Geeks Tolerate Apple Hypocrisy Until They Mess with Porn

On February 24, 2010, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

I’ve posted  several times about Apple’s continued hypocrisy and my love/hate relationship with their products. Like most people, I love their design and I’m glad they’re pushing the industry but I have always hated their closed culture and hyper controlling attitude.

Full disclosure I used to work at HP (who is now a client). Microsoft, T-Mobile (who sells Google’s Android phones) and HTC are all clients. But my wary feelings towards Apple have been around long before I worked in tech. I’ll take choice and glitches over design and limitations.

MG Seigler, TechCrunch’s editor and self proclaimed Apple fanboi, has a post about Apple’s latest move to block porn from the app store. I think this is a fascinating move by Apple. My personal stance on morality is that first I believe everyone has their own free agency to do as they see fit and it’s not my business. Second I personally dislike anything that’s addicting. This goes for drugs, alcohol and pornography. (Yes porn’s addicting). So while I want to applaud Apple for this move, it’s not any type of moral victory, as MG points out.

Problem number one is that while Apple is removing most of these sexy apps from the App Store, it’s not removing all of them. So who gets to stay? Big publishers like Sports Illustrated and Playboy. In fact, not only is Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit 2010 app not being removed, it’s being featured in the App Store. Both it and the Playboy app clearly violate the new rules of the more prudish App Store, yet they get to stay.

The TechCrunch post has well over 100 comments as I write this and is trending on many news aggregation sites. Apple has struck a nerve. Now anyone who has studied technology adoption understands tech’s dirty little secret: Porn

VHS, BluRay, broadband adoption (what pictures and videos do you think people so desperately wanted to look at in the late 90’s), and search can all thank their success, in very large part, to the porn industry. That’s why Apple’s stance against porn seemed so interesting.

Google and Android have no such qualms about porn and several commenters to the opportunity to proclaim their “love” for Android. I also have to doubt Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace will follow Apple’s lead here. It is still in it’s infancy and won’t really see it’s potential until Windows Phone 7 comes out and Microsoft typically takes a hands off approach to content and partner development.

Ultimately I have to think this is a move towards Apple to placate publishers. As MG points out Apple hasn’t removed Apps with similar types of content from Sports Illustrated and Playboy.  Again from TechCrunch we see a hint at the future in Apple’s response?

As Apple VP of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller explained earlier to the New York Times, it’s because they’re well-known companies known for that content. Yet, he also cited women being upset about feeling degraded and parents being upset about kids having access to sexy apps as the main reason Apple is cracking down on them. The omission of the fact that parents probably also don’t want their kids downloading the Playboy app, or that some women might also find the Swimsuit app degrading is laughable.

I imagine that Apple users will get their porn, especially with the iPad coming out. It’s just going to come from established (and struggling) publishers.I just wonder how much longer developers and users will put up with Apple?

[UPDATE] Yep, thought so:  New “Explicit” Category in App Store Could Herald Return of Sexy Apps

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Never chase a market leader. Instead start a new race.

On January 25, 2010, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

Ignore the rumors and stop chasing Apple. Forbes has a good post on innovation. The irony is that the minute you say we want to innovate like Apple, you are no longer innovating. You’re iterating.

Innovation Beyond Apple – Forbes.com

When it comes to innovation, many executives in the consumer goods industry are chasing Apple. Who can blame them? While most retailers spent the holiday season slashing prices, Apple reported record earnings by enchanting audiences with iPhones. Now, as retailers try to re-engage consumers this year, executives are trying to replicate the “Apple thrill.”

But focusing exclusively on product innovation is a mistake for most companies, say executives who gathered recently at Berglass + Associates, my company, to discuss innovation. The attendees included Richard Dickson, general manager, Barbie, and a senior vice president at Mattel ( MAT – news – people ); Melisse Shaban, CEO of Chrysalis, an incubator company for emerging brands; and Bill Brand, executive vice president of programming, marketing and business development at HSN.

