We Love To Hate Microsoft But What About Apple?

The reasons so many people hate (or intensely dislike) Microsoft are
plentiful and for the most part, pretty easy to understand.  If you were to ask
around, reasons cited would centralize around too much power, lack of
innovation, stifling creativity, being “closed” and generally products that on
average, fail to delight customers.  If you’re one of those that hates
Microsoft, I’m sure you have your reasons.  Many of us love to hate
Microsoft.

And, of course, lots of us love Apple.  We love
Apple in that sheepishly adoring way that causes us to want to run our fingers
lovingly over our favorite Apple product when nobody is looking just because it
makes us happy.  Happy in a good way, and not in that weird, twisted kind of
way.  It’s an innocent love.  All sunshine and daffodils. 

But, I’m going to argue that though we will likely continue to love Apple for
a while, there may come a day we hate doing so. 

Why might we hate to love Apple someday?

One simple, fundamental reason:  Apple cares too much about customers, and
the customer experience — and not much about the community.  Apple has
become a benevolent dictator.  They’ll invest lots of time, energy and
money making their products great and their customers “happy”.  But, at their
core, they want it to be them that delivers that happiness — not
someone else.  Third-party developers are a necessary evil.

There’s a reason for this:  Apple (rightly) thinks that a phenomenal
experience is created by closed, proprietary systems by companies that control
the boundaries and edges of product design. 

Great experiences are created when the experience designer can dictate and
control as much as possible.  The iPod would not have been great if the hardware
were designed by one company, the device software by another, applications by
another, etc.  The iPod was exceptionally great because Apple controlled it
all.

This is why the original Apple computers had such a better
experience than the IBM PC.  On the IBM PC platform different companies
built the hardware, OS, apps, devices, etc.  Lots of creativity — but
understandably, lots of crap.  And lots of complexity for the user/customer.

So, Apple likes control.  But this advantage of control only goes so far. 
Eventually, users will come to value something more than the delightful
experience.  Might be performance of an individual component (larger storage),
lower price, wider selection of add-ons, etc.  (Maybe even replaceable
batteries, less confining DRM, etc.)

Now, thanks to Apple, millions of consumers are enjoying technology like
digital music that would likely not have done so without Apple’s fanatical focus
on solving for ease-of-use and experience.  But, now that we’re there, will our
love of Apple endure? 

And, if we do continue to love Apple, will we hate ourselves for doing so
someday?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

The insight for startups?  Some of the biggest innovations and market successes come from companies that are total control-freaks and fanatically focused on solving the problem.  Often, the problem is best solved by an uncompromising purity of approach.  

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