observatory

advertising / apple / apple news / iPad / iPhone / iPod / microsoft / naming / observatory / steve jobs / technology — 9 Comments
2
Sep 10

Apple hits the high notes

Fans of over-analysis surely enjoyed the rumors about what was going to happen at yesterday’s Apple event. Thankfully, that’s all behind us now. It’s time to start over-analyzing what really happened. Here’s my contribution:

Live streaming. Welcome back! After five years, it was good to see you again. If this was a real-world test of Apple’s new billion-dollar server farm as some speculated, I’d give it a 95% rating. The video was fantastic, except for a few glitches. Just need one little tweak in Server #11,355. (Update: See comment below. This may have been Akamai’s technology, not Apple’s.)

The Perky Factor. Haven’t seen Steve this “on” in a while. He was enthusiastic, animated and funny. That’s entertainment.

iOS 4.1. Kudos for fixing the two unforgiveables: (1) the proximity sensor, and (2) the horrid performance on iPhone 3G. Wireless printing is cool, but I’m most anxious to try out the HDR photo feature. You haven’t gotten me to leave my pocket camera at home yet.

iPod shuffle. Feels like a “do-over.” Has any new iPod ever been larger than the model it replaced? Buttons are back. Remote/earphone combo is gone. Much, much better. Apple design leads the industry, but on occasion it does lead them astray.

iPod nano. Holy cow. Home run. Out of the park. Love it to death. Apple will sell a ton of these in the holiday season. Who among us can resist the lure? Just don’t think you slipped this one by us, Apple: Last year, all your marketing was about the cool new video feature, this year you’ve removed it. We’ll let this one slide, only because it wasn’t real video anyway (not HD) and this mini-touchscreen is just too damn cool.

iPod touch. iPhone 4 set us up for this one. It’s exactly what everyone expected: Retina display, dual cameras and FaceTime. And let’s have a big hand for the A4 chip, which is now powering iPod, iPhone and iPad. Nice and snappy.

iPod prices. Our traditional deal with Apple has always been “more features, same price.” Is it my imagination, or are these prices creeping upward? Cue Darth Vader: “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it further.”

iPod ads. When a company gets big and successful, nobody wants to be the one to screw it up. So you begin to stick with things simply because “they work” — even though the younger, brasher version of yourself wouldn’t have thought twice about shaking things up. The new ads are perfectly fine. They’re just awfully familiar. In fact, the new touch ad (click in the image above and skip to 35:40) is virtually a carbon copy of the 2009 touch ad and the 2008 touch ad — except now FaceTime is added at the end.

iTunes 10. Ping is a huge, huge, huge addition. Until now, Apple has been more of a bystander in social media, and Ping puts them right in the thick of it. Or at least closer to the thick of it. Following friends’ discoveries and following your favorite artists is one of those “why didn’t they think of this before” kind of things. Perfect. I’m already signed up and horrifying my friends with my musical taste.

Zing! Bing! Ping! But can we talk about the Ping thing? Since when does Apple go with a me-too product name? Zing was an embarrassing failure for Dell. Microsoft is putting millions behind Bing at this very moment. Surely there’s a better word in that dictionary somewhere.

AppleTV. Huge step in the right direction, giving us access to Netflix, movies, TV shows, all those good things. $99 is a great price. Its tiny form is impressive, though in practical use not a terrific benefit. It’s still another box with cables sticking out of it. Question: what happens to my current AppleTV? It’s not like Apple to render a product obsolete so quickly. May I have a credit, please?

All in all: great show, Apple. Thank you for a fun and interesting afternoon. Just make sure you terrify the right people in the lead-up to the next show. Your secrets seem to be leaking more and more these days…

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google / observatory / strategy / technology — 4 Comments
26
Aug 10

Battle of the philosophies

Any right-thinking person has to believe that competition is good. As Apple and Google go about thrashing one another, we all reap the benefits. And right up front, I do have to admit (gasp) that I’ve now tried a few Android phones, and in my superficial test drive they felt pretty good.

