UPDATE 8/10/08: Check out Apple’s Rotten Decision (via eWeek). It’s a report from the Black Hat Conference, where the writer says "Apple’s image was pilloried on the show floor."
A smart friend of mine, who’s the founder of a startup with a successful online application/platform — and a longtime Apple user and developer — told me recently he’s really unhappy with Apple of late. I must say I was taken aback! 
What, with all the hoopla about Apple’s latest consumer hits: the iPhone 3G and the wildly successful iTunes App Store (which I’m sure is up to 50 million downloads by now)? Can Apple actually do wrong? (Okay, with the obvious exception being the recent MobileMe launch, which they’ve already admitted they flubbed, and I have no doubt will be fixed soon — Steve will make sure of that.)
So, this was a real surprise to me — that such a longtime Apple believer and supporter could say something like this. I had to probe: "What on earth do you mean?" I wanted to get at what could possibly be behind his newfound negative feelings toward Apple.
Well, it turns out my friend has some very real concerns, and he makes a lot of sense — particularly because he speaks as someone who really understands the SaaS (software-as-a-service) business. So, here — unedited, in the raw — is his response to me:
BEGINNING OF APPLE RANT:
Graeme, I think part of the issue is that Apple’s culture is now at a mismatch with the SaaS and developer worlds. There certainly is a pattern here: arrogance and secrecy. Namely, SaaS and developer communities require transparency; Apple is more secretive than the CIA.
Ringtones
Apple tried damn hard to prevent people from making Ringtones of music they legitimately own. And you still have no mechanism for making Ringtones out of DRM’ed iTMS purchases without paying again for the song. And it is hard.
iPhone 3G Activation
In my opinion, the downfall of Apple (no, I am not really about to add myself to the legion of idiots predicting Apple’s doom over the years!) began with acquiescing to AT&T on the activation issue. I understand the legitimate business concerns involved, but the reality is that Apple re-invented the way a cell phone works with the original iPhone, and they gave away one of the coolest things about it with the iPhone 3G (the activation process). You can’t buy iPhones as presents any more!
But that was a nuisance.
MobileMe
So many things. One, the fiasco illustrates that Apple does not know a damn thing about web-based application hosting. They have iTunes working (more or less) right because it is so narrow in focus and so tightly controlled. But the MobileMe fiasco should not happen with any SaaS based system, ever.
And then their silence. They were silent for so long. When we finally heard from Apple, it was really just a note saying how Steve was forcing some dude who would give only his first name to blog about it every day or so. Contrast that with Amazon’s recent S3 fiasco. Amazon had updates every half hour for the duration of the outage, even if only to say we still don’t know any more than we did a half hour ago. For our online platform, we have a Twitter feed dedicated to system status so that our customers have ready access to what we know is wrong.
Every day or so? And saying nothing at all really in those communications. Inexcusable. The technical issues were about hard problems. The communication issues were easily fixed and never should happen in any scenario.
DNS Vulnerability
So, Apple knows about this vulnerability long before the rest of the world. The work of patching it is done for them. All of the major vendors of the world coordinate the announcement of the vulnerability and sending out patches.
Apple does nothing.
Weeks go by. Apple does nothing.
Exploits appear in the wild. Apple does nothing.
Eventually, Apple sends out a patch with the version of bind that is supposed to have the vulnerability patch. Somehow or another, it does not actually include port randomization features that protect against the vulnerability.
Apple does not send out the patch to non-server versions of OS X.
Apple never bothers to explain what it is up to or why it is failing to deliver timely patches.
I move my DNS off OS X for good. This was the final straw in the back that breaks OS X Server for me. I have been learning slowly over time that Apple is way too untrustworthy as a vendor of business services. This proved it.
In the meantime, Apple still has the vulnerability out there.
The App Store
Apple has proven the App Store concept is screwed up beyond belief. No ability to reasonably allow for trial use. No ability to reasonably have beta programs (the ad hoc deployment stuff is a fiasco in itself). But those are just feature complaints.