Sounds much like my advice I included in two posts: Chase your Customers not Your Competition

Now that we’ve moved past The Tipping Point it’s time for everyone else to play catch up. Everyone else will want to replicate the successes other companies – and in many cases their competitors – have had. The problem is that most of these new efforts will be based on 2009 examples.

2010 is a different world than 2009.  Most companies that try to play catch up this year will be playing catch up to the wrong people. They’ll be playing catch up to their competition.

While my advice was geared towards social media use it’s perfectly applicable to any strategic decision. Never chase a market leader. Instead start a new race.

But if you really want an Apple love fest, I suggest heading over to Louis Gray and Chris Saad’s EdgeTheory Podcast (?)

louisgray.com: EdgeTheory: Apple’s Closed Approach in an Open World

In advance of all the fun and fury that will be sent Apple’s way this week, as many are expecting new hardware from Cupertino on Wednesday, EdgeTheory conversationalist Chris Saad and I talked about how Apple can be so successful with its closed, proprietary, approach when we tend to promote and hope for openness from companies we do business with on the Web.

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Google Falls For The Hype Cycle with Wave

On October 13, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
2 Hype album cover
Image via Wikipedia

One of the more interesting things about being a parent is watching your children grow up. Especially as they begin to make more independent decisions, you start to get an idea of what kind of adult they’ll be.

As a business junkie the same is true as I watch companies “grow up” and scale. Two companies that I have always enjoyed watching are Google and Apple. Both of these companies are extremely successful and profitable in their own right but compared to many of their Fortune 500 counterparts are still relatively *small*.

How can I say Google and Apple are small? Well on one level they are small. Compare them to companies like HP and Microsoft (disclosure: both Microsoft and HP are clients of my employer Waggener Edstrom):

  • They don’t have nearly the number of employees. Especially if you count contractors and agencies. Google and Apple seem to do most of their marketing in house, while you’d be hard pressed to find a firm that hasn’t done work for HP or Microsoft.
  • Microsoft has 14 businesses all doing over $1 Billion annually and did $60+ Billion in 2008.
  • HP grew during 2008 and did $118 Billion.
  • Apple’s revenue in 2008, while strong was only $32 Billion. (That’s half of what Microsoft does annually and about what HP does in one quarter.)
  • And the mighty Google? It’s impressive to think that they make most of their money one click at a time and get pennies for each click but with as omnipresent as they are they only did $21+ Billion in 2008.(yes I realize the irony in saying *only* 21 Billion)

Related to bullet point #1 is the way Google and Apple go to market with new products. Apple has Mac World but other than that they don’t have to do much hype building.Their fans do more than enough for them.

Google usually does even less. Their approach is sometimes a blog post, along the lines of, “Oh yeah we just launched this new product. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.” That’s a big product release. Usually they just roll out the feature or put something in the Labs and wait for people to notice.

As someone who works in marketing (I’m resistant to calling myself a marketer) I’m often at awe with this approach. I’ve even encouraged my clients to do the same thing. You don’t need a press release for every little thing.

But something different happened in May. May is when Microsoft launched Bing (again full disclosure, I work with the Bing account). Google publicly dismissed it (of course) but I think they were a little nervous. The same day Bing launched Google pre-released Wave. They had a conference, demoed the product (that they admitted was not ready for release) and got everyone very excited. This is a classic product marketing move. I know people at HP that live for stunts like this.

But to my knowledge, Google’s never done something like this before (please correct me if I’m wrong). I use and love Gmail and Google Reader among many Google products but something never sat right with me about Wave. What need was it serving? To replace email? Most email is not working on a collaborative project. Google has struggled with integrated products (but they are getting better), was this just going to be another standalone product?Was it going to replace Gmail? Too many questions IMO.

I though maybe I was jaded because of my client work. So I held my tongue. But I wasn’t the only one skeptic. TechCrunch’s own MG Seigler predicted backlash. Google turned on the hype machine and now they had to deliver.

While Wave is an impressive application with a lot of potential it hasn’t lived up to the promise. Most early adopters are unimpressed.

Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype

But this service is way overhyped and as people start to use it they will realize it brings the worst of email and IM together: unproductivity.