However, the philosophies behind the platforms remain night and day. To some, this means nothing — legitimately, they may only care about the phone in their hand. To others, it means a lot — because it affects the way they the platform is managed and perceived around the world.

Apple, as many point out, is into the control thing. This is exactly why so many people love their iPhones. Apple guarantees the experience by crafting both the OS and the hardware, and polices the App Store to at least attempt some quality control. The dark side of Apple’s approach is the perception that they are stifling freedom. (225,000 apps be damned.)

The world of Android is very different. Google supplies the OS while a legion of manufacturers compete with one another to make the hardware. This guarantees choice. But the dark side is the potential for fragmentation, where certain phones run certain versions of Android, some are missing features, upgrades can be delayed or unavailable, etc.

In fact, it’s hard to classify this as “potential” anymore. In the short time Android phones have been among us, fragmentation is already rearing its ugly head. PC Magazine just observed that the rollout of Android 2.2 was a mess. To paraphrase:

• The first Android 2.2 (Froyo) upgrades to Droid failed to deliver Flash. An upgrade to the upgrade will shortly fix that.
• The overseas Droid (called Milestone) gets Froyo in late Q4, but only in Europe and Korea. Froyo is “under evaluation” for Canada, Latin America and Mexico.
• Motorola phones with pre-2.1 versions of Android won’t get Froyo anytime soon.
• The Motorola Cliq, Cliq XT and Backflip are waiting for Android 2.1, but the Devour won’t get it.
• Owners of the Droid Incredible are still waiting for their upgrade.
• The brand-spanking-new Dell Streak was delivered with Android 1.6 and won’t get an upgrade till the end of the year.
• Samsung Galaxy phones are expected to get Froyo, but no one knows when.
• The only company to “ace” the Froyo launch was … Google. Nexus One users got their upgrades back at the end of June.

Like I said, none of this matters if you love the phone in your hand and could care less about the guy sitting next to you. But if you’re a fan of simplicity — or even democracy — it’s hard not to be turned off by the fragmentation of Android.

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apple / iPhone / mac / observatory — 2 Comments
24
Aug 10

The more things change…

Sometimes I get all wispy and sentimental thinking about how our little industry has grown up. Things were so innocent when that angelic Bill Gates stood behind Macintosh.

Bill Gates: admiring Mac fan in 1984

While the various players and their market shares have changed, certain things haven’t. Take Apple-bashing, for instance.

Back in the old days, hating Apple was a simple thing. It was all about the technology. Some people attached to their PCs looked down their nose at Macintosh. That childish mouse just wasn’t serious enough.

Today’s Apple-haters have branched out. They still dislike the technology, but now they have two new things to hate. First, of course, is Apple’s raging success. This doesn’t reconcile with the fact that Apple sucks, so clearly the world has gone mad. They must carry the flag of freedom to stop Apple from controlling our lives and ruling the world.

The real nut-jobs have evolved even further. They hate those who use the technology more than the technology itself. Apple users are smug and arrogant, so Apple must be destroyed. Won’t they look silly when Apple discovers the secret of eternal life.

But back to history. Over time, it’s interesting to see how certain advantages have changed hands.

Back when Apple was dying a grizzly death, the weapon most used to bludgeon it was the PC software advantage. CompUSA had rows and rows of PC titles, but only a tiny rack of Mac offerings. It took a while, but this advantage became less relevant over time — until iPhone came along. iPhone’s biggest selling point quickly became its huge, indisputable lead in apps.

Unfortunately for Apple, they won’t keep this advantage as long as PCs did. Android is already up to 60,000 apps and its upside potential is a big lure for developers.

As things settle down though, iPhone vs. Android starts feeling eerily reminiscent of Mac vs. PC.

