Is 2011 like 1994 for Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and the Web?(scobleizer.com)
scobleizer.com
Is 2011 like 1994 for Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and the Web?
http://scobleizer.com/2010/04/11/is-2011-like-1994-for-apple-twitter-facebook-and-the-web/
5 comments
Luckily for Apple, "a better Product, with a better OS and it is open" is extremely hard to pull off. People frequently seem to think that people just have to replicate Apple's product and add a heaping dose of "Open", but it's partly the closed nature of Apple's approach that enables them to do what they do.
Apple had problems in the 90s because Windows became similar enough to the Mac OS that people who once preferred the Mac no longer thought it was worth the price premium. Sales fell and developers "defected" to Windows.
[deleted]
I thought Apple failed in the 90s because they tried to go mainstream.
Everybody above in this thread of "Why Apple failed in the 90s" -- you're focusing on tiny facets of why they had so many problems, so let me tell you the true story.
As someone who was there, covering the whole Apple saga, going to the tradeshows, etc., etc., I can tell you what the problems really were.
1. Quixotic, inconstant leadership that didn't understand technology and also didn't have a vision. Nobody has run Apple better than Jobs 1.0, much less Jobs 2.0.
2. That lead to a lack of focus in the product arena, trying this, trying that, producing printers, scanners, way too many types of Mac, home gaming devices without a chance, trying to do everything at once. With so many failures, and products killed or abandoned left or right, the company had lots its spirit and so did the employees.
It's especially amazing to look at the Apple Design book, which has many photos of gorgeous and amazing prototypes from the design group made during the 90s, which of course never made it to the light of day. Except the TAM.
3. When all that scrabbling failed, the (silly) leadership decided that the reason Microsoft won was OS licensing. That may be strictly true, but Apple had always been built as a hardware company, and the attempted head transplant nearly killed it. (That's why the first thing Jobs did when he was back was to call in the Power Computing, etc., licensing deals.)
4. Entré doomed retail deals with sales channels that were more like shit channels. Seriously? BestBuy in the 90s? Bad idea.
5. And, of course, they had crap-all for a future OS roadmap. Copland was doomed and years late.
All of the above comes down to ignorant leadership. Scully, Amelio, they were all unfocused and impotent at best and deeply incompetent at worst.
When NeXT bought Apple for -$400 mil, and Jobs came back, grown up a lot as a human being, it was like when a missing parent shows up after a kid has been living on his own, building forts, skipping school, making a mess and eating ice cream all day.
At first, it seems terrible, but secretly the kid is relieved and glad that some discipline, somebody who knows better, has finally returned.
Jobs cleaned house. He tore down the forts and restored the living areas to a semblance of adulthood (bye bye Power Computing). He took away the ice cream (bye bye Newton, sniff). He made the employees go back to school… he's a demanding and exacting boss, with a clear vision, and not afraid to tell people when their work is not measuring up.
And Apple grew up.
End of story.
------
Did Apple lose developers to Windows? Extremely few. The people who were with Apple in the 90s were almost exclusively hardcore fans.
Did Apple not have as much software as Windows? Yes, but it was of higher quality; Windows has never had a shareware community (so willing to pay) like Macs have always had. There was a tight-knitness there that existed nowhere else.
Did they lose distribution of physical software packages in stores? Yes. See their retail woes above. This was a symptom, not a cause. Any retailer would be pissed that they were expected to carry 15 models of Mac that were practically indistinguishable from each other. A huge amount of Mac software was high-quality, professional shareware, downloaded or copied on floppy disks at Mac user groups.
Was trying to 'go mainstream' the problem? No, it was a tiny facet of the core issue -- worthless leadership.
-----
I also don't get why anyone would say "Why Apple failed in the 1990s" -- since it's still around, and has boatloads of cash, the core principles are still the same as they ever were. They were just buried for a while under fear.
Apple was never truly near death. You can't trust the news media and internet gossip, since they've been predicting Apple's death for 20 years.
Apple has always kept boatloads of cash on hand and its IP was extremely valuable. Throughout much of the 90s, its cash reserves were higher than its stock price * outstanding issues.