Google has fallen victim to the same hype cycle the it’s much larger competitors have fallen victim to over the years. In all fairness it’s easy to do. Big public companies have a lot of pressure on them to return results quarter after quarter. They either have to grow revenue or cut expenses. Neither of which are easy but the latter is especially tough because it often means cutting jobs. The question is, will they try it again?

Apple hasn’t been without its own troubles and missteps this year. But I’ve blogged about those already.

As both Apple and Google grow they are going to have to learn some of the same lessons that Microsoft and HP have had to learn. Growth isn’t easy. Scale is really tough. You can’t make everyone happy.

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Will Flip Fight Back Against Apple, or is it too Late?

On October 9, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
The @WaggenerEdstrom Flip camera
Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

I love my 8 gig Flip UltraHD. Here at Waggener Edstrom we love our Flip cameras. Mashable even had a great guide today on Video Blogging. I think we’re about to see some even greater things in the world of video blogging.

Everyone got pretty exited when they thought Apple would integrate a camera into the iPod Touch. Mike Arrington actually predicted the demise of the Flip. Apple decided not to release the iPod Touch with a camera. Many people believe that there was too much fear this would cannibalize their iPhone sales.

I believe Apple has given Flip a huge opportunity here. The question is, will they capitalize? Flip needs to revive their camera and software. Today the file format is hard to work with if you’re on a PC. The software doesn’t really do anything the iPhone doesn’t do native on the device.

If it were me I’d drop the price on all existing cameras, launch a new device with a full touch screen, build the editing software into the camera, make it wifi enabled and keep it at the $299 price.

But will it be enough? All Apple has to do is put a camera in the iPod Touch (something they’ll do eventually) and they already have an arguably better product, because it’s all that, a music player, game device and a bag of chips.

So maybe it’s already too late for Flip. What do you think?

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Will Apple Finally Have to Embrace Social Media?

On August 4, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

As I was flipping through one of my favorite start pages I couldn’t help but notice something. Let’s see if you notice it to:

Notice a theme here? Do you know what that is? That’s Apple entering the main stream. Now yes, Apple has been main stream for a few years but until now they’ve been able to act like the cool outsider who jeered and derided, well pretty much everybody.

I’ve wondered out loud how it is that Apple could get away with the approach they take to Social Media (aka hatred and disdain). They have had a very clear lack of presence. There was no need for them to get involved. Why would they waste their time, attention and money on social media when all their fan boy’s took care of hyping them, building buzz, monitoring their brand and defending their virtue?

But things are different now. Apple’s is no longer just a threat to Microsoft (and every PC manufacturer). They have become the main threat to every mobile phone company. And they are now a threat to their biggest ally, Goolge. But competition is nothing new to Apple. The current scale and pressure they are facing is something new but something else has changed.

When you compete in the main stream not every customer is willing to put up with your little idiosyncrasies. As you scale not every manufacturing partner plays by your rules. As your platform gets bigger not every developer is willing to put up with your rules.

Consumers don’t trust size. As you get bigger people don’t trust you. This is why so many companies have become more transparent and are engaging in social media. Openness and transparency are not in Apple’s DNA. The sad thing is that they would have to do so little to have a big impact.

Now that the honeymoon is over will people continue to accept Apple’s lack of transparency and lack of presence in social media? I don’t know, we’ll see.

(Microsoft, T-Mobile and HTC are all clients of my employer Waggener Edstrom. Please see my disclosure)

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I dislike Apple but I’m really glad they’re around

On July 31, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
Apple I at the Smithsonian Museum

Image via Wikipedia

As much as I like to bag on Apple for their closed proprietary nature I am thankful that they exist. If it wasn’t for Apple our computers would be ugly and difficult to use. I insist on having all PC operating systems and use them all. I’ve had several iPod for years I finally broke down and got an iPhone (I now have 2 phones with me).  It’s cool but I could easily live with something else (partly because they’ve made everyone get better).

