inqk.net

So John Gruber named Henry Blodget his Jackass of the Week because of a piece Blodget wrote at Silicon Alley Insider suggesting that Google will do to Apple in the ’10s what Microsoft did to Apple in the ’80s. That is, completely marginalise the company and develop and control the de facto operating system.

Gruber’s argues that the situation is different this time around and that, because the analogy to the 1980s is flawed, the argument is wrong.

I agree that Blodget fails to properly explain what the danger is to Apple. But I also think Gruber writes the argument off a little too quickly. Blodget’s not wrong because there is no analogy between now and then. (He’s also not wrong because the iPhone is selling. Windows is still selling and I don’t think there’s many people who would say Microsoft doesn’t have problems.)

If Blodget is wrong, it’s because he fails to explain exactly what Microsoft did right in the ’80s and what Apple did wrong. From the Silicon Alley Insider piece:

What was that mistake?

The insistence on selling fully integrated hardware and software devices, instead of focusing on low-cost, widely distributed software.

…

With Microsoft spraying the same software platform across dozens of hardware manufacturers, the world had a chance to standardize on a single, cheaper development platform.

This doesn’t fully explain the situation and begs the question as to why being able to standardize a single, cheaper development platform led to Microsoft’s success.

The reason low-cost, widely-distributed software was important to dominating the PC market was because at the time the PC market was essentially the business market. And what the business market cared about–more than usability, innovation or anything else–was the bottom line. If they cared about anything else it was applications, but, really, at first, applications weren’t what sold DOS; it was the price.

Of course, applications became important. Indeed, once Microsoft obtained ubiquity, it then set about maintaining that ubiquity through applications. This is important because, to coin a phrase, someone else will always build a cheaper mouse trap. You can’t dominate solely on price. You can get scale, but at the end of the day you need to be able to solve a problem that someone else can’t. You need to be the only mouse trap running Outlook.

Is this what’s going to happen this time around? If Google can get to ubiquity, then, yes, it might be able to cement itself Windows-style in people’s pockets. But that is a big if and, as Gruber is correct to note, it’s an if Blodget never explains (other than to appeal to a vague historical analogy).

The problem with the analogy is that this time around the market is not business, it’s the consumer. And while the consumer cares about price, it’s not the determining factor in the way that it is for an IT department. Sure, consumers care about price but if that’s the only thing they cared about, we’d all be carrying around Nokias.

Is there something that is a determining factor (or at least close enough)? It’s hard to see anything that unifies consumers in the same way that cost unifies business customers. In fact it’s tempting to conclude that such a task is impossible since consumers are not a homogeneous group. Some people are going to buy a product for its quality, some for its price, some for whether it matches their clothes. And it’s at this point that maybe (maybe) we’ve found it. Consumers want variety.

Consumers want different things and they want to be different. No product can ever completely satisfy that need if it only comes in one flavour on a family of devices from one manufacturer. It’s for this reason that Apple might (and you really do have to stress might) have a problem.

Is there anything Apple can do about this? (Gruber criticises Blodget for not being able to suggest what Apple should do.) Not really. Apple is a hardware manufacturer and in what consumer space does one hardware manufacturer dominate like a software company can? The answer is none and the reason is because software can be almost infinitely customised when it comes to the variations that are possible from one hardware manufacturer¹.

This is Apple’s problem. If the mobile phone world decides the game is being played on Android, then Apple risks being left behind. But if we get there, it’s not going to be via the same route as we did with PCs. It’s going to be because consumers don’t want an iPhone. They want choice.

It’s 2010.

Are you kidding me?

I rather like Japan. Some of my best friends are Japanese. My wife is Japanese (probably should have written that one first). I’ve lived and worked in Japan for two and half years and deeply admire many aspects of the society.

Today I saw the film 夕凪の町、桜の国 (Yūnagi City, Sakura Country). The film follows the life of a family and the way in which the atomic bombing of Hiroshima affects their lives, from the 1950s until the present. I enjoyed the movie a great deal.

Still, it was hard to watch the film without thinking that it was yet another movie exploring the effects of the atomic bombings of 1945 (albeit one that pays attention to the discrimination against those who survived the attack). It’s easy, particularly for an outsider, to feel as if the Japanese are obsessed with the events of August 6 and August 9. Without a doubt the bombings were horrific. I consider the attack on Nagasaki, especially, to constitute an indefensible war crime.

