[Sigia-l] Microsoft way vs Apple way

[Trenouth, John]

> Therein lies the conundrum: to provide the best user experience you 
> need to integrate hw/sw/services and yet MSFT's way has been to 
> segregate them. Ray Ozzie realizes this, and said so in the article. 
> So does MSFT continue its segregated way and fall pray to others or 
> integrate and threaten its platform strategy and erstwhile partners?
>
> ---- 
> Ziya

This sort of integration necessitates an enormous amount of control (and
if you speak with any former Apple employee, they'll describe a near
police-state culture obsessed with control).  Yet there are powerful
market trends away from control, away from the "Apple way."

Control is the antithesis of open.  On this topic John Maeda writes
"[i]n other words, open systems allow your product to evolve along with
the consumer.  So while a closed system creates a monopoly around a
product an open system creates a free-market economy."(1) 

Philosophically I agree.  Free-market economies (i.e. democratic
capitalism) will always ultimately trump centrally controlled economies
(i.e. soviet communism) in terms of innovation and value creation. 

Peter Merholz also agrees, writing a number of recent articles about the
future of web being one of relinquishing control(2).  Amazon, Google,
Ebay have all started relinquishing control.
http://www.kokogiak.com/amazon/ provides and example, as do peer tools
like wikipedia and the seeming flood of new mash-ups.  Even the dreaded
Microsoft opened up its Office file formats; so feel free to use
OpenOffice.  All of these examples are diametrically opposed to the
"Apple way".  
 
In The Innovator's Solution, Clayton Christensen provisionally agrees
saying that control is important in the early stage of a new product to
ensure adequate and consistent levels of quality and value, because
there won't be sufficient support from suppliers yet.  However, after a
product achieves a certain level of maturity, Christensen says you have
to start letting go--too much control becomes counter productive.

Apple provides a great example of control's downside.  Compare Mac's
historically obsessive and centrally controlled tidiness with the PC's
chaotic free-market messiness of upgrades, modifications from countless
sources.  It's the catherdral versus the bazzaar.  

The personal computer market has been very clear on its preference for
open versus controlled: Macs have never broken 5% marketshare, and sit
around 3.5% today.  Indeed Apple came awfully close to declaring
bankruptcy not so long ago.  

Has the "Apple Way" provided long-term product success that is
comparable to the success of the "Microsoft Way" outside of the now
tired iPod example? 

-- john




1. John Meada Article
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/oct2005/id20051017_303716.h
tm

2. Peter Merholz article
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000501.php