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Steve Jobs Is Building AppleWorld - And Google's Running Scared
- joe_the_user 17y ago"'ll bet that in one of those Apple board meetings that Google (GOOG) CEO Steve Schmidt used to attend, he realized that Jobs was on the verge of building AppleWorld and he's been scared ever since." I don't think it's possible to build a "closed digital world" that will have the traction of the entirety of the open Internet. Closed systems are great for creating an ideal model of how thing "ought" to work. But the "wide world" tends to take those innovations and expand them beyond the limits of a closed ideal system. Apple has made great profits on the Macintosh but it's also become happy with the Mac having a highly profitable niche position. That seems like the fate of the entire "Apple World" situation. Remember Disney never extended Disney World beyond Florida. I'm sure Google is running. "Scared" seems like a bit of a reach. I suspect that Google is more afraid of entities which try monopolize and monetize their Internet pipes.
- josh33 17y agoThis closed world is close to possible with control, which is exactly what Apple has achieved with the iPhone. They limit which apps make it on, and which content can be displayed. I do not doubt that sooner than later Apple will offer filtering for internet, and will package it in an appealing way (security). It seems foolish now, but just wait.
- count 17y agoIndeed - as long as Apple is willing to accept less than 100% penetration in the market, there are many people more than happy to live in Steve Jobs' closed world. It sure beats the current competition in my eyes...
- GHFigs 17y agoI do not doubt that sooner than later Apple will offer filtering for internet, and will package it in an appealing way (security). It does seem foolish now, and "just wait" is not a compelling argument. What makes you not doubt this? Where is the money in it?
- joubert 17y agoYou can browse to any web app. "Limit" is very relative - there are more on-the-metal apps available for the iPhone than any other phone, no? And not only that, but you get probably the best mobile phone browsing experience; although I have not tried the Nexus One yet (because there's no customer support), but I am willing to eat an onion if the Nexus is better. I know the BlackBerry sucks at browsing.
- euroclydon 17y agoLet's see, Apple had a closed operating system before they went to unix with OSX, and we know where OS9 was headed. It's only when they co-opted unix that they achieved such great success with Mac market share.
- bad_user 17y agoAre you saying that OSX is more open than OS9? :)
- euroclydon 17y agoI'm not sure "open" is the idea I'm going for here, rather OSX exposes a larger existing ecosystem of tools, libraries, applications, all of which are open source. Now the topic of the original article was about a closed environment versus an open one, and it certainly seems to me that since OSX is unix, that it's part of a larger, open environment, and I think that's why their desktop market share has increased since OS9 and below.
- dannyr 17y agoI won't use the word 'scared' but I actually think Apple is worried about Google. In my opinion, It is Google that is getting into Apple's territory (Android, Chrome OS) and Apple is trying to stave them off. A lot of Apple's IPhone users depend on Google services and not the other way around. This is why Apple would probably have its own Search and Map services in the near future.
- joubert 17y agoiPhone users don't depend on Google Maps & Search per se; rather they depend on maps and search, which at time of this writing there's at least one other major provider (quality, market penetration notwithstanding). This can be swapped out. What I would not like to see is only 1 search provider, 1 map provider. Reminder: must check whether there is an OpenStreetMap iPhone app.
- catch23 17y agoTo a certain extend, iPhone users do depend on the Google suite of products. If you're a GMail user, you probably have lots of saved locations on your google maps, items on your google calendar, and contacts & voicemail on google voice. The android integrates all of these "must-have" apps very nicely on a mobile device. Apple hasn't done so great with their mobile.me platform. Had they done better, the iphone would have been a great mobile device for their mail/contacts/maps.
- joubert 17y agoOnly if you actually use GMail. I wonder what percentage of iPhone users use GMail on their phones vs. other email services. I don't use GMail. My calendar syncs with my non-G calendar and my Mac. Ditto for contacts. In what respect does Android integrate these features better than the iPhone does? The one thing that sucks on Google Maps is you don't have access to reviews (or at least in no way that I can determine). At least they show subway stops. I think success here is probably determined by number of hardware units sold. PS: Apple doesn't do maps.
