Friday, October 22, 2010

Jobs argues for Soviet command philosophy - The Inquirer

Jobs argues for Soviet command philosophy - The Inquirer

Jobs argues for Soviet command philosophy - The Inquirer

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 09:02 AM PDT

Open systems don't always win

Tue Oct 19 2010, 16:58

REALITY DISTORTION appears to be one possible outcome of great success because for Apple CEO Steve Jobs the sales of his Iphone 4 and Ipad have led to open source not being open and most video on the web transforming into the HTML5 format, in his mind.

An enthusiastic Jobs delivered Apple's third quarter 2010 earnings call with an attack on competitors of his big Iphone tablet and a redefinition of what most of the IT world defines as open, with respect to open source software. After CFO Peter Oppenheimer talked about record $20 billion revenue for the third quarter with $11.4 billion from Iphones and Ipads and their accessories combined, Jobs took over and waded into Apple's competitors.

In a telling comment that would probably send a shiver down many a nerd's spine, Jobs said without flinching, "We see tremendous value in having Apple rather than the user being the system integrator." Integrated is the key word for Jobs because for him Android is not an open operating system and saying that it is, is "a bit disingenuous and clouding the real difference between our two approaches".

For Jobs Android is not open software because it has many versions out in the market, making it "very fragmented", and this is a situation made worse with operators adding proprietary interfaces to it. For Apple's founder this leads to many app stores and many Android apps that won't work on Android phones. He mentioned four Android app stores Google's, Vodafone's, Verizon's and Amazon. Actually Jobs forgot to mention the app stores Archos and Toshiba have set up for their tablets.

Yet most people would imagine that a free and open source OS that has many versions on many handsets just means that it's popular. Each mobile network operator can choose the best version for its customers and many mobile users with unlocked handsets can change to whatever version they like.

Jobs gleefully mentioned that Android 2.2 'Froyo' was no good for tablets and it's true, as Google has said so. But when the tablet specific Android OS comes out, like for the phone handsets it's not a stretch of the imagination to realise that those existing tablet products will also be able to upgrade.

For Jobs these different versions for different products and the need to upgrade all leads to an unacceptable reduction in apps because his Itunes store has 300,000 and they all operate on the monolithic Iphone and Ipad operating system that is IOS. But will the fanboi who wants to spend their annual income on most of its 300,000 apps please step forward?

And of course Jobs must be right that people need a selection that would take many years to scroll through because, as he tells us, Apple has been activating 275,000 devices a day on average "for last 30 days". An average that saw activations peak at 300,000 on some days, said Jobs.

But in a revealing moment Jobs did use the word open in relation to Android saying, "Open systems don't always win", then he gave the example of Microsoft abandoning what Jobs called its play-for-sure music strategy. We're not even sure that Jobs actually knows what open source software is, based on what he talked about.

In another magical moment, the Apple founder said "I try to not predict, I try to just report," when asked about what share of his future business will be tablets or phones or something else. Yet minutes earlier he had said of his rivals' tablets, "We think the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival, their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, abandoning their customers and developers."

Jobs reason for thinking 7-inch tablets are too small is because "we think 7-inch is too small for the software people want to use". Answers on a postcard please to the question, what functions do people want to use on tablets that they don't already use on phones?

In what could become seen as a strange admission Jobs said that the Ipad was outselling Macs and that the tablet format would have an impact on notebooks. One wonders, how many Mac sales will be replaced by Ipad sales? In the third quarter Ipod sales were down by 11 per cent year on year. Is it already an Ipad victim? Will Apple's notebooks be next?

But to top it all off, Jobs made a startling statement about video on the Internet. He said "Most of the video now available on the web is in HTML5." So there you have it, according to Steve Jobs, whose world view seems increasingly like that of a James Bond super villain - his video format already reigns supreme.

So never forget that "open systems don't always win". No doubt many octogenarian former members of the Soviet Union's politburo were telling themselves the same thing about Western societies, right up until November 1989. ยต

 

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