TechDirt as always has a very thoughtful and well put piece on the swelling Apple backlash:

Recently, we’ve decried Apple’s autocratic governance of their App Store. But don’t let that mislead you into thinking we’re down on the whole product. The iPhone is a turning-point device, which changed the usability level of the mobile Internet. All of a sudden, the mass market – who until then had no interest in muddling with clumsy mobile data services – was able to connect to the web on their phone, browse sites, download apps, and truly realize the promise of “anytime, anyplace, any info”. The phone also revolutionized the mobile phone UI. While the other handset vendors developed each application and hardware in its own silo, Apple designed it all as a single whole experience, also sketching-in the content and application ecosystem. And it’s been no shock that good user experience matters a whole lot! Lastly, the iPhone shattered the iron grip carriers had on handset vendors, and the phones their customer’s eventually owned. Apple yanked some of that control away, and their more open (than carriers) approach has blown open the barn doors of developer creativity. The iPhone sales figures and data usage stats are in. Its a success. So if you are one of the people that says the iPhone is nothing more than a shiny toy, you need to come back to reality. http://techdirt.com/articles/20090728/1142255686.shtml

Apple is a great innovative company. I may think Steve Jobs is a megalomaniac, but he is a genius.

I like choices, I like freedom of content and I like transparency. Sometimes Apple makes those better, unfortunately they just as often make those worse.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, I’m glad they exist.

(Please see my disclosure as I work for a company that represents several iPhone competitors)

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The Opiate of the masses

On June 23, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

I’ve decided that Marx had it wrong.

Religion is not the opiate of the masses, Apple is.

iPhone Still Leads the Superphone Derby

Three days after launching the iPhone 3G S, the company sold more than a million units, Cupertino said today, on par with the number of iPhone 3Gs sold within the first three days of that device being launched. In comparison, it took some 74 days to sell a million of the original iPhones. Overall, Apple is expected to sell about 5 million phones in this quarter.

They still draw love and adoration despite a KGB like control on their communications.
Apple’s Management Obsessed With Secrecy – NYTimes.com

Give people a well designed product that works and apparently nothing else matters.

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Excuse me, News Industry. Why did you matter? I forgot.

On June 4, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
Printing press from 1811, photographed in Muni...
Image via Wikipedia

I want you to think back over the last decade. First mainstream media had to take part of their sites online to keep up with these crazy portal pages. Then Google came along and scattered their content to the wind. Bringing them more online readers than they knew how to monitize. That’s because they couldn’t figure out how to sell banner ads and most refused to open their sites for free.

Now think back 5 years ago. Most newspapers have torn down their walls. Google’s “stealing” their content (while sending them hundreds of thousands of visitors.  And they still haven’t figure out how to monitize all that content. But guess who did? Those crazy, angry geeks siting around in their underwear typing HTML into their Web logs. Those geeks were no threat to the journalism industry, even if they were making a few dollars on AdSense (stupid Google).

Fast forward to the start of 2009. The media has now added commenting, sharing widgets and write Digg bait articles. Yet the media industry still can’t monitize that stupid Web traffic and blogs are raising venture capital while newspapers are closing their doors.

Well the newspapers will show them. Tired of playing the bloggers game, they’re taking their content and going home. Rupert is trying to lead a Quixotian quest to rebuild those walls they tore down several years ago.

What do the bloggers do? Up until now they’ve always stayed one step ahead of the traditional media. Not much. They still offer megabytes of great content each day for free. Oh yea and they’re also:

And, uh, wait, I’m forgetting something. Someone is doing something else….

Oh, yeah. Making freaking sweet looking computers! CrunchPad: The Launch Prototype (Screw Google and Garter, watch out Apple.)

crunchpad-4

But hey media, news guys, good luck putting up those walls. Why did we want to see what’s on the other side again? I forgot why you mattered.

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Transparency isn’t about creating trust it’s about creating better content.

On May 6, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

Transparency isn’t about creating trust it’s about creating better content.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the issue of transparency. Partly because I’m reading Shel Holtz great book, Tactical Transparency. This is a very *meaty* book. It’s taking me a while to read because I end up stopping every few pages to chew on the ramifications of what I just read.But today I had a thought about transparency that put things in a different light.