Like Mac, iPhone shook up the market by reinventing the interface and opening up new possibilities. Like PCs, the smartphone manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and started churning out the alternatives. The participants have all picked up familiar roles. Android plays the part of Windows, the smartphone makers become the PC companies and Apple gets to play the part of … Apple.

iPhone will remain the “walled garden,” with Apple’s control of hardware and software offering a certain kind of experience. The Android side will exploit its openness — reincarnating the best and worst of the PC model. Already, the Android market is splintered with different phones running different versions, and upgrades offered to some but not others. Some carriers are even starting to stuff their phones with crapware demos, just like the good old days. When margins are smaller, they have to do something to make a few extra bucks.

So, technology may have evolved tremendously in the last 20 years, but the nature of the competition has not. It’s a safe bet that quantity and quality will forever be locked in mortal combat.

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advertising / creative / observatory — 1 Comment
19
Aug 10

BlackBerry’s little dream world

In this world, dreams and aspirations come in every size and shape.

Look hard enough and you’ll find a brain surgeon who wants to be a toreador. Or a truck driver who wants to be a nun. Maybe even a BlackBerry that dreams of being the life of the party.

Well, that’s weird. Here’s that BlackBerry now. AT&T just started running this ad for the new Torch. They sum it up like this: “Business, meet fun. Fun, business.”

It’s a curious approach, because business and fun have not only been meeting for three years — they’ve been shamelessly involved in a wild, passionate affair for all to see. It’s only RIM, maker of BlackBerry, who’s been watching from afar.

But let’s mind our manners, and first lavish this commercial with the creative praise it deserves. It’s tremendously cool. The concept is fantastic. The production is first-rate, the soundtrack is quirkily fitting, and I smile every time I watch it.

Unfortunately, this Torch ad is in serious danger of proving an old marketing adage. That is, nothing kills a bad product faster than a great commercial. Drawing a large crowd can be fatal if the crowd is largely disappointed.

No matter how you twist your reasoning, it’s hard to escape the basic fact: Torch ain’t fun. In fact, it’s shockingly un-fun when compared to iPhone and Android. On the day it was released, it was panned for its underpowered processor and undersized, low-res display (Gizmodo: “like going back to standard definition after a year on HD”). If apps are any indicator of fun, iPhone offers 225,000, Android 100,000 and BlackBerry only 8,000 — most of which aren’t even compatible with the BlackBerry 6 OS at the core of Torch.

Seemingly determined to prove the fun, those mirth-makers at RIM have done just the opposite. They’ve shipped Torch with a version of the 20-year-old arcade game, Sonic the Hedgehog. (Engadget: “the experience is abysmal. Slowdowns, garbled audio, horrible controls. It’s actually kind of sad.”)

Given the grim reality, Torch’s sluggish initial sales are understandable. During opening weekend, there were no lines and no sellouts. Total sales were only a small fraction of what iPhone and Android have seen.

Comparisons to Torch’s competitors are so one-sided, AT&T can’t possibly be talking to the general public with this ad. They have to be talking to long-term BlackBerry customers who have the itch to upgrade, but are being distracted by those flirtatious newcomers. If this is the case, they really mean to describe Torch as “relatively fun.” Compared to the humorless old BlackBerrys many of these people are carrying, the Torch is a laugh riot.

In the end, Torch is a stopgap measure at best. It can only hope to stem the tide of BlackBerry defectors, but clearly it has no hope of stealing customers from iPhone and Android. That’s bad news, considering iPhone and Android are rolling in cash by stealing customers from RIM.

Clearly RIM needs to be less concerned about the party clothes, and more concerned about what’s beneath.

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observatory — No Comments
16
Aug 10

CEOs: feeling the love

In the wake of CEO Mark Hurd’s “resignation” (wink) last week at HP, quite a few stories have popped up about the man’s lovability quotient. Apparently, they weren’t exactly weeping in the halls over there.

This brings up an interesting subject. That is, exactly how do employees feel about their own CEOs at the major technology companies?

Turns out, there’s a site for that. Glassdoor.com offers “a free inside look at over 84,000 companies.” Here, employees can anonymously rate their own places of employment, so perspective employees can hear some straight talk before they sign on the dotted line. It’s hard to draw conclusions from this stuff, since negative voices are usually the loudest. But if you’re comparing one company’s loudest responses to another’s, you have to take notice when the differences are stark. And they are.

