Calacanis misleads, insults about "Apple's Master Plan"
Jason Calacanis graciously sent me a nice tweet a few days ago acknowledging my earlier blog post responding to “The Case Against Apple”. I thank him for that, but I can't thank him for his followup effort. I find his blog entry today, “Apple’s Master Plan (and why even fanboys should be scared)” is even wider of the mark than the first — and in some cases quite insultingly so.
Right off the bat, I find his assertion that “well over 95% of you responded that Apple was acting too closed and should, for market opportunities alone, open up their platforms” is somewhat suspect. I’m not sure what measuring stick he’s using. It appeared to me that most of the longer blog responses I saw around were refutations of his points, not support for his thesis. Most of the “support” in shorter comments appeared to be of the usual unreasoned “yeah, screw Apple!” variety. Even the comments attached to his own blog run no better than 50-50.
“The Case Against Apple” was at worst a badly-aimed scattershot repetition of oft-repeated off-target analogies about what (mostly) the iPhone “should be”. “Apple’s Master Plan” is, in my opinion, far less defensible. The piece is full of scare tactics, name-calling, misdirection and outright errors.
Calacanis is correct that Apple is fighting for the mobile desktop, and that they are off to a good start. He’s wrong, however, when he asserts that if Apple wins it will set the industry back decades. In fact, Apple may be the last, best chance to save the mobile desktop from the morass that the mobile phone has been mired in for years.
I find the repeated assertions in this piece that Apple is in the mobile market only to “line their own pockets” pretty disingenuous coming from a businessman as competitive and matter-of-fact about making lots of money as Calacanis. Does Calacanis advocate running a publicly-held company with no profit motive, aimed at some goal of assisting his competitors to divvy up the market “for the good of all”? Of course not. If so, his stockholders should take him out and have him shot. Thank goodness Apple does aim at making a profit, and they do it by offering products that lots and lots of people want to buy. Consumers vote with their dollars, and they are overwhelmingly voting for Apple. Calacanis calls those of us who think Apple should aim for profits “Ayn Rand-ers”, which is doubly insulting coming from someone who (a) knows the difference and (b) never had a problem aiming at profits himself in the past.
Calacanis asserts that “competition and open systems are better for consumers on all levels”, implying that Apple doing well in the mobile desktop market will put an end to that. Again, Calacanis knows better and is using generalizations that don’t fit as a scare tactic. There is plenty of room for competition in this market, and if the competition fails it will be because they do a poor job of delivering what their customers really want. One way they can assure such a failure is to deliver a mobile desktop experience that is exactly what Calacanis says he wants, expecting that he is a typical user. There is plenty of room for mobile data devices that target an open-source, anything-goes, elite audience that needs and wants that. Indeed, the Blackberry did well targeting the top end business elite for a long time. But Blackberry did not begin to penetrate the market formed by the “rest of us” until Apple’s iPhone showed there are other ways to approach things. They are learning quickly that there are more of us than there are of the elite Calacanis-type users.
The term “open systems” is not set forth here in the usual sense. Instead, it is used by Calacanis as a meaningless buzzword, setting “open” equal to “good” and “closed” equal to “evil”. The issue here is not one of “open” vs. “closed”, but one of who is the audience Apple should target with the iPhone/iPod/iTablet product line. Calacanis claims “open” is better on all levels for consumers. Nonsense. Not every data communications product or product line needs to be a no-standards free-for-all.
Apple seems to be choosing to create “the mobile platform for the rest of us”, and in so doing is attracting tons of customers who never gave a damn about the idea of a “smartphone” before. Apple did the work to figure out what customers like and how to give it to them in a package that anticipates needs they don’t know they have yet and provides unequaled usability. While others created phones that were “designed” by Torquemada and systems that told customers they’d use what they had and like it, Apple created something that was a quantum leap ahead. Calacanis, however, seems to think that this is some sort of dastardly plot to turn us all into slaves. For him, “open” means Apple does the work and everyone else is “open” to exploit it and bend it out of shape and force all users to deal with the consequences, whether they want that or not.