Apple could have chugged on for another decade with no problem.
As someone who was there, covering the whole Apple saga, going to the tradeshows, etc., etc., I can tell you what the problems really were.
1. Quixotic, inconstant leadership that didn't understand technology and also didn't have a vision. Nobody has run Apple better than Jobs 1.0, much less Jobs 2.0.
2. That lead to a lack of focus in the product arena, trying this, trying that, producing printers, scanners, way too many types of Mac, home gaming devices without a chance, trying to do everything at once. With so many failures, and products killed or abandoned left or right, the company had lots its spirit and so did the employees.
It's especially amazing to look at the Apple Design book, which has many photos of gorgeous and amazing prototypes from the design group made during the 90s, which of course never made it to the light of day. Except the TAM.
3. When all that scrabbling failed, the (silly) leadership decided that the reason Microsoft won was OS licensing. That may be strictly true, but Apple had always been built as a hardware company, and the attempted head transplant nearly killed it. (That's why the first thing Jobs did when he was back was to call in the Power Computing, etc., licensing deals.)
4. Entré doomed retail deals with sales channels that were more like shit channels. Seriously? BestBuy in the 90s? Bad idea.
5. And, of course, they had crap-all for a future OS roadmap. Copland was doomed and years late.
All of the above comes down to ignorant leadership. Scully, Amelio, they were all unfocused and impotent at best and deeply incompetent at worst.
When NeXT bought Apple for -$400 mil, and Jobs came back, grown up a lot as a human being, it was like when a missing parent shows up after a kid has been living on his own, building forts, skipping school, making a mess and eating ice cream all day.
At first, it seems terrible, but secretly the kid is relieved and glad that some discipline, somebody who knows better, has finally returned.
Jobs cleaned house. He tore down the forts and restored the living areas to a semblance of adulthood (bye bye Power Computing). He took away the ice cream (bye bye Newton, sniff). He made the employees go back to school… he's a demanding and exacting boss, with a clear vision, and not afraid to tell people when their work is not measuring up.
And Apple grew up.
End of story.
------
Did Apple lose developers to Windows? Extremely few. The people who were with Apple in the 90s were almost exclusively hardcore fans.
Did Apple not have as much software as Windows? Yes, but it was of higher quality; Windows has never had a shareware community (so willing to pay) like Macs have always had. There was a tight-knitness there that existed nowhere else.
Did they lose distribution of physical software packages in stores? Yes. See their retail woes above. This was a symptom, not a cause. Any retailer would be pissed that they were expected to carry 15 models of Mac that were practically indistinguishable from each other. A huge amount of Mac software was high-quality, professional shareware, downloaded or copied on floppy disks at Mac user groups.
Was trying to 'go mainstream' the problem? No, it was a tiny facet of the core issue -- worthless leadership.
-----
I also don't get why anyone would say "Why Apple failed in the 1990s" -- since it's still around, and has boatloads of cash, the core principles are still the same as they ever were. They were just buried for a while under fear.
Apple was never truly near death. You can't trust the news media and internet gossip, since they've been predicting Apple's death for 20 years.
Apple has always kept boatloads of cash on hand and its IP was extremely valuable. Throughout much of the 90s, its cash reserves were higher than its stock price * outstanding issues.
Apple could have chugged on for another decade with no problem.
This is what I love about Hacker News. I think it is one of those rare few places where one voices his/her opinion and gets back an amazing, intelligent, well thought through response. As I have not been in the business in the 1990s I can only rely on records of people who saw it first hand. I enjoyed your post so much, because it is a very thorough explanation for an issue I heard only very onesided opinions so far.
Glad you liked it.
What I strongly dislike about HN is how such a high percentage of commentors feel that, because they are smart in a given topic, they can hold forth on any topic.
I'm tired of seeing people get the facts so wrong about Apple, Apple's history, the legality or precendents for 3.3.1, etc., etc., etc.
Not because I care. The truth doesn't care, it just goes on being true. But because it's a bunch of people who have no clue, arguing with other people who also have no clue. It's like a contest for who can make up the most shit.
