Apple and Steve Jobs… Evil?
Author Tim Wu of the book “The Master Switch”, in a recent interview with the New York Times, gives some sobering, yet controversial thoughts about Apple’s role in information control that prove much more interesting than Apple’s announcement today. Wu finds Apple just a little terrifying.
Paved With Good Intentions
Wu, a professor of copyright law at Columbia University, writes about business “in the way that writers have traditionally written about war,” in his own words. His work focuses on the ways that power permeates commerce, sustaining some firms while destroying others.
Wu takes aim at companies like ABC, NBC, AT&T and Google, that started as firms focused on serving the public, but turned to “evil” when they began to suppress technologies that could possibly interfere with their market dominance.
When asked which company is the most threatening, Wu has a ready answer: “Right now, I’d have to say Apple… Steve Jobs has the charisma, vision, and instincts of every great information emperor. The man who helped create the personal computer 40 years ago is probably the leading candidate to help exterminate it. His vision has an undeniable appeal, but he wants too much control.”
Data, Packaged and Sold
The iTunes Store, founded in April 2003, was perhaps Apple’s first major foray into changing the way we receive data. Over time, it became the foremost means for acquiring digital music legally, and changed the face of the industry forever. The Beatles coming onboard is one of the final dominoes to fall in Apple’s effort to provide access to the entirety of popular music.
Apple also spearheaded the rise of the app. Downloading apps is now commonplace, thanks largely to iOS. More and more, we don’t go to our favorite website to view that snippet of news or buy that hot product, we instead use apps designed for the purpose that wall off access to the rest of the web, and often charge us for the privilege of doing so.
While there are many other app stores in existence with other companies, with the success of the iOS App Store and the coming Mac App Store, Apple is positioned to remain a dominating force in the arena of intermediation between information and audiences. While this serves as a great opportunity for many technology creators, how long will Apple retain its position of trust in its current curatorial role?
Rotten to the Core?
When asked about the possibility of Jobs leaving Apple before long, which could happen due to health and increasing age, Wu states, “I think it may not matter…the mark of Steve Jobs is firmly placed on that firm, that it will continue long after he passes from leadership.” His core values may indeed remain, though I doubt his personality-based idiosyncrasies will carry on.
Whether or not we agree with Wu’s opinions, his assertion that Apple isn’t our little darling from Cupertino anymore is a reality that must be grappled with.
What do you think? Does Apple have too much control over how information is distributed? If so, what’s the best way to go about limiting its power?
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“The man who helped create the personal computer 40 years ago is probably the leading candidate to help exterminate it.”
The extermination of the personal computer has its good and bad points. I’m not seeing how this makes a company or person evil.
Not to mention the fact that Steve Jobs isn’t destroying PCs so much as redefining them and how we use them.
Like Steve Jobs said years ago, Apple lost the desktop wars and needed to move on to the next big thing which turned out to be digital media and mobile computing.
Steve was visionary enough to see at least two revolutions coming and figure out how to ride them before anyone else. He’s not destroying anyone per se, he’s just outrunning and out gunning everyone else this time.
“If so, what’t the best way to go about limiting its power?”
The same old word that helped bring down M$’s power, YAHOO! and others, competition.
Yes it may be “evil” but such is capitalism. If people find a person/company sufficiently evil, go somewhere else with your business. Basically all he is saying is that once you become large enough to be nationally recognized, you are evil because you care more about your bottom line then the good of the customers/industry. People generally complain about this when they are not successful.
Wu should be concerned, rather, with Google’s wanting unbridled access to scan all books without regard to copyrights. Apple’s leadership in bringing digital pirates [downloaders] into the paying fold has rescued digital music, and may do so for many magazines and newspapers. If Wu is worried about risks in the information age — he needs to consider ‘net neutrality’ and bandwidth purveyors who exercise control to content. Content is useless if you can’t access it.
