Jul 09
30
The Dangers of Copyrighting Fruit.
Its winter in Australia.
Supposedly the coldest time of the year. Yet my Serrissa Foetida’s (tree of a
thousand stars) are all in full bloom.
Can’t be much of a winter if my Bonsai are all convinced
that it’s already spring.
So if it’s still winter, and it’s already this warm, will
there be a bumper crop at the apple orchard this year?
The original Apple Logo was a picture of Newton
beneath a tree, waiting for the Apple to fall.
That logo is kinda appropriate. What goes up – must come
down. Newton’s law of Gravity.
Apple in 1976 brought out a proprietary computer system that
they then nailed shut by refusing to provide API’s or SDK’s to programmers.
You want software? Come and buy it from us. “Authorised
Apple Software.” After all – we invented the Personal Computer, so we know what
is best for you.
We all know how that one came out….. IBM, and then Microsoft
stole 90% of their market share and kept it for a very long time.
Is Apple now regaining market share?
According to a Wired article last year:
Today it has a market cap of $105 billion, placing it
ahead of Dell and behind Intel. Its iPod commands 70 percent of the MP3 player
market. Four billion songs have been purchased from iTunes. The iPhone is
reshaping the entire wireless industry. Even the underdog Mac operating system
has begun to nibble into Windows' once-unassailable dominance; last year, its
share of the US
market topped 6 percent, more than double its portion in 2003.
But what’s this… do I hear another IBM and Microsoft coming
over the hill ?
I sure do and they look like Chinese apple pickers from this
distance, no wait, I see an OGG format picker
disguised as a browser there’s some Google folk a dreaming and I see a an ECO
phone and some Palm guys…(I wonder why they’re grinning…).
Micosoft Zune – can I see any Zune apple pickers? Not many.
But they might pick a few million apples off the tree,
mainly the clueless and lazy consumers. Especially when they start trading old
iPods for a Zune “upgrade” at their new Microsoft “Theme” Palaces.
So what are the clued folk doing?
Well most of them are :
A) Jailbreaking
their iPhones
B) Not
buying iPhones
C) Waiting
to see what develops before buying their new phones.
What is developing?
Well the Cell phone manufacturers have realised the
potential of owning their very own “App store”. Allowing third party developers
to program for the platform appears to have delivered several benefits to Apple.
How do those iPhone developers create iPhone apps? On
Apples of course. Which is obviously Stephen Job’s secret and very
successful plan to increase the sales of Apples.
Therefore what will happen when twelve handset manufacturers
open up their SDK’s ad API’s to third party developers and don’t require the
developers to buy an Apple running OSX with Xcode installed to write the code ?
Apple, if Job’s continues to insist on proprietary systems
and hardware, can only move in one direction;
Down.
Which is likely to be the direction of the Apple share price,
in about twelve months time.
References:
Apple Logo
http://www.goodlogo.com/extended.info/2390
How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer
The crime: Playing iTunes on devices not named iPod
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/7704/the_crime_playing_itunes_on_devices_not_named_ipod/
Apple stifling Iphone Apps developers
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1031390/apple-stifling-iphone-apps-developers