There are tons of books that detail Apple's history. If you want to learn about Apple, read Accidental Empires, Apple Confidential 2.0, West of Eden, Insanely Great: Life and Times. There's the book Wozniak co-wrote, taht told his side of the story, and there are several books that focus on Jobs.
Gil Amelio even wrote a whine-ography called Firing Line. Sculley wrote one called, if you can believe it or not, Odyssey.
Apple didn't happen in Ancient Mesopotamia, it happened in the 1970s. There is massive amounts of documentation. There's absolutely no excuse to debating it in ignorance.
And there's tons to gain from studying Apple, because it's got a fascinating history and had an unbelievably enormous impact on what the tech world looks like today.
There are plenty of people on HN making the same stupid mistakes that nearly "killed" Apple as a successful company (regardless of how much cash they had).
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." - Twain
What I strongly dislike about HN is how such a high percentage of commentors feel that, because they are smart in a given topic, they can hold forth on any topic.
I'm tired of seeing people get the facts so wrong about Apple, Apple's history, the legality or precendents for 3.3.1, etc., etc., etc.
Not because I care. The truth doesn't care, it just goes on being true. But because it's a bunch of people who have no clue, arguing with other people who also have no clue. It's like a contest for who can make up the most shit.
There are tons of books that detail Apple's history. If you want to learn about Apple, read Accidental Empires, Apple Confidential 2.0, West of Eden, Insanely Great: Life and Times. There's the book Wozniak co-wrote, taht told his side of the story, and there are several books that focus on Jobs.
Gil Amelio even wrote a whine-ography called Firing Line. Sculley wrote one called, if you can believe it or not, Odyssey.
Apple didn't happen in Ancient Mesopotamia, it happened in the 1970s. There is massive amounts of documentation. There's absolutely no excuse to debating it in ignorance.
And there's tons to gain from studying Apple, because it's got a fascinating history and had an unbelievably enormous impact on what the tech world looks like today.
There are plenty of people on HN making the same stupid mistakes that nearly "killed" Apple as a successful company (regardless of how much cash they had).
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." - Twain
Maybe the world is just too big for only one platform.
Why does he write "baaaahhhhssstttaaaarrrrdddddssss" when he means to write "bastards" ?! Reads very silly to me. Is he trying to be cute? Or trying to get around content-blocking systems? (One would think he could just write "batsards")
I like the analogy between the 2010 Time iPad app (and similar worse-than-the-web publisher-specific apps) and 1994's Pointcast: similarly pretty but equally doomed.
Maybe, maybe not. If anything, I think that the current interest in these sorts of apps is because they can cache content. The network is not pervasive yet, thus using a web browser to view all of it is impractical.
When you can reliably browse the web at broadband speeds in a car going through Bumfuck, Appalachia, the web will emerge triumphant again.
When you can reliably browse the web at broadband speeds in a car going through Bumfuck, Appalachia, the web will emerge triumphant again.
Precaching didn't seem the main selling point of these apps to me; but if it is: perhaps HTML5 manifests/local-storage is a better way to preserve webbiness and allow offline operation.
Maybe, maybe not. It's definitely my favorite aspect of them. It's very nice to be able to read a bunch of top articles from the BBC, the Times, and NPR on my way to work with all the article pictures and really fast loading. The only way it'd be better is if I just had to touch a single button for all of them to update their caches (and that the NPR app would load the audio stories in addition to the text and pictures).
edit: BTW, I take a train to work, so it's not like I'm doing this while driving a car or something.
edit: BTW, I take a train to work, so it's not like I'm doing this while driving a car or something.
I never bought the 'iPad is going to save publishing' nonsense because I knew big media was going to be too greedy & clueless. I think a killer app would be something that grabs RSS headlines AND content, then automatically applies a nice layouting algorithm to make it look like a magazine on the iPad. Like readability on steroids.
More like 1775
malcognition.com
Today they have more developers then they would need.
Still their tactics has one weak point; They must deliver the best product in the market. In the moment there is a better Product, with a better OS and it is open, the users and developers would abandon the "Apple Empire".
The loyalty and "fanboyism" for the Apple brand is not for Apple itself, but for the high quality products they consistently produce.