What if transparency isn’t about creating trust it’s about creating better content?

Transparency does not create trust. It just doesn’t. *Unless* you are trustworthy.

A well polished, media trained executive, speaking to his talking points at a press conference makes horrible content. A mumbling engineer speaking into his shoes, but passionately, about how and why he created their new product makes for much better content.

Apple is probably the most controlling, closed consumer tech companies out there. They can rip off the Beatles and sue bloggers and no one says a word. Why? Apple products make for great content. Steve Jobs keynotes make for great content.

Twitter has continued to grow despite starting off with one of the the worst Web user experience since the 1990’s. Granted it’s better now but it’s still not *great*. Why do we put up with it? Because the possibilities of this new category, microblogging, that they created makes for great content. The conversations we have there make for great content.

Now before the transparency evangelist jump all over me, I still believe that transparency is an important factor of trust but if it doesn’t make for great content, no one will care. Don’t believe me? Let me ask you one question? How many Fortune 1,000 company blogs do you read?

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2009 Predictions from John Battelle

On January 5, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

John Battelle at the Web 2.Image via WikipediaI don’t know why, but we just love predictions. They are almost always wrong but that doesn’t stop us. I guess it’s a good way to try and make us feel more secure in an insecure environment. Or for some of us it’s a way to try and figure out what’s next and how can we capitalize on it.

There are few people I take seriously when it comes to predictions (myself included) but John Battelle is always someone I pay special attention to, even if I don’t agree with him on everything. Not only is John a thought leader in this space, he’s a pioneer and a serial entrepreneur.

Predictions 2009 – John Battelle’s Searchblog

I won’t go through all of John’s prediction but I did want to note a few:

1- We’ll see an end to the recession, taken literally, by Q4 09. In other words, the economy will begin to grow again by the end of the year, but it won’t feel like we’re out of the woods till next year at the earliest.

I couldn’t disagree with John more on this one. I think we have a long 5-7 years ahead of us. The real danger here is that if we see even a mild uptick after a year or two I’m afraid people will want to believe so badly that we’re out of the woods that they’ll act irrationally and start spending like it’s 2007 all over again. But to be fair I’m a complete pessimist on the time frame of our macro recovery but a total optimist on entrepreneurialism.

2- The online media space will be hit hard by the economic downturn in the first half, but by year’s end, will have chalked up moderate gains over last year in terms of gross spend.

I’m starting to lean in this direction. A few months ago I thought online would be a nuclear winter. I think that advertising over all will be that or worse but I think that online will grow in the single digits. But honestly, even staying flat is a big win.

3- Apple will see a significant reversal of recent fortunes. I sense this will happen for a number of reasons (yeah yeah), but I think the main one will be brand related – a brand based on being cooler than the other guy simply does not scale past a certain point. I sense Apple has hit that point.

And the angels sing Hallelujah!! On this point I couldn’t agree more. Apple has had a nice run. I love Apple products (mostly just the iPod line, although I have a growing distaste for iTunes), I’m thankful to Apple for reminding the world what great design is but I don’t think Apple, their brand and their die hard design requirements can scale to a Wal-Mart world. I think their inability to play in the netbook space will hurt them harder than they realize and I think the other electronics makers are catching up in design.

4- Major brands will continue to struggle with the best way to interact with “social media.” They will take budget reserved for media spending (IE buying banners and building out branding campaigns) and start to become publishers in their own right.

Again, I couldn’t agree more, but of course me and my dead-pooled BlueLine cohorts were calling this “Be Your Own Media” 3-4 years ago. This is one reason why I’m starting to believ that online advertising will at least stay flat, if not continue to grow.

4.5- but given the plastic and social nature of online media, many marketers will see these efforts fail, in particular when the efforts are executed in partnership with major media companies. The reason has to do with putting the cart before the horse: in order to truly succeed in conversational media, the company must itself be fluent in that conversation.

I think 09 will see a lot of social media failures, but it will also see it’s first few real social media validation points and these will be enough to carry us into 2010 where we’ll really hit our stride.

John has many other predictions worth checking out, esp around search and specific tech giant mergers.

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