- portman 17y ago"Apple quickly realized that apps would one day overtake .coms." I'm sorry, what? In what conceivable metric do apps outnumber .coms?!
- sp332 17y agoIt doesn't say outnumber.
- ryanelkins 17y agoIt says "one day".
- gvb 17y agoMethinks he has some problems with units and is drifting out to sea. http://xkcd.com/687/ http://xkcd.com/687/
- Raphael 17y ago$
- portman 17y agoLet's ignore the _trillions_ of dollars being made by ALL .coms and just focus on one of them: Amazon. 2008 revenues of $20BB. To match that, Apple would need to sell $66BB worth of apps in one year. If the average price on the app store is $.25 (incl free), that would be 264 billion app downloads just to match the 2008 revenues of ONE dot-com. There are no scenarios, no-matter how outlandish, in which the app store can overtake websites in $.
- sahaj 17y agoyou'll probably need google to search thru all your apps that have outnumbered your .coms to find what you need.
- bad_user 17y agoI don't get it ... what's AppleWorld? My first thoughts is that it will be an amusement park with Start Trek-like themes and with chapels where you can get married by a Steve Jobs look-alike. No wonder publishers were the first to get gaga about cloud-computing :)
- pyre 17y agoArg. Accidentally down-voted. Sorry. [EDIT] I'm not sure why I got down-voted. Is this a 'revenge' for my mistake (not necessarily done by the parent poster)? Is apologizing for my mistake something that I shouldn't have done? Color me confused. (Note: I don't believe that this post deserves to be up voted past 1.)
- stanleydrew 17y agoI didn't vote you down, but I find it completely unnecessary to write an apology and it's a little annoying to read one for a mistaken downvote, as this adds nothing to the discussion. It's just a mistake. It happens. The voting is anonymous (to all except pg and a few others perhaps). If you want to apologize, try to find a way to send a private message. I'd say you got downvoted for cluttering up the discussion, which ironically I am now also doing. Oh well, hope this helps anyway.
- minalecs 17y agothis may be a side note, but using chromium nightly builds on mac, I see no down vote button anywhere. Just the upvote. anyone know the reason for this.
- ajross 17y agoApple quickly realized that apps would one day overtake .coms. They knew that mobile devices would overtake PCs. Indeed. Which is why they spend a full year denying that the iPhone needed native apps and trying to shut down all the jailbreak work before finally caving and shipping an SDK with the next rev of the hardware. Apple got lucky with the iPhone; it was the right product at the right time, and the App Store was a once-a-decade gold rush. But it certainly wasn't in Jobs' master plan for world domination. I kept looking for insight in this article and not finding any.
- mattmaroon 17y agoThe weird part is his overall thesis is at least not bad. But then the article is just a long string of misinformation arriving at a somewhat accurate conclusion.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoIt's got post-hoc reasoning written all over it.
- Que 17y agoI'm glad someone else shared my opinion, I found "Apple quickly realized that apps would one day overtake .coms." to be a particularly absurd thing to say. When placed in context of the entire article it made more sense seeming as though the piece was on a whim (or possibly a dream/fantasy) rather then hard evidence or a deep understanding of our industry and culture.
- mattmaroon 17y agoThe best part is how he says it in past-tense as if it has already happened.
- bradendouglass 17y agoglad someone else caught this. I actually read it over twice and chocked it up to being a type...not impressed at all.
- ryandvm 17y agoIf any tech company is creating their own "world", it's Google. Apple should be the fearful partner here.
- pyre 17y agoThe mobile computing platform has a long ways to go before it will overtake desktop computing. For check-email-and-view-web-pages type tasks, it really works well, but I don't see people doing 3d-modelling, desktop publishing, software development or just plain spreadsheet work on a mobile device in the near future. Maybe I just don't have the vision to see interfaces that will make these operations doable on a smaller screen.
