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Responses to Jason’s Questions

I have posted a couple responses to questions that Jason Calacanis posted to his now famous, Jason’s List. I figured I’d include them here to provoke some dialog.

1. Do you think Apple would be more, or less, successful if they adopted a more open strategy (i.e. allowing other MP3 players in iTunes)?
I agree 100% that “open always wins”. However, that implementation of that maxim is very dangerous as we have seen in the past with issues with apps not playing well with others or hurting OS performance in the windows world (and early mac OS systems. Remember the days of rebooting with extensions off to one by one rule out the offending extension?). The reason why consumer technology has been littered with frustration and failure was the lack of well thought out user experiences. Think about how many remote controllers you have with 60 buttons. Think about how many user manuals you have over 60 pages. Most tech manufactures ship a product that puts a huge onus on the technical proficiencies of the ned user. Yet most  folks simply dont have the attention or time to learn the ins and the outs of each device. People are tired of needing a secret decoder ring for each OS, device or service. Apple is popular despite its poor behavior because people know they are getting simple. (to me, the most innovative feature in the first iPhone  was its 4 page manual…it spoke worlds to how well Apple had designed the experience.

The “command and control” perspective that JobsCo employs does work with technology, as Apple has illustrated time and time again. As  we all would agree, Apple is a design company first and foremost, and what they do very well is bury complexity with design so that a broader audience of end users can adopt technology and realize the productivity benefits more easily. Things “just work” for the consumer because Apple constrains what the user can do. That being said, I think they can become more successful by becoming a more open ecosystem as you suggest.

I believe Apple’s next truly great design accomplishment will be to design an environment for their products where openness can be embraced (and where the end user assumes the risk, as you suggested in your piece). As you suggest, I believe that Apple will be forced by the market  (more consumers are getting more tech savvy and demanding more open solutions and folks like Leo, Scoble, and Peter are helping them identify the freedoms they seek). I believe Apple will find ways similar to the ones you suggest to become more open and still maintain the stability of “it just works” for the 90% of folks that dont care and are happy to be told what they want/need.

2. Do you think Apple should face serious antitrust action?

They should and they will and they will become better for it.

3. Do you think Apple’s dexterity and competence forgive their bad behavior?

To some extent (see above), it does. They have to make design decisions that restrict freedom to insure that the end user experience will be solid. Restrictions or constraints are key issues when designing great software (good read “Getting Real” form the 37 Signals team) and how you handle them will greatly effect the outcome. (For instance, unrestricted freedom results in the registry nightmares many Windows users often suffer.) I applaud Apple’s identification that design itself is a differentiator in the very highly complex world of consumer technology. Their steadfast commitment to easy and intuitive solutions will help them continue to dominate as technology becomes inherently more technical. People have less time for secret decoder rings, so Apple products will continue to grow in market share. However, as you have identified two new realities should result as we rely more and more on technical solutions:

1. Apple finds a way to design a more open user experience so that these monopolistic behaviors can be eliminated (some of them can go right now!).
2. The rest of the consumer technology industry should step up and take the design challenge to begin to design experiences that are easy and intuitive…and don’t require a CSS competency to figure out.

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