Image via Wikipedia
Jason Calacanis has a very well written post titled “The Case Against Apple” on his blog
At one point, I thought Jason had given up blogging and had moved to Twitter, FriendFeed and his email lists.
I’m glad he’s back.
His latest angst with Apple is an important post. I think Jason brings up a lot of excellent points.
Here’s my thinking about Apple right now.
0. I don’t like a lot of Apple’s control issues. Jason’s view about the App Store is spot on. I wish they let the Palm Pre and any/all other devices connect to iTunes. Blocking 3rd party devices & apps is amisguided approach. Imagine if they did that with MacOS. An open platform is the only thing that works ultimately.
1. In my opinion Apple makes the best laptops in the world right now. And I think their OS is also the best (or at least for my needs). The browser has changed the world and many desktop apps aren’t as important as they used to be. Users are getting smarter. We all graduated from the days of letting the ISP or PC manufacturer tell us what browser we should use. That is a good thing.
2. I don’t agree with the notion that apple has a monopoloy on phones. Just this quarter it was widely reported that the Blackberry Curve was the number one selling smartphone. You could argue that Apple would be #1 if they sold across all US carriers like RIM does and you would be right. But Apple made that decision and now are living with the result.
3. This line from Jason doesn’t sit right with me:
Bottom line: Of all the companies in the United States that could possibly be considered for anti-trust action, Apple is the lead candidate. The US Government, however, seems to be obsessed with Microsoft for legacy reasons and Google for privacy reasons.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a fan of government intervention in the technology space. Things move too fast. There was a time when Apple was left for the dead. There was a time that Microsoft was the most powerful company on the planet. There was a time before Google.
If Apple doesn’t open up iTunes & the iPhone completely there will be better alternatives. I just know it. Most likely it will come from a startup or maybe from an existing company (RIM, Palm, Google, Microsoft).
And that will much better than the US government trying to “fix things”