And yet it was hardly the only war crime. The atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army are well-documented, even if not to the same extent of their fellow Axis powers in Europe. Unfortunately, this is not a topic that gets the same attention in Japanese cinema as the devastation of defeat. If Japanese movies were you only guide, it’d be easy to think World War II was some sort of event where Japan didn’t do much until out of nowhere an American plane dropped an A-bomb.

It’s also easy to start getting defensive as a foreigner. Why don’t the Japanese own up to their responsibility? Why isn’t there the same amount of time spent discussing Nanjing as there is discussing Nagasaki? Or the Burmese Railway? The truth is that even in spite of my connection to Japan I find it hard not to get annoyed.

Sometimes when you’re annoyed, you tend to get wrapped up in your own victimhood. Occasionally you stop and think: Westerners sure spend a lot of time talking about September 11. Why don’t we own up to our responsibility? Why isn’t there the same amount of time spent discussing Nablus as New York? Or our support for corrupt regimes that suit our interests?

I guess because that’s hard.

This is the problem with themes.

When you’ve tweaked a theme to within an inch of its life it’s hard to let it go. This was what happened with Hemingway. I’d spent so long making it mine that the thought of throwing all of that way was too high a barrier to switching. It took a loss of inspiration (that I perhaps erroneously blamed on the theme itself) to finally get me to make a break.

The problem is that now that I’ve made a break I have none of the inhibitions against doing it again. In other words, I’ve become a theme slut.

While it’s been three months since I switched to Old Popular Yolk, I came across a theme today called Manifest. What can I say? It was love.

I love the design of the new Foreign Affairs website. They have this little thing where they use Flash to render the headlines of their articles. I realise we’re all supposed to hate Flash but it looks so nice. They’ve got just the right amount of line-spacing and even though articles are spread out across multiple pages, the advertising is tasteful enough that I don’t mind seeing it again.

In fact, I love the design of the new Foreign Affairs website so much I decided I’d subscribe to the magazine. They have a paywall in place and I was getting frustrated at not being able to read what sounded like the most interesting articles. Also, I don’t believe there’s some magical money-making machine that ensures good writing gets paid for. So I thought, you know what? I’ll do it. I’ll subscribe.

If you live in the U.S., a subscription to Foreign Affairs magazine costs US$32. If you live outside of North America you pay US$32 for a subscription and US$35 for delivery.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Printing is cheap these days and Australia is a long way from the United States. And US$67 is hardly the end of the world. But I don’t like paying for things I don’t need and I didn’t want the printed version of Foreign Affairs; I just wanted to be able to access the website. Surely something could be done. I thought my question was pretty straightforward:

Hi

I’m not sure who the right person to ask is. I’d like to subscribe to Foreign Affairs but I live in Australia.

The main reason that I want to subscribe is to have full access to the website. To subscribe with an Australian address will cost more in shipping than the cost of the subscription itself (currently US$35 v US$32).

Is it possible only to subscribe at the US price and simply not have the physical magazine shipped to me?

Cheers

Michael.

This was the response:

Ms. Camilleri,

We do not offer kindle subscription. Please contact Amazon.com for further assistance. If we can be of any other assistance, please let us know.

Thank you for subscribing to Foreign Affairs.

Sincerely,

Pete Stone Email Customer Service

Stellar job there, Pete. In three lines you managed to call me a girl, tell me to go and ask someone else for help subscribing to your magazine and then thank me for subscribing when my question was about how I could subscribe.

Still, I kept my cool:

Dear Pete

I’m not actually after a Kindle subscription; what I’d like to know is if there is some way to subscribe without having the magazine sent to Australia. I presume I could simply put a U.S. address in and send my issues to someone else but, in the interests of saving paper, I thought perhaps it would be possible to subscribe and simply have the magazine not sent.

Cheers

Michael.

The response:

Ms. Camilleri,

We are sorry, we do not offer digital subscriptions. If you wish to avail only a online subscription and no print version, please contact amazon.com.

Thank you for your interest in Foreign Affairs.

Sincerely, Scott Shelton Email Customer Service

Two things: (1) Seriously, when did Michael become a woman’s name? (2) What is it with you guys and Amazon?

I realise there’s a danger at extrapolating from personal experience. What happened to me is possibly a one-off. Certainly it’s not the cause of the decline in print media. But it’s hard not to see it as emblematic of a struggle for companies to adjust to the idea that people might want to pay for the content without the dead trees.