Apple is no more evil than any other tech company. When it drops all browser support, it will be. But that won’t happen. You can surf freely. When it makes no bones about its belief that you have no privacy, it will be. But that won’t happen. Unlike Google, Apple wants you to buy what they are selling, not sell you to someone else. So Apple has strong motives to protect rather than exploit its customer relationships. Apple is guilty of removing the layers of abstraction between user and computer. This inevitably involves exerting tighter control. Installing, deleting and updating software has never been easier. There is a dark side to control, of course, too much restriction. But those restrictions, I would argue are an effort to protect the company from extinction. Apple is not perfect. But while they are famed for product secrecy, they are pretty open with their market intentions. You may not like their control, but they are not shy about it. They don’t feint openness. And unlike other companies, they have a thirty year track record of taking care of customers. I trust that they want my money for their products. Google wants my information. They want me to put all of my data into their hands, yet show no interest in protecting it. You get what you pay for. They want far more from me with no evidence that they will treat that information well. So Apple is a convenient target, but Google is the new Evil Empire.
It’s one thing to exert dictatorial control over a company, another thing to exert dictatorial control over content, code, and developer tools. It seems Apple is the new Oracle.
Really? As a company built in a free society they have every right to control content, code and developer tools. It is there product and software they are protecting. If you want to have a free-for-all (read:worry about the security and content of what you and your family downloads), use Android or Windows.
Is this guy even listening to what he is saying? He needs a serious reality check.
1. I believe Windows is still running on around 90% of the world’s PCs.
2. Amazon music can sell virtually any song or book that Apple sells and I can load them on my iPhone. Or my Kindle. Or my PC. Oh wait, Amazon uses a proprietary e-book format, but Apple uses an open e-book format.
3. Anyone can make an app and sell it through Android or WM7 or Apple. Anyone can set up a website viewable by anyone on the internet with any kind of web device.
4. Apple has yet to buy Time/Warner like AOL or buy Universal Studios like Sony. Google is still busy trying to digitize the entire printed output of mankind, copyrights be damned.
5. Apple’s open source webkit has become the mobile industry browser standard–except for the new WM7 phones–and done as much as anything to push open standards and stymie the IE monopoly.
6. Apple almost singlehandedly removed DRM from digital music–much to the chagrin of the record companies, MS, Real and their delusions of eternally, locked down subscription based music.
7. Apple’s app store has done more than anything else in the last 30 years to democratize and revolutionize software development, distribution, reimbursement for 12 year olds and Fortune 500 mega companies.
8. Every single media company in the world can/could set up websites to sell their own content and completely bypass Apple’s distribution systems yet still take advantage of Apple’s growing universe of iDevices by using open standards and formats.
Sure, Apple might have a closed garden but it allows plenty of 3rd parties to make lots of money off the closed garden. And if you don’t like that idea, you can set up shop in the HTML 5 public park across the street and still make a lot of money on the Apple playground.
Geez.
I think he gives Apple too much credit. Apple has been successful but it faces many threats.
For example it couldn’t persuade Facebook to work with Ping. That should be a sobering reminder that Apple can’t always get what it wants. Not that I know the details of the event. Perhaps a solution is in the works.
Never the less I don’t agree with academic from Columbia. Maybe we can pool our money and buy him a stuffed Orange or something to help him sleep better at night.
Oh come on, not another “zomg Apple are evil” nonsense. Jobs is not obsessed with control for the sake of having control to have some sort of “evil dictatorship”. They simply want to provide what is best created under a controlled environment. The success of their products simply confirms this experience. There’s of course always a danger to having too much control but until there’s proof that such a danger actually exists, I’ll leave this as a rhetorical issue.
“The man who helped create the personal computer 40 years ago is probably the leading candidate to help exterminate it.”
If his analysis is as accurate as his history, I would say that Apple is all hugs and puppies.
For the record, it was only 34 years ago that Apple introduced the Apple 1 (July 1976.)