4 ms·

Lock-in was their business model back in the 80s, it still is to this day. It got them to the verge of bankruptcy then, it will be their downfall now.

by yholio 6y ago

hapless 6y ago
One may hope, but I doubt it. They make a majority of the money in mobile.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
How was Apple’s business model from the 1980s right through until the App Store got popular about “lock-in” though? You could say that any platform vendor’s business model is predicated on some form of lock-in. Apple’s poor financial state under Sculley was more because they had an objectively poor product (going by the technical merits alone), a confusing product line-up, a failure to recapture the education sector that was quickly switching to Windows due to its enterprise-friendly features like Group Policy and compatibility with Directory Services like NetWare, and because it didn’t have a plan going forward into the 21st century. I do note that in the 1990s under Sculley they both licensed macOS to third-party hardware vendors and were fine with PowerPC being adopted by other platforms (even Microsoft, and evening when it was incompatible with Apple’s architecture) - that’s the very opposite of the vendor lock-in-in that you’re describing. It can be argued that Apple’s “nice guy” approach further contributed to their decline - it certainly didn’t help raise sales nor their share-price. Aldo consider when Steve Jobs returned they made deals with Microsoft to ensure Office would still be available for the Mac. Apple’s stewardship of WebKit was about driving open web-standards, even though Safari is very much Apple-exclusive. Apple also made a big-deal about how the then-new Mac OS X was a POSIX-compliant BSD system. I think you’re confusing Apple’s aggressive control of the user-experience with IBM and Oracle-style lock-in. With IBM/Oracle a company or gov dept will have sunk $lots into a system that they cannot take away to a different vendor: there is literally no alternative than to continue with whatever gargantuan system their sales reps convinced the customer to buy. This is why banks and insurance companies are still rocking IBM Z-series today after 30+ years even though a system that’s just as resilient could be built for a fraction of the price on commodity hardware (I’m not going to pretend that Linux was a viable option back then, but systems like VMS or a project requirement to use POSIX were options back then). When people say that banks/insurance companies are “conservative” when it comes to technology I think it’s better to describe them as being technically inept or even corrupt which led to them being caught in vendor lock-in which paralysed them internally: I feel the arguments that they don’t want to risk losing billions over a bad technology move are just excuses for being unable to make a technology move even if they wanted to. I believe that Apple sees that their controlling of the user-experience of its customers creates value for the user - whereas IBM/Oracle-style lock-in rarely does. I reckon 90%+ of non-developers using Apple hardware today (iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc) could switch to Android, Surface, and Windows PC respectively without losing much in the way of capability - but they would lose a cohesive and well-thought-out user-experience, which is Apple’s moat.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  > Safari is very much Apple-exclusive. Nit: Safari shipped for Windows for a few years

Lock-in was their business model back in the 80s, it still is to this day. It got them to the verge of bankruptcy then, it will be their downfall now.

by yholio 6y ago

Lock-in was their business model back in the 80s, it still is to this day. It got them to the verge of bankruptcy then, it will be their downfall now.

hapless 6y ago

One may hope, but I doubt it. They make a majority of the money in mobile.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

How was Apple’s business model from the 1980s right through until the App Store got popular about “lock-in” though? You could say that any platform vendor’s business model is predicated on some form of lock-in. Apple’s poor financial state under Sculley was more because they had an objectively poor product (going by the technical merits alone), a confusing product line-up, a failure to recapture the education sector that was quickly switching to Windows due to its enterprise-friendly features like Group Policy and compatibility with Directory Services like NetWare, and because it didn’t have a plan going forward into the 21st century. I do note that in the 1990s under Sculley they both licensed macOS to third-party hardware vendors and were fine with PowerPC being adopted by other platforms (even Microsoft, and evening when it was incompatible with Apple’s architecture) - that’s the very opposite of the vendor lock-in-in that you’re describing. It can be argued that Apple’s “nice guy” approach further contributed to their decline - it certainly didn’t help raise sales nor their share-price. Aldo consider when Steve Jobs returned they made deals with Microsoft to ensure Office would still be available for the Mac. Apple’s stewardship of WebKit was about driving open web-standards, even though Safari is very much Apple-exclusive. Apple also made a big-deal about how the then-new Mac OS X was a POSIX-compliant BSD system. I think you’re confusing Apple’s aggressive control of the user-experience with IBM and Oracle-style lock-in. With IBM/Oracle a company or gov dept will have sunk $lots into a system that they cannot take away to a different vendor: there is literally no alternative than to continue with whatever gargantuan system their sales reps convinced the customer to buy. This is why banks and insurance companies are still rocking IBM Z-series today after 30+ years even though a system that’s just as resilient could be built for a fraction of the price on commodity hardware (I’m not going to pretend that Linux was a viable option back then, but systems like VMS or a project requirement to use POSIX were options back then). When people say that banks/insurance companies are “conservative” when it comes to technology I think it’s better to describe them as being technically inept or even corrupt which led to them being caught in vendor lock-in which paralysed them internally: I feel the arguments that they don’t want to risk losing billions over a bad technology move are just excuses for being unable to make a technology move even if they wanted to. I believe that Apple sees that their controlling of the user-experience of its customers creates value for the user - whereas IBM/Oracle-style lock-in rarely does. I reckon 90%+ of non-developers using Apple hardware today (iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc) could switch to Android, Surface, and Windows PC respectively without losing much in the way of capability - but they would lose a cohesive and well-thought-out user-experience, which is Apple’s moat.

saagarjha 6y ago
> Safari is very much Apple-exclusive. Nit: Safari shipped for Windows for a few years