Re:The Steve Jobs email that outlined Apple’s strategy a yea...
by eridius on Saturday November 05, 2016 @03:36AM
(#12878613)
By what logic do you think it's a bad thing for a company to make products that complement each other so well that users don't want to leave the ecosystem? Yes, tech diversity is a good thing, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing for one company to build a great ecosystem that attracts users. If they're the only company that builds these products, then there's no diversity, but Apple is hardly the only company making products in the various categories that make up its ecosystem (it's not even the market share leader in those products, with the sole exception of the Apple Watch).
I'll try to explain it again in more concrete terms. The way this form of lock-in works is by making products that not only have good value on their own, but have even better value when used together because they complement each other and work great together. Any given product may have competitors from other companies, and those competing products may even be objectively better when compared just against the product (and not against the ecosystem as a whole). But someone who's invested in the ecosystem may still choose to stick with their current product because, even though in isolation it's worse than the competitor, when viewed in the context of the ecosystem it's better because it makes all the other products they have better, and in turn those products make this one better.
As a concrete example, let's go with phones. Someone who has an iMac and a MacBook Pro and an AppleTV will get a lot of benefit from having an iPhone, because these products work well together and complement each other. But if they buy an Android phone instead, then they can't AirPlay to their AppleTV, they can't play their iTunes TV shows or movies on their Android, they don't get Universal Clipboard or Handoff, they don't get iCloud integration, they don't have Pages/Numbers/Keynote and so can't seamlessly switch between devices while editing their files, etc. All these features are ways the Apple devices work together that are lost if you leave the ecosystem. And that's fine, none of these things are artificial roadblocks created by Apple to prevent customers from switching.
> The primary objective is "further lock customers in". He has decided that one way to achieve that objective is to tie products together, but obviously there are many other ways already in place to lock customers in, as hinted by the word "further".
You're being incredibly nitpicky about something that you are objectively wrong about. The phrase "lock-in" does not mean what you're trying to imply it means. Yes, there are forms of lock-in that are bad for users, but to say that the usage of the phrase "lock-in" implies these bad forms is a logical fallacy. And no, the usage of the word "further" does not in any way mean that Apple is doing both bad lock-in and good lock-in together, it just means that Apple already has an ecosystem that works well together and thus provides benign lock-in, and Jobs was saying they should double-down on this approach, making their products work even better together and therefore strengthening the (benign) lock-in.
> Wi-Fi direct - I was talking about screen mirroring, not streaming iTunes video
Before I wrote that comment I read the whole wikipedia page on Wi-Fi direct, and no, it doesn't mean screen mirroring either (in fact, the page doesn't even contain the word "video"). You may be using some feature of your laptop/receiver device that uses Wi-Fi direct, but Wi-Fi direct itself does not magically let you send video from one device to another. You need some protocol built on top of Wi-Fi direct for that. BTW what device are you streaming to? Because the devices I'm familiar with that allow wireless streaming all have their own special way of doing it (e.g. Chromecast, as I mentioned before, requires using Google's SDK).
I'll try to explain it again in more concrete terms. The way this form of lock-in works is by making products that not only have good value on their own, but have even better value when used together because they complement each other and work great together. Any given product may have competitors from other companies, and those competing products may even be objectively better when compared just against the product (and not against the ecosystem as a whole). But someone who's invested in the ecosystem may still choose to stick with their current product because, even though in isolation it's worse than the competitor, when viewed in the context of the ecosystem it's better because it makes all the other products they have better, and in turn those products make this one better.
As a concrete example, let's go with phones. Someone who has an iMac and a MacBook Pro and an AppleTV will get a lot of benefit from having an iPhone, because these products work well together and complement each other. But if they buy an Android phone instead, then they can't AirPlay to their AppleTV, they can't play their iTunes TV shows or movies on their Android, they don't get Universal Clipboard or Handoff, they don't get iCloud integration, they don't have Pages/Numbers/Keynote and so can't seamlessly switch between devices while editing their files, etc. All these features are ways the Apple devices work together that are lost if you leave the ecosystem. And that's fine, none of these things are artificial roadblocks created by Apple to prevent customers from switching.
> The primary objective is "further lock customers in". He has decided that one way to achieve that objective is to tie products together, but obviously there are many other ways already in place to lock customers in, as hinted by the word "further".
You're being incredibly nitpicky about something that you are objectively wrong about. The phrase "lock-in" does not mean what you're trying to imply it means. Yes, there are forms of lock-in that are bad for users, but to say that the usage of the phrase "lock-in" implies these bad forms is a logical fallacy. And no, the usage of the word "further" does not in any way mean that Apple is doing both bad lock-in and good lock-in together, it just means that Apple already has an ecosystem that works well together and thus provides benign lock-in, and Jobs was saying they should double-down on this approach, making their products work even better together and therefore strengthening the (benign) lock-in.
> Wi-Fi direct - I was talking about screen mirroring, not streaming iTunes video
Before I wrote that comment I read the whole wikipedia page on Wi-Fi direct, and no, it doesn't mean screen mirroring either (in fact, the page doesn't even contain the word "video"). You may be using some feature of your laptop/receiver device that uses Wi-Fi direct, but Wi-Fi direct itself does not magically let you send video from one device to another. You need some protocol built on top of Wi-Fi direct for that. BTW what device are you streaming to? Because the devices I'm familiar with that allow wireless streaming all have their own special way of doing it (e.g. Chromecast, as I mentioned before, requires using Google's SDK).