My idea of “open” is that Apple is open to seek the market they see out there and everyone else is open to do the same. A certain level of interoperability and data portability is certainly required, as we all have to use the same cellular networks and data formats. Apple can’t possibly develop every desired piece of software themselves, so a market for third-party software is also necessary. But there is no reason that every mobile data device needs to be wide-open to everything any individual wants to put on it, regardless of what that does to the overall user experience. I’m the homeowner and if I am more comfortable sitting in a walled garden than in a glass house, who is Calacanis or anyone else to tell me Apple is evil for allowing me to make that choice?
Calacanis discusses the rumored (and almost certainly soon-to-be-announced) Apple tablet, and is horrified that Apple might bring it out as part of the iPhone/Touch ecosystem. To do so instead of equipping it with the more “open” Mac OS X is in Calacanis’ words “the ultimate tell” — making it clear (to him) that Steve Jobs intends to rape the world by somehow forcing them to buy something easy to use and demonstrably popular with an extremely wide variety of consumer types instead of something aimed at only the same people already buying Mac laptops.
Using this scare language, Calacanis hopes to convince you that black is white, bad is good, and buying what you obviously want and like is the worst thing that could happen. Please don’t fall for this. Calacanis says we “fanboys” (there’s the gratuitous insults again) are drunk on the kool-aid, but right here it is Calacanis that is standing at the punchbowl with the rat poison box in hand insisting that Apple selling anything short of a Calacanis Chaos Communicator which offers any experience different from that big box you already have on your desktop is the work of the Devil.
The next section, however, is where Calacanis goes completely off the deep end. Here he tries to sell you the idea that a more narrowly-focused iPhone and an iTablet based on the same concepts will lead inevitably to Apple coming into your homes to take away your ability to load third party software on your desktop computer. Steve Jobs is coming to make you buy your desktop software only from the App Store, to rip away your Firefox and Opera browsers in favor of Safari Forever, and lock you away in Apple-branded Hell eternally! Piffle.
(By the way, Jason — despite your assertion here, Apple’s heinous decision to not put the gross piece of memory-hogging crap that is Adobe Flash on the iPhone does not prevent you from playing Bejeweled for free, forcing you to shell out an outrageous $2.99 for Bejeweled 2 in the App Store. After all, that’s a whole microfractional percent of a Tesla payment! You can go to http://popcap.com/iphone/games/bejeweled and play Bejeweled for free on the iPhone any time, without Flash. I frequently do. If you are going to use inane scare tactics, at least be accurate with them.)
Calacanis doesn't really believe this load of bull. I can’t believe he’s sincere because he’s a smart, savvy guy. He has to know that this is the worst sort of crappy “slippery slope” argument, as favored by venal politicians and fly-by-night hand-in-your-pocket televangelists. I’m insulted that this should even come out of his mouth — that he thinks his readers are so incredibly empty-headed as to let that one slide by while we stand slack-jawed and drooling. Damn, Jason, I never underestimated your intelligence. How dare you underestimate mine in such a fashion!
The personal computer as it has developed (in the usual chaotic way that anything like this grows) is a whole different sort of beast than a mobile. Using a personal computer attached to the internet requires an investment of time, money, study and focus. Everything affects everything else and woe will befall anyone who can’t handle that for themselves or rely on someone else to do ti for them. You no longer have to be a geek to use a computer — but only because there are a lot of other geeks working damn hard to cover your butt for you. Even so, you are asking for it if you so much as download your email or hook up a wireless access point for your laptop without having some idea about what you are doing.
No matter how smart you are, you don’t necessarily want that level of complexity all of the time! It is no reflection on one’s intelligence to want a device to do a more limited set of tasks and “just work” for each of them — especially when it is not the only device you own. A mobile device that “just works” for a wide range of data handling, communications, media and fun uses is a nice thing to have, and Apple is discovering (or rather the world is discovering because Apple made the choice available) that one way to accomplish that is to be a little picky about what you put on the device in the first place.
If you want an everything box, fine! Buy one. (You probably already have it — it is called a “laptop computer”, and Apple makes the best ones on the market.) But for those times you don’t want or need that out in the mobile world, there is an iPhone. And if you want the bigger screen along with the simpler interface, I think Apple’s going to have you covered there soon, too.
