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Apple is continuously under fire for lack of openness. Once the industry's underdog, as it's market power grows, Apple slowly becoming the target of many attacks, the latest one from Tim O’Reilly.
Interestingly enough, Apple never claimed to be open. Or nice. Apple claimed one thing only - that it knows how to create great innovative products. They aren't cheap. They are good. and that's how the Cupertino based company mange to have 10% market share with 83% market cap in comparison to Microsoft.
The myth of openness
Being open is a business decision. Nothing more and nothing less. Some companies harness openness to cut development cost (open source companies are great example). Some do it in order to cultivate a vibrant development community that in turn increase its value and market power (Google is a good example). But there is nothing sacred or better in openness.
The irony is that one of the most so called open companies in the world, Twitter, just dropped an A bomb on its ecosystem, when it announced the development of desktop and mobile clients. While the blogsphere is attacking Apple and praising Twitter, the industry darling itself single-handedly sent the companies that made it so succesful to the deadpool.
So, let's stop being naive. At the end, it is all about business. The rest is fluff.
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2 Comments
Kfir,
While I share your view that openness is a business decision, there are a few things to note:
1. Twitter was never open source. It simply provided APIs to its service. It has been slammed by others about the fact that it doesn't follow open standards.
2. Some of the success of the iPhone/iPad can be attributed to the AppStore, which is based on a set of open APIs provided to developers – quite similar to what twitter has done, with a minor difference of having developers sign a contract to gain access to the API.
3. Twitter has decided to go and develop its own clients, but it hasn't decided not to support those who have developed their own – so in a sense they can still “compete”. If it was Apple, they would have simply changed the rules of the game – like they did to Adobe Flash.
Thanks for your comment.
Tend to agree though buying the best Twitter client and making it official is almost identical to killing the competition