- cracell 17y agoWell it's silly. You have to figure as mobile devices advance so will desktops. Sure being able to have a computer in your pocket on the go is nice. But no one is ever going to be going to work and working all day on their iPhone. You could create a docking system so your iPhone could be hooked up to a real keyboard, mouse and monitor. But that is silly with current differences in power between laptops and mobile phones.
- PanMan 17y agoI'm guessing we'll have workstations for those tasks for some years to come. But of all computer usage, how much is web/email, and how much is 3D modeling, sw dev, etc? I'm guessing not that much, if you look at a general crowd (not HN).
- joubert 17y agoIt all boils down to where your majority revenue comes from: Google: advertising. Can they diversify? Apple: hardware. With desirable hardware, you calculate what is the price point to maximize profit and execute. Some other random comments about the article: 1) Share price is meaningless in isolation. $10 can be very expensive while $3,000 can be very cheap. 2) The rumor mill now has Google Tablets as well. Wow, I must have been asleep 3) AppleWorld must collaborate with Virgin Galactic.
- sabat 17y agoGoogle (GOOG) CEO Steve Schmidt Heh. Apparently, from inside AppleWorld, all CEOs are named "Steve".
- joe-mccann 17y agoLMAO...here's the key sentence in that article: Disclosure: Long AAPL Seriously, how could you possibly have an objective opinion about the proper valuation of arguably one of Apple's biggest competitors, Google. Moreover, Apple's P/E right now is 33. Let me repeat that. 33!. If the two stocks prices are two switch places, then Apple's P/E sky rockets to an absurd 80. So you should be getting long $AAPL? Hmm, not at these levels...
- joubert 17y agoOver the long term, stock price factors in earnings expectations. So to assume P/E will be 80 is incorrect. Also, Google stocks are more expensive than Apple's at a current P/E of 37. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+google http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+google But yeah, the article is really bad "financial analysis".
- padmanabhan01 17y ago// 24 months from now, the two stocks will have changed places and Apple will be at $585 and Google will be at $210. I can't believe someone is writing an article in a finance site that doesn't know what stock prices mean, in absolute terms.
- z8000 17y agoI read all of the comments here hoping to find this. Thank you.
- greyman 17y agoGoogle probably is not scared, but what I found out, unexpectedly, that Google's services are indispensable less and less for me. In the past decade, Google search had been essential for my internet life. But in the last months, when I was to find out what is happening now in certain area, Twitter search does it for me; if I want to watch some area for longer time, I subscribe to a few rss feeds. If i want to find out basic facts about something totally new to me, Wikipedia will serve that. And in rare cases, when I need to find out something specific, I use Google. But even in this area, Bing is catching up. Then, I use a few Google services like GMail or Greader, since I found them to be the best, but if some better clients will arrive, I'll switch. To sum it up, it seems to me that Google doesn't have anything truly irreplaceable now - they were ahead of the game with the general search, but they couldn't maintain their focus on it, so the margin isn't that big currently. Now, it seems to me that the main battle is fought about what will be the ultimate Internet platform in terms of hardware+software. Here, Apple and Microsoft are the biggest animals so far, with Google and maybe Amazon trying to participate. But in the grand scheme of things, Google already isn't the main Internet player it maybe used to.
- Tichy 17y agoExcept that atm Twitter search only reaches back one week, and to get older Tweets, you have to go to Google or Topsy or something.
- moron4hire 17y agoIf mobile devices "would overtake PCs" then why does everyone still have a PC?
- PanMan 17y agoEveryone? There are about 1.1 billion PC's, and 4.6 Billion phones in the world..
- joubert 17y agoDon't many people have multiple phones?