Let’s start with Mark Hurd’s pitifully low approval rating: 34%. This is in sharp contrast to Larry Ellison’s high 78% and Steve Jobs’ absurdly high 98%.

Common sense says that employees at successful companies will generally approve of their CEO’s performance. Yet HP has been very successful, and Hurd’s approval rating was in the tank.

Maybe it’s just that he was a tough guy? Well, Ellison and Jobs aren’t the most cuddly CEOs around — and their ratings are sky-high. So it seems that Mark Hurd really did have something special going for himself. He had that rare ability to push his company forward as he pushed his employees away.

Common sense also says that on a site inviting negativity, it would be virtually impossible for a CEO to score 98% approval as Jobs did. Not so difficult to understand, though. (A) Apple’s success is beyond phenomenal, and (B) tough as he can be, Steve Jobs demonstrates respect and responsibility for his employees. Cutting jobs is not the way Steve produces profit, and he does not wall himself off from employee contact.

And let’s not forget our friends Ballmer and Dell. They received 52% and 51% approval ratings, respectively. Sound roughly respectable? Nice middle-of-the-road numbers? Only if you’ve been conditioned by presidential approval polls. Personally, I find 50% to be shockingly low in a corporate poll. Unless your CEO had stolen your wallet or poured sugar in your gas tank, most would support him or her by default. 50% seems like a given, with bonus points for actual performance.

The fact that Ballmer and Dell dwell at the 50% level shows a lot of nothingness. Their failure has not been a matter of months, it’s been a matter of years. And when half your company wishes someone else had your job, it doesn’t bode well for your future.

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observatory — 7 Comments
10
Aug 10

Three men and a baby

Dell, Ballmer, Hurd and Torch — doing their best to lower the bar

After a solid month of Apple and Steve jobs being pummeled by the media over Antennagate, it’s refreshing to see other CEOs and companies step forward to take their beatings. Let’s thank them all for their creativity. While they’ve chosen different routes, each gives new meaning to the word “leadership”:

Michael Dell, CEO, Dell
Here’s a guy who made a fortune by breaking the rules in the computer business. Now he’s graduated to breaking S.E.C. rules for financial reporting. Not only does his company get fined $100 million, he personally gets zapped with a $4 million fine for participating in a scheme to mislead Wall Street. This isn’t exactly the inspirational behavior employees (or shareholders, customers and analysts) like to see in a CEO. While Michael fiddles, Dell burns. The Dell brand is fading, as is the value of its stock. But it’s okay. Dell’s board has just reaffirmed its “unanimous support for Michael’s continued leadership, transparent accounting, integrity in financial reporting…” It’s enough to make me believe in alternate universes.

Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft
Steve has done nothing in the last couple of weeks to deserve louder calls for his ouster — but then doing nothing has become his specialty. Under Steve’s leadership, shareholders have received a steady diet of embarrassing delays, often followed by even more embarrassing products. There was the revolutionary Courier tablet, which was in development forever and then killed before release. And the concept-challenged Kin phone that was killed just 60 days after release. Let’s not forget the grand-daddy of them all, the long-delayed and ill-received travesty called Vista. Most damning though, is that in the world’s most important market — mobile technology — Microsoft is but a whisper while Apple and Google have become the superpowers. (Oh, right, I forgot. Windows Phone 7 is coming.) Is there any measure by which Ballmer deserves to keep his job? With the resources available to Microsoft, you have to wonder what the company might be if it had a real visionary at the top.

Mark Hurd, ex-CEO, HP
Justice is harsh, isn’t it. The one guy who was actually doing a good job for his shareholders was sitting on top of the world one day and sent packing the next. The official story is that after marketing contractor Jodie Fisher filed a sexual harassment suit against HP for Hurd’s behavior, an internal investigation revealed discrepancies in his expense reports and payments to Fisher for work she didn’t do. Personally, I love the idea that the CEO of HP was sitting up at night fiddling with his expense reports. Whatever, there’s a lot about this story that just doesn’t add up. Henry Blodget has an interesting take on it this morning in SFGate. All I know is that you or I don’t get severance when we resign from our jobs or when we get fired for cause. Mark got a nice little $40 million severance package for accepting exile.

