous. So now I’m back to iphone 3GS etf and all and I realized that when you put the total package, hardware, software, apps, use ability and functionality all of the pretenders can fain” multi-tasking or Open operating system” but none work , feel and are the iPhone and that my friends is why it will continue to dominate. PS next iphone iteration in July will blow the rest of them out of the water, you see they are always playing catch up and by the time the get to the line APPLE moves it, July 2010
The rumor is that Apple will soon sign a deal with Chinese mobile carrier for 5 million iPhone deal. If you think FCC probing is interesting, wait for Chinese government/regulators probe Apple for any fishy practice
Well, if Google could build and deliver a better experience for their customers, then people would be lining up to buy the Google Phone.
But their not, so Google complains like a big baby … or so it seems.
Apple is successful because they know what customers want. Obviously, the iPhone has made a huge impact on other companies who are trying to play catch up with the innovative and seamlessly integrated iPhone.
Good for Apple.
If Microsoft one day said iTunes cannot run on windows and made that possible it just would not run. People would scream bloody murder.
Or if on a windows machine you can’t install or use google services.
if mac said one day no google voice you would all praise jobs.
Am I missing something or this a really