Dear Kara, dear Walt,
as a devoted reader of yours & AllThingsD from Germany, I believe from distance it is sometimes easier to see what is going on with the digital world and Apple nowadays. Maybe you will agree. As you knew Steve Jobs personally, I believe the following can be true and if you believe it is worthwile, it may be an inspiration for your thinking/writing.
I wrote this as a replique to this insane story @ Venture Beat, that “the Apple board tells tim Cook to speed up”. Truely cruel and brutal what I believe to be the following. And what starts as an Apple Fanboy letter, it should turn out to be different – it is on what America has taught Germany: Liberty. And the connection of digital, liberal arts and liberty itself.
“All Apple fans will have to accept as in the 80s, that perfectly integrated Hard- and Software as done by Apple has a price. And that price one has to pay. If you do not pay it for the unit, others will charge you for the use or even make you the product (Facebook/Google). There is no such thing as a Apple phone, a watch, a Apple TV as far as I can see that would follow the Apple philosophy as Steve Jobs lived it. That is why it is so difficult and takes so long – you cannot innovate with a one click finger. E.g. combining Android (Windows) with Asian made Hardware (Acer at Windows befor iPad/Samsung nowadays for Phone). This approach has one major difference to the Apple philosophy. It is using the User a lot as the middle man between Hard- and Software. At Apple, the User was Steve Jobs. Google is going one leap forward: If the user is not paying upfront for the more expensive phone, he is letting the customer work for himself. By supplying the data it can sell. It is not a magic trick, it is a circle and it works well for them so far. We understood recently, that this is a threat for privacy. We in Germany had 3 severe changes of regime in one century: From Democrycy to Facism, from Faciscm to a divided state with left wing facism in the GDR, from GDR to a now united Germany that is democratic and we hope for a long time to come. However, we had the experience with what regimes do with user data. It is a threat to privacy and to freedom – and it can be used to kill not only Jews, but lives. It is dangerous, what governments can do with private data that does not belong to them. And they have found a workaround in the US. The Germans or British or French spy on US citizens, the US services spy on us and there is no international law for privacy data protection wherever. Steve Jobs knew that quite well and he did not give up on it for a long time.
A clean layout and design of one hardware architecture to one software architecture simply is outperforming everything else. You can add many buttons, you can have more gizmos, more fancy processors and more Gigabit. You can never beat the leverage of a perfectly integrated tool of this magnitude. And, you have to pay a price to guarantee your service provider (e.g. Cloud) that he does not sell your private data for, excuse my french, brain-fuck advertising to make you consume more. Nowadays it is clear that even Apple cooperates with the FBI and NSA as they have to, however, it is unclear if that is misued or not. This scares the shit out of us Germans – we have experienced what you never had – we have lost democracy several times.
Unfortunately it will also mean for us Apple fans, that volume peak is propably already over, or at least market share must fall as overall mobile usage it growing. It is the price for being one leap ahead – later on, the innovater has to innovate whereas the follower will make his margin on the innovators mistakes. It is simple science we all have heard of before. The majority of users will buy less expensive (and yet not as good) Android phones. As it was in the 1980s when Windows took over mass market and perfectly used the inspiration done by Apple before. And one day, they delivered Windows95. And it was all fine with us for some time (until Vista). That may happen to Android as well, it may turn out to be the best OS for mobile units in the decade to come. Right now, we are all expecting a new release of the iOS 7and we will for sure one time again breath the spirit and be impressed of how close to perfection this is going to be. And we paid for data protection using iCloud. But that may not bring/raise market share. And as we all know that Apple hardware users spend more time with their devices, they even spend more time on Google and now Facebook. This time is money. It is just a matter of time until they are materializing more of this time – to the help / advantage of the user of the disadvantage is going to be their business. As with NSA we saw, that it took Apple a long time to change places – from a user and a real human being, that does not want to be spied (Jobs) to a cooperative citizen, that is proud to be American (Cook) and still considers himself human enough to give as much as he can.
Nonetheless, Steve did it several times: Innovate and make the giant leap forward. Apple I, Mac, iPod, Iphone and iPad. That was Jobs, who was the major integrator. And to integrate this insanity, that is between Hardware and Software-Engineers that cannot tend not to talk each other, even looking at the Liberal Arts, using the best in Design and Creativity techniques, well, you needed a one piece icon. What the user has to do with million frustrations and anger within Windows and now Android world, Steve all took it for himself. He fought the fights where it hurt most, in the beginning. What the user does in Android world, well, you have to cope and fight a lot of wars. Steve Jobs did that for us, to give us a single unique tool – a bicycle for the mind – however, Steve is unfortunately no more – you cannot give that much another time. No human being can do that.
Please forgive Tim Cook, that he does not want to give up his life now. It is his decision, not ours. And as insane as it may sound in the beginning: If Apple survives and wil not bring the next Newton to us (failed innovation), it will help us to keep our freedom and privacy. It is so precious and it has a price.”
Eventually you like it and that would please me, a hobby writer and thinker, who works as a real estate enterpreneur, the most. And yes, I wrote the same letter to Walt.
Yours,
buZzman!