BlackBerry Torch, Newborn, RIM
Ain’t it cute? Say hi to the new Torch. Hard to remember the last time a non-Apple product got knocked about like this one has been. That RIM released this phone is surprising, given the company’s heritage. It’s not like they’re a newcomer to smartphones — they were literally the first guy in the pool. They’ve had plenty of time to analyze the success of Apple and Google. With all this skill and knowledge, they’ve created a new version of their software and launched it with the “all-new” BlackBerry Torch. Torch might appeal to the BlackBerry crowd but won’t be even remotely tempting to iPhone and Android customers. It has an underpowered processor, a cramped lo-res screen, and it’s thick and heavy. The words “clunky” and “cluttered” seem to pop up often in the reviews. It’s way too early to start writing BlackBerry’s epitaph, but maybe not too early to start checking out gravestone prices, just in case. The latest Nielsen survey says that only 42% of BlackBerry owners plan on buying another BlackBerry — compared to the 89% percent of iPhone owners and 71% of Android owners who plan to remain loyal.

Given the temptations and humiliations people have suffered at the top, you might want to think twice before you go applying for Hurd’s job…

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apple / iPhone / observatory — 5 Comments
5
Aug 10

The frenzy that never ends

It’s hard to say exactly when Apple started stirring up such passions.

For practical purposes, let’s say it started with the launch of Macintosh — that perfect blend of revolutionary technology and revolutionary marketing. In more innocent times, a good media frenzy could work 100% to Apple’s advantage. But things change.

In the mid 90s, with Apple just a step ahead of the grim reaper, the frenzy was relentlessly negative. Journalists were eager to cover the tragic end of a great American success story. Even when iMac showed Apple still had a spark of life, no story was complete without a mention of the “beleaguered” Apple.

Finally losing the baggage, Apple entered a golden age of positive coverage, and profited greatly from it. The hype grew geometrically, launch after launch. Because with each product — iPod and iPhone — the company found a way to exceed expectations.

But when exceeding expectations becomes the expectation, things get a little sticky.

iPad benefited from what might have been the biggest pre-launch frenzy ever — yet on launch day, it was received with a thud. Why? Back on that very first day, it simply wasn’t surprising enough. “Just an oversized iPod touch,” they said. If you got caught up in the negative frenzy, it was easy to believe this would be Apple’s most embarrassing failure.

But as happens with all frenzies, ultimately they die down. Then reason returns, and people seem to forget the conclusions they drew so hastily. Only on occasion do we learn from the experience.

Take iPhone 4. Again, Apple was the beneficiary of an unprecedented build-up to the launch. This time, the launch went well. But the antenna issue, discovered within days, became the catalyst for an even bigger frenzy. Surely this was the most horrifying Apple failure of all — except that now we hear sales and customer satisfaction ratings for iPhone 4 are through the roof, and most analysts predict Apple will soar even higher in 2011.

Of  course, this just sets the stage for the next feeding frenzy — based on the news that Android has for the first time outsold iPhones in the U.S. Obviously this is the beginning of the end for iPhone. Time to abandon ship.

Well, you might want to take stock of the post-frenzy reality before you go selling your vast holdings in AAPL. Because the obvious truth is this:

The phone market is vast. Almost incomprehensibly vast. Neither Apple nor any analyst believes Apple can own this category as it owns the music player category. Android isn’t going away. BlackBerry isn’t going away. Microsoft isn’t— oh, sorry, where’d they go?

iPhone is a single product made by a single company, available on a single network. Android is an OS featured in umpteen phones from a variety of manufacturers across all networks. Apple will likely change this in the next year or so.

