John Gruber commenting on an article predicting a sharp drop in iPad market shares:
And the evidence of platforms winning solely on the basis of openness is what? And the Android handset maker selling more units or making more profit than Apple (or RIM) is who?
Yeah, yeah. We get it, John. Apple is #1 in profits and #1 in manufacturers selling handsets.
Which is great for Apple.
And terrible for consumer choice.
#1 by Jason on August 25, 2010 - 11:04 pm
How is it bad for consumer choice? Nothing is stopping folks from buying Android, Blackberry, Windows or any other mobile device. More of them just seem to choose iPhone, and no one Android manufacturer seems capable of changing that right now.
#2 by Scott on August 26, 2010 - 4:29 am
Richard Gabriel. “Worse is Better.” By now a famous, canonical piece on software technology development and adoption.
Google for it and read it. All thoughtful people about technology will be so enriched for the better by reading it.
And no, Apple’s early fruits of R&D and market domination are not “bad” for consumer choice in even the technology-adoption-time-scale near term.
Let’s all just say of Apple “good for them – for now.”
#3 by Cedric on August 26, 2010 - 4:33 am
In a world where Android wouldn’t exist, your only realistic choices for a smart phone would basically be either an iPhone 3 or an iPhone 4 (and limited to AT&T in the US, period).
I can’t see how this would be a good thing for consumers.
Thankfully, the market found its way around this nascent monopoly.
#4 by Scott on August 26, 2010 - 4:35 am
BTW, Gruber’s comments do have an interesting take, but he neglects the fact that *THE TOTAL TABLET DEVICE MARKET* is roughly 0% of the combined PC and Cell Phone markets.
So right now (and YES – *kudos* to Apple’s innovation prowess and marketing chutzpah), ~100% of 0 = 0 !!!!
With these devices and the market for them, the future is still basically an open question before us all.
Scott
#5 by Jesse Kuhnert on August 26, 2010 - 5:26 am
How can apple have a monopoly on the market when they created it? By all laws of what is just and right apple simply has a better product and their sales reflect that.
If android/chrome isn’t “good enough” to overtake apple that’s Google’s problem and Google’s failure.
#6 by PJ on August 26, 2010 - 6:32 am
The evidence of platforms winning solely on the basis of openness is the massive x86-based ecosystem: PCs outnumber macs something over 30 to 1 due to Apple’s “closed is better” stance in the 80s.
I don’t say Apple is going to die, but they’re not going to continue to dominate – they only way they’ve remained relevant is by co-opting those ‘open’ bits: macs now run a BSD-based OS on x86 hardware.
#7 by Simon on August 27, 2010 - 10:47 pm
This is non sense. Consumers have made apple number one.
#8 by Jason. on August 27, 2010 - 11:05 pm
Cedric, you say “In a world where Android wouldnt exist, your only realistic choices for a smart phone would basically be either an iPhone”.
You’re tacitly admitting that the iPhone is a superior product, buy suggesting that only Android devices, and not Blackberry, Windows mobile, and Palm devices are “realistic choices for smart phones”.
And yet those devices did (and do) exist long before iPhone came along.
How exactly is a superior product bad for consumer choice, if it’s consumers who are making the selection? I’m not a big fan of Windows, but its dominance wasn’t bad for consumer choice: they always had the choice of not buying it.
It’s fine to dislike Apple or iPhone, but you might as well argue that the success of wine is bad for consumer choice because you prefer beer.
#9 by Andrew Binstock on August 29, 2010 - 11:42 pm
PJ’s comment is right on. The openness of the PC and the closed nature of the Mac determined those products’ respective market share.
In software, Linux would be a good example of open winning vs. closed on the server.
Ultimately, though, I don’t think that open vs. closed software makes a lot of difference in terms of market acceptance. The price of OSS software has far more to do with its success than the ability to access the code.
#10 by RC Truck Fan on September 1, 2010 - 3:19 am
I believe that Android is going to give Apple a good run for their money, hopefully introducing the competition that was needed. Honestly – a tablet without a camera for VOIP. Can’t have been that expensive to do.