This is not a Commie plot, it is a Good Thing. If you want a mobile platform that is utterly open like the proverbial barn door in all ways, I’m sure someone will make one for you. (Google’s Android platform might be an excellent place to start.) I’m equally sure that such a thing will not sell in the numbers that the iPhone sells, but that’s OK. There’s room for both. But it is utter balderdash — insulting balderdash — to say that anything else is Evil and aimed only at sheep who haven’t the sense to want exactly what Calacanis wants out of a mobile platform.
Calacanis is trying to tell you that “freedom” requires that anyone have the ability to do anything, anytime, with (or to) any device and system you buy. That’s a load. Freedom means you — the buyer — have the freedom to choose what you want to buy. Apple is offering a better choice, and people are flocking to it in droves. We kid about the Steve Jobs “reality distortion field”, but the real distortions are coming from the people who want you to “think the same” about the growing mobile desktop as the existing personal computer market because they don’t know how to compete on any other level. The target markets are not the same and there is no reason the devices must be the same.
I want to be free from crap on my iPhone, free from software bloat, free from the same hassles in the great outdoors that I have when I am at my desktop computer. A lot of people have brought out tablet computers that failed because they were just laptops with a different form factor. I want my mobile platform to just work, and if Apple can do that — I’m buying. I do want flexibility, and if Apple restricts my choice too much I’ll buy from someone else. But it is not a moral crusade, and anyone who tells you it is a holy mission is just trying to get their piece of the pie for free, and they say screw you and what you want and need. Don’t fall for it.
Apple’s only “Master Plan” appears be to offer an easy-to-use and self-consistent platform for mobile devices that is aimed at the widest possible market, not just the minor percentage who want seventeen browsers and the latest bloatware, and all the rest all the time. Sure, Apple wants to sell you something, but they are giving you something honest in return for your money. There's a new concept. Watch out for the people who claim only they are wearing halos while the other guy who is trying to make an honest buck is Satan incarnate. Their hands will be in your pockets a lot deeper in the long run, and you’ll have a lot less to show for it.
Right off the bat, I find his assertion that “well over 95% of you responded that Apple was acting too closed and should, for market opportunities alone, open up their platforms” is somewhat suspect. I’m not sure what measuring stick he’s using. It appeared to me that most of the longer blog responses I saw around were refutations of his points, not support for his thesis. Most of the “support” in shorter comments appeared to be of the usual unreasoned “yeah, screw Apple!” variety. Even the comments attached to his own blog run no better than 50-50.
“The Case Against Apple” was at worst a badly-aimed scattershot repetition of oft-repeated off-target analogies about what (mostly) the iPhone “should be”. “Apple’s Master Plan” is, in my opinion, far less defensible. The piece is full of scare tactics, name-calling, misdirection and outright errors.
Calacanis is correct that Apple is fighting for the mobile desktop, and that they are off to a good start. He’s wrong, however, when he asserts that if Apple wins it will set the industry back decades. In fact, Apple may be the last, best chance to save the mobile desktop from the morass that the mobile phone has been mired in for years.
I find the repeated assertions in this piece that Apple is in the mobile market only to “line their own pockets” pretty disingenuous coming from a businessman as competitive and matter-of-fact about making lots of money as Calacanis. Does Calacanis advocate running a publicly-held company with no profit motive, aimed at some goal of assisting his competitors to divvy up the market “for the good of all”? Of course not. If so, his stockholders should take him out and have him shot. Thank goodness Apple does aim at making a profit, and they do it by offering products that lots and lots of people want to buy. Consumers vote with their dollars, and they are overwhelmingly voting for Apple. Calacanis calls those of us who think Apple should aim for profits “Ayn Rand-ers”, which is doubly insulting coming from someone who (a) knows the difference and (b) never had a problem aiming at profits himself in the past.
Calacanis asserts that “competition and open systems are better for consumers on all levels”, implying that Apple doing well in the mobile desktop market will put an end to that. Again, Calacanis knows better and is using generalizations that don’t fit as a scare tactic. There is plenty of room for competition in this market, and if the competition fails it will be because they do a poor job of delivering what their customers really want. One way they can assure such a failure is to deliver a mobile desktop experience that is exactly what Calacanis says he wants, expecting that he is a typical user. There is plenty of room for mobile data devices that target an open-source, anything-goes, elite audience that needs and wants that. Indeed, the Blackberry did well targeting the top end business elite for a long time. But Blackberry did not begin to penetrate the market formed by the “rest of us” until Apple’s iPhone showed there are other ways to approach things. They are learning quickly that there are more of us than there are of the elite Calacanis-type users.
