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That Apple is creating a closed system is of little surprise. Steve Jobs is all about control. It works in the short term, but I believe it will bite them in th

That Apple is creating a closed system is of little surprise. Steve Jobs is all about control. It works in the short term, but I believe it will bite them in the ass over the long-term. Making use of a closed-system and trying to be the best in a category assumes that you have access to the most brilliant minds in that field, and the most brilliant marketing campaign. What makes Apple great? Well, they can control every aspect of their production because they own all their own tools and can keep out the crap. Also, they have slick industrial design. For now they also have some of the most brilliant minds in the industry, but not all of them. This is why they will never achieve world domination with their products. I suppose I could make use of their own advertising to make an example : "I'm a mac, I'm a PC". You are either an apple person or you're not. Their closed-system allows little flexibility. They would be doomed to what they used to be were it not for them opening their file formats to standards. Why is this not the best approach? Because of human innovation. People hate being held down, forced into one category, etc. This is what apple is doing, but because their products are so innovative, consumers will go for it. Google is much smarter; they know what to hold onto and what to open up for the masses. Even though they employ many geniuses, they are always on the search for new innovative ideas. That's why they purchase so many startups, or so I've been told. That's why I believe in a race between Google and Apple, Apple WILL lose eventually. Closed-systems should actually drive innovation because they must be circumvented. That's why Apple products are cracked all the time. So I guess the challenge then is, that if you aren't happy with Apple, build a better product and market it as well as they do. All things being equal, the open-system product will win every time. You can't employ all of the brightest people yourself, all of the time. I think Apple will learn this in due time, and then things will change. A sidenote is that a large part of Apple's appeal is simplicity because of their closed-system. If anyone could create an opem-system as turnkey as theirs, they'd come ahead by far. I think one of the closest systems to being fully open and turnkey I've seen so far is Facebook Connect, but I'm starting to become too long-winded, so I'll leave it at that.

mcav 17y ago
Patents complicate that vision, though.
chaostheory 17y ago
"It works in the short term, but I believe it will bite them in the ass over the long-term." I disagree. Both Apple and Nintendo have shown proof that their closed 'circle of one' system works. Yes both of them have had a lot of big missed opportunities in the past because of this, but what matters more for these companies is profitability and not marketshare. Both Apple's and Nintendo's closed systems have led to large margins, and a healthy supply of cash flow and reserves. Yes it doesn't really fully cater to us, but we're not their main market.
- fnid2 17y ago
  Apple has also shown that their closed 'circle of one' system does NOT work. That's why they lost to IBM/MS so long ago. Everything apple was proprietary and people went to PCs.
  - whyenot 17y ago
    I don't think it's at all clear that people "went to PCs" because the Mac was proprietary. Macs were also expensive, slow, monochrome, and you couldn't buy them from IBM or Compaq, for example. The elephant in the room is the iPhone, where "circle of one" seems to be working extremely well. Maybe the model just needed some fine tuning.
    - fnid2 17y ago
      Macs were also expensive, slow, monochrome, and you couldn't buy them from IBM or Compaq, for example. All of those issues are precisely because the Macs were proprietary. If they hadn't been proprietary, none of the issues that made them lose to PCs would have been issues and they may have won the war. In the 80's, every school bought Apple IIe's, so they had the foot in the door. Then, under the leadership of Mr. Jobs, apple slammed the door shut on their foot and here they are doing it again -- also under Steve Jobs. Steve is the problem. Eventually, they'll realize this and fire him again when people get tired of his antics.
      - chaostheory 17y ago
telemachos 17y ago
> People hate being held down, forced into one category, etc. Here's an alternative take on this (with a story). I recently saw Thomas Keller (chef and owner of Per Se here in NYC and French Laundry in CA, among others) talking about a new-ish restaurant of his in CA, Ad Hoc. Ad Hoc has no menus. They make meals and serve them family style. You take what you want from the dishes provided. You have choice only within that range. He argued that true luxury was the freedom from choice. Now in a political context, this is Orwellian and terrifying. But in the context of a meal, it made a lot of sense to me. Let a great chef do his or her magic, and I will try any damn thing they put in front of me and thank them for the privilege. For us as hackers, computer use is more like politics. We want the openness to do what we want, to dig around, to break things and fix them again, to change things. For most people, however, computer use is more like a meal. Give them some great toys to play with and they won't mind the limitations at all.
- MrSartorial 17y ago
  I actually agree with you 100% that people love something that's easy to play with. That's what I meant when I said that Apple's simplicity is their strength. What I'm talking about is a difference between "open" turnkey and "closed" turnkey. I love turnkey, and so do a lot of people. Who wants to fuss with installing new software, etc.? That's my perspective. Closed-systems are much easier to make turnkey, but they aren't the only alternative. Just because something is open, doesn't mean that it can't be simple. It CAN be tinkered with, but it doesn't have to be to make it work. That response is shorter than I'd like, but I have to run unfortunately.
  - actf 17y ago
    Very well said - I really can't understand why so many people on HN think turnkey == closed. Sure there is a correlation, but is it just me or does it seem like everyone has forgotten that correlation != causation.
- lambda 17y ago
  But, this isn't about giving the users freedom from choice; with 140,000 options in the App Store, that's a lot of choices. This is explicitly about locking developers down, and not allowing them to do things that Apple does not approve of. Want to write a competing web browser? Sorry, you can't. Want to write an awesome JIT that optimizes itself for their shiny new chip? No can do. Imagine if this policy had been in place on their desktop or laptop computers. Half of the technologies that they themselves use and tout as great would not exist. LLVM/clang? WebKit? Heck, the Mach and BSD kernels that this is all built on. None of this would have been created in a closed ecosystem with restrictive policies, and yet Apple is perfectly happy to take advantage of it while not letting anyone else play in their sandbox. The hypocrisy of their policies makes me sick.