- moron4hire 17y agothat is phones, not smartphones. And the smartphone that can easily be used for creative purposes past taking shaky videos has yet to be invented. If I want to get work done - writing, coding, drawing, planning - smartphones aren't helping.
- TrevorJ 17y agoGoogle has a massive advantage because A) The barrier to entry is low because most of the services are free and B) Just because somebody owns an Apple device doesn't mean they can't use Google. There's some overlap but the companies just don't do the same things. Unless they decide to lock themselves in a segment of the market that overlaps completely, there's no reason they can't both be successful.
- mark_l_watson 17y agoInteresting article, but I disagree mostly due to my personal preferences: I am more comfortable using GMail+GCalendar+Gdocs in my workflow, buying MP3s cheaply on Amazon, and having the relative openness of the Android phones over the iPhone. Still, for non-techs, the Apple do it all approach would be very tempting if not for the much higher cost of Apple gear. I may be calling this wrong, but I think that we are going to the commoditization of just about everything: cheaper bandwidth, cheaper devices, low cost or free software, etc. The market will grow but individually products and services will get much cheaper. Very long term, will most people be willing to pay for the Apple cost premium?
- ericd 17y agoSee Apple's laptops for an answer to your last question. In a field of $400-1200 laptops, they're selling $2000 machines very successfully. PCs have already been commoditized, Apple has maintained their premium by offering something that noone else can: smooth integration and experience due to everything designed end-to-end by one company (and OS X).
- count 17y agoWhen you factor in the time and effort savings from the extensive polish/integration work that Apple does, plus the 'style' bonus value, Apple really isn't that much more expensive. Hell, the iPhone is only a whopping $0.25 more than the Droid over the 2-year life of the contract. The iPhone is easily $0.25 more awesome than the Droid!
- doronba 17y agoApple has too much stock (literally and figuratively) in Steve Jobs. It is not at all clear that Apple has the capability to survive and innovate without him.
- mortenjorck 17y agoA valid concern shared by many, but I can't see Apple not being prepared for its CEO's eventual retirement. I think it's safe to say Jobs has shaped the leadership of Apple with people he trusts, and while there's not going to be any one person with his traits, there are enough minds that share his vision to carry the company long-term.
- joubert 17y agoI actually wondered today who at Google sets their tone/vision? I think one of the companies that relies the least on a persona for their facade in the market is Adobe.
- Tichy 17y agoDon't get me wrong, but if some people choose to live in AppleWorld, we might as well put them all on a spaceship together and send them off into space. I don't mean it in an evil way - just saying they would probably be living isolated lives, only interacting with each other. So they might as well live on another planet. I for one wouldn't want to live in Disney Land, and not in Apple World either.
- dejb 17y ago> Once you enter AppleWorld, you have no reason to leave. Except of course if there is better stuff outside AppleWorld which there invariably is. This would only work if the residents of AppleWorld are so cut of from the rest of the world they are not aware of all the cool stuff outside. But then it starts to look more like a prison.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- sahaj 17y agoboth companies have very different business models and are going after different aspects of the same overall market. it's like comparing intel with microsoft. one is after the information and how to host and provide it and the other is after the device that will display that information (and the personal media). if it wasn't for apple's closed strategy, everyone would be using google voice to make free phone calls and send txts. btw, this is going to happen. Apple will be selling the iPhone thru google.com/phone one day. besides the internet is large enough for both companies to coexist. disclaimer: long AAPL, long GOOG.
- jtth 17y agoIt's times like these that make me thankful for IMAP.
- teilo 17y agoSeeking Alpha has been in love with Google for some time now. They positively gush about all things Android, even when Android = Fail (like their horrible multitasking - trust me, my phone is a G1, and the multitasking sucks), repeatedly predicting how Android is the obvious winner in the mobile OS wars. So it doesn't exactly surprise me that they would put out tripe like this about Apple. I have to think that their editors are heavily invested in GOOG, and are prepared to sell short on AAPL. Not exactly an unbiased source.