The term “open systems” is not set forth here in the usual sense. Instead, it is used by Calacanis as a meaningless buzzword, setting “open” equal to “good” and “closed” equal to “evil”. The issue here is not one of “open” vs. “closed”, but one of who is the audience Apple should target with the iPhone/iPod/iTablet product line. Calacanis claims “open” is better on all levels for consumers. Nonsense. Not every data communications product or product line needs to be a no-standards free-for-all.
Apple seems to be choosing to create “the mobile platform for the rest of us”, and in so doing is attracting tons of customers who never gave a damn about the idea of a “smartphone” before. Apple did the work to figure out what customers like and how to give it to them in a package that anticipates needs they don’t know they have yet and provides unequaled usability. While others created phones that were “designed” by Torquemada and systems that told customers they’d use what they had and like it, Apple created something that was a quantum leap ahead. Calacanis, however, seems to think that this is some sort of dastardly plot to turn us all into slaves. For him, “open” means Apple does the work and everyone else is “open” to exploit it and bend it out of shape and force all users to deal with the consequences, whether they want that or not.
My idea of “open” is that Apple is open to seek the market they see out there and everyone else is open to do the same. A certain level of interoperability and data portability is certainly required, as we all have to use the same cellular networks and data formats. Apple can’t possibly develop every desired piece of software themselves, so a market for third-party software is also necessary. But there is no reason that every mobile data device needs to be wide-open to everything any individual wants to put on it, regardless of what that does to the overall user experience. I’m the homeowner and if I am more comfortable sitting in a walled garden than in a glass house, who is Calacanis or anyone else to tell me Apple is evil for allowing me to make that choice?
Calacanis discusses the rumored (and almost certainly soon-to-be-announced) Apple tablet, and is horrified that Apple might bring it out as part of the iPhone/Touch ecosystem. To do so instead of equipping it with the more “open” Mac OS X is in Calacanis’ words “the ultimate tell” — making it clear (to him) that Steve Jobs intends to rape the world by somehow forcing them to buy something easy to use and demonstrably popular with an extremely wide variety of consumer types instead of something aimed at only the same people already buying Mac laptops.
Using this scare language, Calacanis hopes to convince you that black is white, bad is good, and buying what you obviously want and like is the worst thing that could happen. Please don’t fall for this. Calacanis says we “fanboys” (there’s the gratuitous insults again) are drunk on the kool-aid, but right here it is Calacanis that is standing at the punchbowl with the rat poison box in hand insisting that Apple selling anything short of a Calacanis Chaos Communicator which offers any experience different from that big box you already have on your desktop is the work of the Devil.
The next section, however, is where Calacanis goes completely off the deep end. Here he tries to sell you the idea that a more narrowly-focused iPhone and an iTablet based on the same concepts will lead inevitably to Apple coming into your homes to take away your ability to load third party software on your desktop computer. Steve Jobs is coming to make you buy your desktop software only from the App Store, to rip away your Firefox and Opera browsers in favor of Safari Forever, and lock you away in Apple-branded Hell eternally! Piffle.
(By the way, Jason — despite your assertion here, Apple’s heinous decision to not put the gross piece of memory-hogging crap that is Adobe Flash on the iPhone does not prevent you from playing Bejeweled for free, forcing you to shell out an outrageous $2.99 for Bejeweled 2 in the App Store. After all, that’s a whole microfractional percent of a Tesla payment! You can go to http://popcap.com/iphone/games/bejeweled and play Bejeweled for free on the iPhone any time, without Flash. I frequently do. If you are going to use inane scare tactics, at least be accurate with them.)
Calacanis doesn't really believe this load of bull. I can’t believe he’s sincere because he’s a smart, savvy guy. He has to know that this is the worst sort of crappy “slippery slope” argument, as favored by venal politicians and fly-by-night hand-in-your-pocket televangelists. I’m insulted that this should even come out of his mouth — that he thinks his readers are so incredibly empty-headed as to let that one slide by while we stand slack-jawed and drooling. Damn, Jason, I never underestimated your intelligence. How dare you underestimate mine in such a fashion!