No one company should ever control what you can put on a device you own. If I want to pay $1,000 for "I am Rich", that’s my own damn prerogative. But even if we grant that right, the idea that they can remove apps from the store and tell no one anything about why it was removed? And what about if Apple corrupts my iTunes library and I need to re-install an app that I bought, but Apple later determined is not appropriate for their store? This is unacceptable.
———
END OF APPLE RANT. What do you think? Please speak your piece in the comments below.
I see a few things at play here, all of which are broad, sweeping and probably irrelevant observations.
Apple fans tend to unrealistically think that Apple is better at everything than anyone, rather than thinking that Apple is better than some competitors at some things, so when they finally figure out that Apple isn’t, they are pretty disappointed.
The converse is that most people think that most technology companies do things right sometimes and wrong other times, and tend to not be as critical when things go bad, probably because they didn’t expect much from non-Apple companies anyway.
In other words, why would anyone think that because Apple can create a pretty decent ‘user experience’ on desktops and phones, they should also be able to build and maintain on line stores, portals, and web applications? Or that because they make a half-ways usable GUI, they can secure a DNS? But fans tend to assume that competency in one arena presumes competency in all arenas.
As far as iTunes, the app store and the control of software on devices, Apple is purely evil. Microsoft, had they tried to lock up desktops in the same manner, would have created a global hailstorm of criticism and legal action.
For “I am Rich”, if someone wants to buy it, great. But if someone hit the buy button by mistake, not taking it seriously, I think he should get his money back. Simple. Maybe the application was removed because chargebacks were exceeding authentic revenue, which would certainly be fair if true.
I was thinking of writing a application “I have $0.99” that would have a picture of an emerald and cost, well, $ 0.99. The idea made me laugh, but my business partner said that Apple might not like it.
Darn.
In early 2006, I visited the Philippines, where oddly enough they are much more interested in advanced cell phones than Americans. They are status symbols there, like luxury cars are here. People who make, say, $12,000 a year – an upscale income there – will buy $400 cellphones.
So this nice lady I got to know had a Nokia 6600, far fancier than anything I’d seen in the USA at the time. It had a big, gorgeous color screen and lots of tiny, confusing buttons. The user interface, well, let’s just say it didn’t scale well for such a complex device. Trying to find the web browser in their menu system was nearly impossible.
So she came to me one morning and said, “I think Celly is sick.” (Filipinas love their cellphones.) Turns out it got a Symbian virus that sent MMS messages to her whole address book and everyone within Bluetooth range. Adult, obscene MMS messages. Fortunately, most of her friends didn’t have her fancy phone and so they could not see the messages, which was at least a relief.
I was able to find the fix on the web. But not before she’d run up a staggering $300 in charges. That’s a big deal when your income’s under $1,000 a month.
Ever since then, though, I have realized that really, phones have to use a walled garden application environment, because it would otherwise be too easy to write malicious applications that do the phone’s owners real harm.
In short, Apple’s probably made the right decision here.
D
I’m surprised the Apple secrecy card is being played, Apple has always been secret 🙂
Ringtones? It’s been big business for the telcos. I would imagine there is a lot of behind the scenes negotiating to even let one make them even if it’s hard.
Activation – I would imagine, since so many v1 iPhones were bought/sold separate from AT&T/plan and shipped overseas there was some telco grumbling and they needed to bring everything into a consistent, worldwide, subsidized program. Even though the v1 process was slick I’m not really surprised it had to change.
Have heard some harping about the DNS thing but haven’t read any real-life exploits – has there been any. Is it “really” a serious thing or some just think it’s more serious/urgent than Apple does?
I agree with David that Apple probably made the right decision with the app store being locked down. It’s a CE platform/device and many are closed systems – xBox, Playstation, etc.
More of the same.
Everyone on Earth knows the iPhone 3G has some 3G connectivity issues, many people are speculating there is an Infineon chipset issue.
But Apple refuses to say anything on the subject.