What makes Apple so anti-social?…
I’m not talking here about any corporate level misanthropic activities. I am focused on Apple’s seeming lack of interest in embracing social technologies and integrating them into the core foundation of their various product offerings. For a company that prides itself on thought leadership, creativity in this space seems to be completely lacking.
Apple’s embrace of the internet is strictly ‘Web 1.0′…
This is a hard one to figure out.
Apple has the foundation to build out an incredible social network. They have a footprint on 100’s of Millions of desktops called ‘iTunes’ - a footprint that includes credit card verified user identity for everyone that has purchased a download from the iTunes store. They have millions of iPhones in the market, again with credit card verified user identities. They have experience with providing centralized computing resources in both their iTunes store and .MAC service, and a close enough relationship with Google that they could get help scale that to whatever level they might need.
And most of all, they have some of the smartest, most innovative people in the technology world working for them.
But nothing they produce, as good as it is, seems to embrace the social web…
The iPhone has redefined the smartphone category, but it lacks even basic IM capabilities. The new Leopard version of OS X has created core services around audio and video processing, but lacks any core social foundation beyond support for LDAP like directories and UNIX permissions. iChat is strictly old-school IM with a video twist. (It doesn’t even seem to handle multiple concurrent conversations well.) The iLife suite does fare a little better - with RSS feeds of iPhoto albums and the ability to publish video to YouTube - but these capabilities are really just superficially integrated bolt-ons.
Even Apple’s Pro Application suite is strictly standalone. There isn’t a concept of identity or collaboration built into any of their pro applications, despite the naturally collaborative nature of the creative space they service.
So what gives?…
While there is no clear answer why, I do have a theory.
As a company, Apple is simply a manifestation of Steve Jobs’ vision and creativity. And that vision has a blind spot. I don’t believe that Steve Jobs ‘gets’ social computing, at least not in a foundational way. While most younger people - a big part of Apple’s customer base - both work and play as part of continuous social web, my guess is that Steve Jobs does not.
And therefore, Apple’s products don’t either…
I think this lack of focus on social computing is Apple’s biggest weak spot. While delivering some of the most incredibly well designed software interfaces seamlessly integrated with some of the most innovative hardware footprints in the market, Apple continues to focus on providing solutions that are fundamentally very traditional. To date, their design efforts have been about simplifying, in elegant and innovative ways, the user experience of existing platform definitions - not in creating or embracing new ones.
The risk Apple faces is that, over time, the capabilities they deliver will become less encompassing of the ways people want to work, play, and interact. While this probably won’t hurt them in the near term, that feature gap could become the chink in their “ecosystem armor” that new competitors will be able to exploit. History teaches us that corporate fortunes in the technology space can change very quickly.
Apple can’t afford to ignore this…
All that said, I’m optimistic about what Apple will ultimately do in the social web space.
There are many bright people at Apple that I’m sure understand this domain intimately, and recognize how embracing it can bring real value to what they offer. In addition, Steve Jobs has shown that he can change direction when the situation calls for it - even when it means doing a public about face. (The clearest example of this is that once derided Intel CPU’s now power Apple’s entire computer line).
The power of this brain trust, combined with a pragmatically flexible leader, bode well for where Apple may be headed here. I have no doubt that once Apple gets social computing into their corporate DNA, they will be able to package it in some incredible and ground-breaking ways.
I’d just love to see that happen sooner rather than later…
I love it when people point out all the things that Apple is doing wrong. I’m laughing and they’re laughing…all the way to the bank.
The “social Web”– gag me. I know there are people out there addicted to the social Web; however, I have to wonder how many of those people are past puberty. More specifically, how much disposable income to these people have?
For me, and probably millions of others, the best part of the Web is that I don’t HAVE to have a lot of the kinds of unpleasant social interaction that I was forced to have prior to the Web.
Agreed. I was even surprised and disappointed to see the introduction of iChat. If I want real-time communication, I’ll pick up a phone.
Thanks for the comments. I wanted to throw out a few more things for you to consider…
If you keep the view that what you see today on Facebook or MySpace is the extent of the Social Web, I would agree with you that it really isn’t a significant development beyond a small, young demographic - and is more a fashion than a foundation.
But the “Social Web” is actually more than that, with applications that go beyond the ‘vanity pages’ the media tends to focus on.
Google’s search heuristics are anchored in the social web, basing relevance on the preponderance and quality of links to specific sites. Recommendation systems like those found on Amazon or Netflix are also social in nature and depend on a community to derive value. This is also true of music recommendation sites like Last.FM or Pandora. There are also emergent segments like creating topical bookmarks in browsers that are populated based on what other “peer” browsers look at and bookmark.
Many of the most interesting uses of the social web today don’t require people to ever interact directly - they simply provide increased value to everyone based on the self-interested actions of members of the community. And these are services that reach across a broad demographic of web users - young and old.
There are also significant opportunities for social technologies in the professional markets. The financial space, an area that I have worked in for quite a while, is essentially one large social network - and has been since well before the internet or ARPANET even existed. It operates based on many components that are struggling to make their way into the online world - trust, reputation, security, permissioning, and semantically driven context. These are elements that are applicable to most other professional domains that require interaction, and are all foundational social capabilities that could find their way into the foundation of much of what Apple produces.
There is so much more that can be done in the social web space , and I think that Apple is very well positioned to contribute.
As for my criticism of Apple…
If you get a chance to read back through my posts on Apple, I think you’ll see that I have been very generous in my praise for what they have done. Whenever I criticize, I do it through the lens of a loyal Apple user prodding for improvements in things I see lacking. I am a major fan of Apple’s products, and have based a great deal of my production workflow on Apple’s hardware and software.
However, the latent problem for many companies that achieve great success is that it can mask many underlying weaknesses - weaknesses that can become far more visible and significant in more challenging or competitive markets. To frame this historically, the seeds of Microsoft’s current problems were sown at a time when their stock was soaring and they were THE unstoppable force in the computer industry. There is a Darwinian nature to the technology sector that punishes the complacent and pushes for change - and that force tends to create opportunities for new entrants.
While I in no way mean to compare Apple and Microsoft as companies or cultures, I do want Apple to avoid a similar trajectory to Microsoft in the market. Nothing would make me happier than to see Job’s & Co. “laughing all the way to the bank” for a long time into the future!
Thanks for reading the post and taking the time to comment!
-john