The personal computer as it has developed (in the usual chaotic way that anything like this grows) is a whole different sort of beast than a mobile. Using a personal computer attached to the internet requires an investment of time, money, study and focus. Everything affects everything else and woe will befall anyone who can’t handle that for themselves or rely on someone else to do ti for them. You no longer have to be a geek to use a computer — but only because there are a lot of other geeks working damn hard to cover your butt for you. Even so, you are asking for it if you so much as download your email or hook up a wireless access point for your laptop without having some idea about what you are doing.
No matter how smart you are, you don’t necessarily want that level of complexity all of the time! It is no reflection on one’s intelligence to want a device to do a more limited set of tasks and “just work” for each of them — especially when it is not the only device you own. A mobile device that “just works” for a wide range of data handling, communications, media and fun uses is a nice thing to have, and Apple is discovering (or rather the world is discovering because Apple made the choice available) that one way to accomplish that is to be a little picky about what you put on the device in the first place.
If you want an everything box, fine! Buy one. (You probably already have it — it is called a “laptop computer”, and Apple makes the best ones on the market.) But for those times you don’t want or need that out in the mobile world, there is an iPhone. And if you want the bigger screen along with the simpler interface, I think Apple’s going to have you covered there soon, too.
This is not a Commie plot, it is a Good Thing. If you want a mobile platform that is utterly open like the proverbial barn door in all ways, I’m sure someone will make one for you. (Google’s Android platform might be an excellent place to start.) I’m equally sure that such a thing will not sell in the numbers that the iPhone sells, but that’s OK. There’s room for both. But it is utter balderdash — insulting balderdash — to say that anything else is Evil and aimed only at sheep who haven’t the sense to want exactly what Calacanis wants out of a mobile platform.
Calacanis is trying to tell you that “freedom” requires that anyone have the ability to do anything, anytime, with (or to) any device and system you buy. That’s a load. Freedom means you — the buyer — have the freedom to choose what you want to buy. Apple is offering a better choice, and people are flocking to it in droves. We kid about the Steve Jobs “reality distortion field”, but the real distortions are coming from the people who want you to “think the same” about the growing mobile desktop as the existing personal computer market because they don’t know how to compete on any other level. The target markets are not the same and there is no reason the devices must be the same.
I want to be free from crap on my iPhone, free from software bloat, free from the same hassles in the great outdoors that I have when I am at my desktop computer. A lot of people have brought out tablet computers that failed because they were just laptops with a different form factor. I want my mobile platform to just work, and if Apple can do that — I’m buying. I do want flexibility, and if Apple restricts my choice too much I’ll buy from someone else. But it is not a moral crusade, and anyone who tells you it is a holy mission is just trying to get their piece of the pie for free, and they say screw you and what you want and need. Don’t fall for it.
Apple’s only “Master Plan” appears be to offer an easy-to-use and self-consistent platform for mobile devices that is aimed at the widest possible market, not just the minor percentage who want seventeen browsers and the latest bloatware, and all the rest all the time. Sure, Apple wants to sell you something, but they are giving you something honest in return for your money. There's a new concept. Watch out for the people who claim only they are wearing halos while the other guy who is trying to make an honest buck is Satan incarnate. Their hands will be in your pockets a lot deeper in the long run, and you’ll have a lot less to show for it.
Posted by Guy McLimore at 8/10/2009 10:07 PM 
Categories: Steve Jobs,Opinion,iPhone,General Apple News
Categories: Steve Jobs,Opinion,iPhone,General Apple News
The reference of Ayn Rand reminded me of the politicians in Atlas Shrugged who sounded exactly like Calacanis - that the enterprising entrepreneur must shared his fruits with everyone without cost or a law will be enacted to force him to do so.
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lemme see. Apple expands the world of consumer computing dramatically by inventing a simplified version of OSX that works great on portable devices. in response thousands of new free/cheap applications are created that do all kinds of useful/fun things for people. now many other companies are trying to do this too with their own products. and Apple plans to expand that new format to tablet size to sell to a certain market niche.
so of course this is evil. it's not really dramatically more choices for consumers like it looks, no, it's ... um ... less! because you can't run your desktop applications on that tablet!! and that means Apple wants to take away/limit your desktop applications too!!! it's an Apple plot for world control!!!! oh why didn't i see it sooner - yes, Steve Jobs is an alien.
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