Most important, though, is how happy the customers are. 21% of the Android owners say their next phone will be an iPhone, while only 6% of the iPhone owners plan to switch to Android. So if I were a betting man, I’d say iPhone will continue to own a big chunk of the smartphone market for some time to come — and 100% of the frenzy market.

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apple / observatory / technology — 4 Comments
3
Aug 10

Agitated over arrogance

Didn’t realize I’d strike such a nerve with my recent post about Apple’s arrogance. The flood of comments gave my database a pretty good workout.

I thought a number of responses were comment-worthy in themselves. A few of my faves:

No one forces you to purchase an iPod, iMac, iPhone or iPad if you don’t want one … Purchasing one means you understand some of the constraints and some of the liberties inherent in the device. — Steve516
Right you are, Steve. We all get that Apple exerts more control than other technology companies. We also get that for most people, the result is a more satisfying, liberating experience. Lapel-pin versions of this comment should be distributed far and wide.

In 2008, Steve said iPhone don’t need multitasking and video chat. In 2010, these are main features. All fan boys just followed him 2008, just said hey why do you need multitasking in iPhone. — Vijay
Score one for the anti-Apples. Steve Jobs does have a history of dismissing an idea, only to embrace it later. “Nobody wants to watch movies on an iPod” is a famous one. And yes, many Apple enthusiasts blindly follow. (One day we must learn to speak without getting the script from Cupertino first.) However fun it may be to talk about the sheepish flock, it has nothing to do with the merits of Apple products. So this complaint falls under the category of “I hate Apple users” rather than “I hate Apple products.” Argument dismissed.

What is undeniable is that Apple evokes strong emotion. In my experience there are very few people who have a neutral standing on Apple’s methods and products. And that is part of their success. If you try to please everyone you produce policies and products which evoke no strong emotion, no attachment. — Haight Moar
 Bingo. Both of these points capture the essence of Apple. Apple ignites passion, be it love or hate. It’s a level of public interest that is incredibly rare, and almost impossible to achieve by calculation. I’ll go out on a limb here and say you probably reacted differently to iPhone 4 than you did to the Microsoft Kin. Apple is open about the fact that they don’t try to please everyone — they try to please themselves, believing that what gets them fired up will get customers fired up too. It might sound cocky, but it produces better products than a focus group.

Hack your phones until they scream. Nobody cares. Just leave mine alone. It works fine. You can draw a moustache on the Mona Lisa, but that wouldn’t improve it. — Notablogger
 Just as Antennagate is a far bigger deal for tech bloggers than it is for customers, so is the notion that Apple is manically restrictive. Customers fall in love with a beautiful device that does amazing things, period. It’s hard to convince people they’re being deprived when they’re staring at a library of 225,000 apps.

[Edited for English] The lens in your observatory is of colored glass, rather than a pure glass lens. It shows everything painted in some color, say red, and u see everything as reddish. You cannot see the truth. And worse, sometimes your observatory becomes blind! — kabeer
Damn, you caught me red-handed. There I go seeing things through that annoying lens of my own experience. Surely things would be simpler if I could suppress my time working with executive teams at Apple, Dell, Intel, IBM, Compaq and others, or those long days toiling on both PCs and Macs. Maybe then the truth would be revealed!

Just because a business practice makes stock prices go up does not mean it is the best practice. There is far more involved in the thriving of the human race than profit-making. — Barry
Very true, Barry. But you direct your criticism at the wrong company. Any self-respecting Apple detractor will laugh at the notion, but Apple does have a different philosophy about profit. They’re guided by the belief that if they focus on making great products, profit will naturally result. Most companies find it impossible to move profit down a notch in the priority list.

What do you haters want? … You want us to admit Apple isn’t perfect? I admit, they screw up sometimes. — Vent
Yep, Apple has made mistakes. Some have been whoppers. But if you live in fear of making a mistake, you’ll never do anything great. Most companies are so constrained by processes set up to prevent failure, and so unwilling to accept risk, they rarely create world-changing products.

