I like Apple products. I’m typing this on a MacBook Pro. My wife and I both have iPhones. Our music collection is entirely managed by iTunes. We own a Mac Mini, an iMac, and a Cinema Display. We have a MobileMe subscription for our family. I’m on the waiting list for the iPad. I think you get the idea.
I mostly use Apple stuff at home. I used to “be a PC” but I grew weary of the administrative headaches, patching against zero-day exploits, grew tired of cobbling together products like Picassa, Thunderbird, and Firefox for digital photos, e-mail, and browsing (safely). These are excellent products and I’d like to thank Google and Mozilla for the free software. But each of you has your own design aesthetics. Your products are not terribly well integrated, and that inevitably (and unfortunately for you) leads to technical support questions from my wife and kids. I have better things to do when I get home, like coaching two of my son’s Little League teams.
Apple products are integrated — tightly, even chokingly so — but guess what? They just work. That saves me time. That makes my wife and kids happy. And I’m willing to pay for that.
Of course, this utopia comes at a price. I have come to accept that buying Apple products generally involves accepting Apple, Inc.’s authoritarian style. The word authoritarian describes a state in which a single power holder monopolizes political power. Look up the word authoritarian in a dictionary, and you’re likely to find a picture of Apple’s Chief Executive Steve Jobs. And Apple is most assuredly a monopoly when you’re speaking about easy to use, beautifully integrated hardware and software, that looks and feels great.
I do not in anyway begrudge Mr. Jobs the control he seeks over the company he founded in his family’s garage. He once lost the company in a power struggle with the board of directors (…hmmm… power struggle…), but came back ten years later and rescued it from irrelevance, introducing products like the iPod, the iMac, the iPhone. Ever heard of them?
Until recently I would have described Mr. Jobs (and by extension, Apple itself) as somewhat of a benevolent dictatorship, tirelessly ensuring that it’s products are the best engineered in the world. I’ve cheered the run-up in Apple’s stock price. I’ve laughed aloud at those “I’m a Mac” advertisements lampooning all the things I hated about the Windows platform. I’ve encouraged my friends and colleagues to buy a Mac enough times that if I had nickel for everytime I did, I could have bought myself another one by now.
But now I’m not laughing or cheering — as loud or as hard, anyway — as I recently was for Apple. I’m not alone in this view. Apple’s recent actions have begun to smell more like totalitarianism than authoritarianism to me. A totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life of it’s people including economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens.
I’m 100% okay with Apple’s steely grip on the working environment of their employees. But I’m not so cool with them telling me what is too titillating to see, what is too vulgar to learn, what to is too obscene to hear, or what is too obscene to touch.
I think Apple should have simply tagged these applications as adult themed and allowed individuals or families to determine appropriateness for themselves or children. That’s more akin to advocacy than censorship, and could be perceived as a competitive advantage versus Android or competing platforms. And then there is banning applications retroactively as they enter new markets.
I’m not against the App Store approval process. To the contrary, it’s fantastic that I can download any one of 100,000 applications (from companies I’ve never heard of) and be fairly confident that my contacts, photos and e-mail will not be transferred en masse to a malicious third party. I can say that with some degree of confidence because Apple has actually tested the application on my behalf. If they are half as effective at finding spyware as they are objectionable material, we’re all in pretty good shape.
In the long-term, I won’t accept Apple telling me what I can (or cannot) install on my iPhone (read: a portable handheld computer) anymore than I’d accept them telling me what I can (or cannot) install on my MacBook Pro. For now, short-term, I’ll play along because the competition is inept, but I’m warning you Apple, I’m starting to get the warm fuzzies for Google.
P.S. Come on Steve. Loosen up a little.
