Phase Two, re: Apple’s Four-Year Product Rollout
Before I say anything, I must first stand on the shoulders of a great post by a very smart guy: Apple’s Four-Year Product Rollout by Mr. Shawn Blanc. Go read it.
Great, right? I thought so, too. Something about it bugged me, though. It left open a question which naturally arises from its conclusion. Shawn ends with this:
The future of simplicity and usability in technology means connectedness. It means hardware devices that don’t operate as silos independent of our documents and media and communication channels. But that future is now upon us.
“But Shawn!” you say. “What does that mean for Apple? Where do they go from here?” In other words, if what Apple has undergone over the past 4–5 years has been phase one, what’s phase two?
The answer, I believe, is this guy.
Well, not the man himself, but his new position in the company as Senior VP of Internet Software and Services.
There have been rumors that Apple is building a maps service, and I think there’s credit to them. The company is definitely up to something in that space, what with the acquisitions and the admission in their press release regarding the location data controversy that they are developing a traffic service. But I can’t help but think a maps/traffic service is just the tip of the iceberg.
After all these years of running the iTunes Store, the App Store, the iBookstore, and soon iCloud, why create an SVP post now? Sure, Eddy himself deserves the status and the respect of an SVP. He’s basically kept Apple’s online businesses online for the better part of 10 years. Why the promotion now?
The imminent launch of iCloud factors into this, obviously. It’s a big deal. Consider: every Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV sold after iCloud’s launch will give everybody a bevy of useful and attractive Internet services. And yes, iCloud will be free, but free in a different way than Google, or Yahoo, or Microsoft, or most other things on the Internet: you get it as a complement to your purchase of an Apple product. That means no ads. No ads means no need to collect all kinds of data about users to show them shit they don’t want. No ads also means, none of those friggin’ ads all in my face all the time. Let’s make it simple: no ads = happier users. If you want to make a solid bet, bet on seeing a bunch of @me.com email accounts in the next year. Free email that syncs, no ads, and a nice interface? I can’t wait.
Now, a brief tangent to point out something curious. What’s up with Facebook buying up and hiring all the world’s design talent? Do they just want to improve Facebook’s design to make it less convoluted and friendlier? Maybe they really are building a Facebook phone? I don’t know. But I have a hunch that says Facebook is preparing to compete with Apple, and not just because they might be building a phone, but because Facebook thinks Apple is going to make a bigger impact online than they ever have before.
As Shawn said, everything Apple has been developing over the past several years seems to have reached some new plateau, where everything just works, yes, but more importantly, where everything just works together. The next obvious step for Apple, then, is to continue working on connecting their users’ devices more meaningfully, and that means developing software that operates on the Web.
Apple has said since 2008 that they maintain three software platforms: Mac OS X, iOS, and the web through WebKit. I feel like they’re ready to do something special with that third one.
(Update 9/11/2011: Minor edits for clarity.)