mcav 17y ago

Patents complicate that vision, though.

chaostheory 17y ago

"It works in the short term, but I believe it will bite them in the ass over the long-term." I disagree. Both Apple and Nintendo have shown proof that their closed 'circle of one' system works. Yes both of them have had a lot of big missed opportunities in the past because of this, but what matters more for these companies is profitability and not marketshare. Both Apple's and Nintendo's closed systems have led to large margins, and a healthy supply of cash flow and reserves. Yes it doesn't really fully cater to us, but we're not their main market.

fnid2 17y ago
Apple has also shown that their closed 'circle of one' system does NOT work. That's why they lost to IBM/MS so long ago. Everything apple was proprietary and people went to PCs.
- whyenot 17y ago
  I don't think it's at all clear that people "went to PCs" because the Mac was proprietary. Macs were also expensive, slow, monochrome, and you couldn't buy them from IBM or Compaq, for example. The elephant in the room is the iPhone, where "circle of one" seems to be working extremely well. Maybe the model just needed some fine tuning.
  - fnid2 17y ago
    Macs were also expensive, slow, monochrome, and you couldn't buy them from IBM or Compaq, for example. All of those issues are precisely because the Macs were proprietary. If they hadn't been proprietary, none of the issues that made them lose to PCs would have been issues and they may have won the war. In the 80's, every school bought Apple IIe's, so they had the foot in the door. Then, under the leadership of Mr. Jobs, apple slammed the door shut on their foot and here they are doing it again -- also under Steve Jobs. Steve is the problem. Eventually, they'll realize this and fire him again when people get tired of his antics.
    - chaostheory 17y ago

telemachos 17y ago

> People hate being held down, forced into one category, etc. Here's an alternative take on this (with a story). I recently saw Thomas Keller (chef and owner of Per Se here in NYC and French Laundry in CA, among others) talking about a new-ish restaurant of his in CA, Ad Hoc. Ad Hoc has no menus. They make meals and serve them family style. You take what you want from the dishes provided. You have choice only within that range. He argued that true luxury was the freedom from choice. Now in a political context, this is Orwellian and terrifying. But in the context of a meal, it made a lot of sense to me. Let a great chef do his or her magic, and I will try any damn thing they put in front of me and thank them for the privilege. For us as hackers, computer use is more like politics. We want the openness to do what we want, to dig around, to break things and fix them again, to change things. For most people, however, computer use is more like a meal. Give them some great toys to play with and they won't mind the limitations at all.

MrSartorial 17y ago
I actually agree with you 100% that people love something that's easy to play with. That's what I meant when I said that Apple's simplicity is their strength. What I'm talking about is a difference between "open" turnkey and "closed" turnkey. I love turnkey, and so do a lot of people. Who wants to fuss with installing new software, etc.? That's my perspective. Closed-systems are much easier to make turnkey, but they aren't the only alternative. Just because something is open, doesn't mean that it can't be simple. It CAN be tinkered with, but it doesn't have to be to make it work. That response is shorter than I'd like, but I have to run unfortunately.
- actf 17y ago
  Very well said - I really can't understand why so many people on HN think turnkey == closed. Sure there is a correlation, but is it just me or does it seem like everyone has forgotten that correlation != causation.
lambda 17y ago
But, this isn't about giving the users freedom from choice; with 140,000 options in the App Store, that's a lot of choices. This is explicitly about locking developers down, and not allowing them to do things that Apple does not approve of. Want to write a competing web browser? Sorry, you can't. Want to write an awesome JIT that optimizes itself for their shiny new chip? No can do. Imagine if this policy had been in place on their desktop or laptop computers. Half of the technologies that they themselves use and tout as great would not exist. LLVM/clang? WebKit? Heck, the Mach and BSD kernels that this is all built on. None of this would have been created in a closed ecosystem with restrictive policies, and yet Apple is perfectly happy to take advantage of it while not letting anyone else play in their sandbox. The hypocrisy of their policies makes me sick.