There is barely anything new – Just bringing everyday technology to the unaware masses. So yea, I kinda agree that they’re a sales company, not really a leading tech place. — Raghav
 How many times have we heard this one before. How simple it is to do what Apple does. They don’t invent anything, they just—

Hey, wait a second. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. If Apple can make billions of dollars simply by bringing everyday technology to the unaware, why don’t we just start a company and do the same thing? How hard can that be? We’ll be rich! Who’s with me?

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apple news / observatory / strategy — 8 Comments
29
Jul 10

Antennagate: a love story

The most amazing thing about a Steve Jobs presentation is not what he does on stage. It’s what happens in the mainstream press immediately after. More times than not, they echo and amplify the message Steve has so carefully crafted.

Few companies can pull off such a feat so consistently. That’s because it ain’t easy. Apple puts a ton of work into creating a simple, powerful message for every event. That message then appears in Steve’s speech, on apple.com, in the press release — it’s hard to miss.

Steve’s favorite technique for driving a point home on stage? Brute force. He makes his point. And then he keeps making his point. Until no reasonable person could conceivably miss his point.

The Antennagate Press Conference wasn’t like a product launch event. It was a special circumstance. For this one, Steve pounded away at two messages. One was “smartphones aren’t perfect.” The other was … well, see if you can figure it out from this video.

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observatory / strategy / technology — 98 Comments
22
Jul 10

The ever-arrogant Apple

Following the Antennagate news conference, certain critics quickly concluded that Apple was acting like its usual arrogant self.

I couldn’t agree more.

How dare Apple think they can make this problem go away with a free case that makes the problem go away. They need to suffer more than that.

This company was practically founded on arrogance. Imagine, two guys in a garage thinking they could out-compute companies like IBM and HP. In later years, they’d tell us to abandon the standard PC interface and use some silly mouse to control our computers. With smug superiority, they’d cut out the floppy disk we’d come to love. Errgh.

If only we thought to stop them then.

Because it wasn’t long after that Apple — a company without any real consumer electronics experience — had the gall to build the music player that Sony or some better-qualified company should have built. This self-appointed savior of the music business somehow seduced the record companies with an online music store that forces us all to go along with “their vision” of how music should be sold.

With iPhone, Apple took its arrogance to an extreme. They marched right into a market owned by big, successful global companies like Motorola and Nokia, believing they could “school them” by reimagining the smartphone. How self-important can a company get?

Then came iPad, where Apple’s arrogantly arrogant take on arrogance was laid bare for all to see. This is pure Apple, telling us they can do what Microsoft and others had failed to do for a decade before. Overnight, they create a new category and expect us to follow their vision for the future of computing? And suck us into making even more purchases at the iTunes Store?

It’s gotten to the point where Apple doesn’t even try to disguise their arrogance. They’re a company that creates devices other companies should have created, follows standards only when it pleases them, shuns research to create only the products they’d like to use themselves  — and then won’t even let outsiders tamper with the platforms they’ve created!

Look what they’ve done to poor Adobe, yanking away their right to spend more than three years figuring out how to run Flash on mobile devices. Look what they’ve done to the world’s developers, telling them to write specifically for iPhone rather than just port over apps designed for less capable phones. Compounding their sin, they have the unrelenting gall to insist that apps meet some basic standards for quality and reliability. With their “our way or the highway” attitude, Apple takes choice away from customers, forcing them to settle for a library of only 225,000 apps.

In my mind, Apple is just another in a long list of companies who make the mistake of following their own vision — like Porsche or Nike. Whatever happened to just fitting in?

Obviously, Apple’s excessive arrogance will be their downfall. Never mind that their market share has been so rapidly increasing for so long in so many categories. Or that Apple’s business model produces vastly more profit than those of other technology companies. Chalk that up to good fortune.

One day all the sheep under Steve Jobs’ spell will wake up and demand that Apple act more like other technology companies. Then at last iPhones can be more like Droids, Macs can be more like PCs and Apple can enjoy the PC makers’ perennial sense of economic doom. Apple shareholders will finally be able to rejoice in an investment that avoids such dizzying heights.

That’s the way it oughta be.

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