Back in 1994 when we started Dialogue with an SMS application called PageMail we gave ourselves three years before we were either acquired or out of business. Why? Well in those days the personal computer software world was controlled by Microsoft and the general view was that if you did something well and it was popular then Microsoft would either do it better and make it cheaper, or acquire you and your product. The result would be the same but you would be wealthier if you were acquired.
We've lasted longer than 3 years partly because SMS didn't get as popular as soon in the US as elsewhere. We've also seen that Microsoft has become less important in the world and this is partly due to anti-trust lawsuits which have prevented them from having a stranglehold on the market. The most prominent of these was the one which prevented Microsoft from automatically installing Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system.
Now we seem to be seeing the same approach coming along from Apple and threatening small groups of developers who just like Dialogue are just trying to create and sell innovative solutions to an embryonic market.
The advent of IOS 5 marks for me the stage at which the world's support for Apple will start to weaken and it will be seen less as a force for good and more and more in the same light as we saw Microsoft at the height of its powers.
I was one of many who applauded Apple for its pioneering iPhone. In one fell swoop it disrupted the mobile industry forever. Nothing demonstrates this more than a look at the once unbeatable market leader Nokia. Nokia has lost market share, lost its Finnish locus of control and lost its' operating system.
I also applauded Apple's way of dealing with mobile operators who have always been in control of what went on at the handset. This control has not given us great usability nor great innovation. It has pretty much continued with a status quo. Apple pretty much single-handedly democratised the production of a better user experience.
It has been fantastic to see m0re and more handset manufacturers making devices which are as close to the look and feel of an iPhone as they can get without infringing upon Apple's intellectual property.
So all of this work by Apple has been a breath of fresh air to an industry which was set in it's ways. Apple was the new kid on the block, doing something different, frightening the old dinosaurs and we all loved them for it. I still have no sympathy for other handset manufacturers nor carriers who have had the resources to innovate but failed to. But in the background something less healthy was going on. Apple was getting to enjoy its growing market share and it moved from the 'little guy' fighting the giants, to the 'big guy' who liked to throw his weight about.
The first hints of this were the controls it placed around what Apps you could install and run on your iPhone. But we forgave them for that because there were so many Apps out there that we ignored the ones we missed. Then there was the very public denial of support for Flash on the iPhone. Again we forgave them for that because Adobe is big enough to take care of itself, and we've all suspected that Flash wasn't as stable as it needs to be. But all the same we don't put up with this 'Big Brother' style control over what we use on our PCs.
Now we find that with IOS 5 Apple has included all kinds of new components, applications and services and has been accused on several fronts of cherry picking the best third party Apps and recreating these to be part of the Apple product set.
I love the idea of not needing to synchronise with a PC. Even with my MacBook Pro it takes 3 hours to sync my iPhone. It takes twice as long with my iPad so it has ceased to be a suitable solution. So moving iTunes to the cloud and synchronising over wi-fi is fantastic. But wasn't there a wi-fi sync App which was refused approval by Apple and ended up being a very successful App for jailbroken iPhones? Also, moving iTunes to the cloud makes sense, but iCloud also provides all kinds of other document storage and synchronisation. This poses challenges to products like Dropbox and services like Flickr to compete.
iMessage goes down the same route. There are lots of Apps which merge instant messaging with SMS. One of the more popular is WhatsApp Messenger. These Apps have had to work around all kinds of difficulties to provide a good product with a good user experience. They are all significantly challenged by Apple bringing out iMessage which is a closed App and doesn't have any obvious API access.
In a recent article, Tim Hanlon explores this idea of Apple putting App developers out of business even further. Sadly, he concludes that it's Apple's ball and they will decide what you do with it and for how long.
I guess we do all have to play Apple's game just as we once did with Microsoft. But there are starting to be the stirrings of anti-trust lawsuits against Apple now and at some point, if they are not careful, they will become the target of a lot more.
Perhaps it is the natural order of things that empires whether they are technological or political eventually become too strong and people turn against them. It woud be a shame if this is now starting to happen with Apple. It probably won't stop me from using their products, but it will reduce my admiration for their business.
