President Biden’s newly appointed special assistant for tech and competition is an enemy of monopolies and a fierce proponent of open systems.
Wu’s “The Master Switch: The rise and fall of information empires” (2010) mentions Apple 117 times. A sample:
“There’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask you,” [Wu told Wozniac in 2006]. “What happened with the Mac? You could open up the Apple II, and there were slots and so on, and anyone could write for it. The Mac was way more closed. What happened?”
“Oh,” said Wozniak. “That was Steve. He wanted it that way. The Apple II was my machine, and the Mac was his.”
Apple’s origins were pure Steve Wozniak, but as everyone knows, it was the other founder, Steve Jobs, whose ideas made Apple what it is today. Jobs maintained the early image that he and Wozniak created, but beginning with the Macintosh in the 1980s, and accelerating through the age of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, he led Apple computers on a fundamentally different track.
Jobs is a man who would seem as much at home in Victorian England as behind the counter of a sushi bar: he is an apostle of perfectibility and believes in a single best way of performing any task and presenting the results. As one might expect, his ideas embody an aesthetic philosophy as much as a sense of functionality, which is why Apple’s products look so good while working so well. But those ideas have also long been at odds with the principles of the early computing industry, of the Apple II and of the Internet, sometimes to the detriment of Apple itself.
As Wozniak told me, the Macintosh, launched in 1984, marked a departure from many of his ideas as realized in the Apple II. To be sure, the Macintosh was radically innovative in its own right, being the first important mass-produced computer to feature a “mouse” and a “desktop”—ideas born in the mind of Douglas Engelbart in the 1950s, ideas that had persisted without fructifying in computer science labs ever since.* Nevertheless the Mac represented an unconditional surrender of Wozniak’s openness, as was obvious from the first glance: gone was the concept of the hood. You could no longer easily open the computer and get at its innards. Generally, only Apple stuff, or stuff that Apple approved, could run on it (as software) or plug into it (as peripherals). Apple now refused to license its operating system, meaning that a company like Dell couldn’t make a Mac-compatible computer. If you wanted a laser printer, software, or virtually any accessory, it was to Apple you had to turn. Apple thus became the final arbiter over what the Macintosh was and was not, rather in the way that AT&T at one time had sole discretion over what could and what could not connect to the telephone network.
Thus via the Mac, Apple was at once an innovative and a completely retrograde company. Jobs had elected the design principles that had governed the Hollywood studios, Theodore Vail’s AT&T, indeed anyone who ever dreamed of a perfect system…
It is the old conflict between the concepts of the open system and the closed, between the forces of centralized order and those of dispersed variety. The antagonists assume new forms, the generals change, but essentially the same battles are fought over and over again. It is the very essence of the Cycle [of disruption], which even a technology as radical and powerful as the Internet seems able at most to moderate but not to abolish.
My take: Judging from recent interviews (his 2016 conversation with Ezra Klein is especially revealing), Wu understands the power of platforms and the failure of antitrust law to keep up. Having a good heart matters to Wu. Facebook and Amazon probably have more to fear from him than Google and Apple.
UPDATE: Wu mentions Apple explicitly in a 2010 piece in the Wall Street Journal. Note how he defines the market the company “owns”:
From “In the Grip of the New Monopolists” posted Nov. 13, 2010:
The Internet has long been held up as a model for what the free market is supposed to look like—competition in its purest form. So why does it look increasingly like a Monopoly board? Most of the major sectors today are controlled by one dominant company or an oligopoly. Google “owns” search; Facebook, social networking; eBay rules auctions; Apple dominates online content delivery; Amazon, retail; and so on.
I buy from a variety of online stores like Amazon Smile/Prime, a lot of 3rd party widgets/accessories, various UI/Ux & graphics & barcode software, etc etc all non-Apple.
Feels open to me.
And Apple still doesn’t have majority share in PCs & smartphones, desktop & mobile OS’s.
So yeh about open systems & monopolies.
Like bas flik says, consumers have the freedom to choose or not choose Apple.
Maybe not as good but that could be said for any industry. Porsche has a lock on Porsche. But I can get a Ford.
“As one might expect, his ideas embody an aesthetic philosophy as much as a sense of functionality, which is why Apple’s products look so good while working so well.”
Probably why they sell so well too — AND with a 98% sat-rate.
— quote —
“But those ideas have also long been at odds with the principles of the early computing industry, of the Apple II and of the Internet, sometimes to the detriment of Apple itself.”
To the detriment?
Think different.
— quote —
“Apple now refused to license its operating system…”
Homogenization is best left to dairy products — not devices and platforms.
— quote —
“Jobs had elected the design principles that had governed the Hollywood studios…”
The very thing that distinguished his company from others.
Isn’t it a good analogy here that there are those who build widgets and those who build more satisfying widgets?
Wu’s words reveal his bias, ” But those ideas have also long been at odds with the principles of the early computing industry, of the Apple II and of the Internet” Wu ignores the first 30 years of computing. He throws out info does not match his thinking.
A couple things from that: (1) governments often have different ways to evaluate costs & benefits than commercial companies (or individuals). What might be the best choice for a commercial company could conflict with governmental goals that are not strictly financial. The recent discussions around sustaining domestic production vs continuing to import from China is a good example of this. (2) companies have both technical and business incentives to distinguish themselves through proprietary solutions. Sometimes you want the ‘best technical solution’. Other times competition on cost against the standard that provides less technical capability but a financial advantage makes sense.
The right way for the government to promote open systems competition is by supporting appropriate standards to make a standards based solution both cost and technically competitive. But that will not be achieved by prohibiting innovative companies with proprietary solutions from competing.
It all goes back to “defining the market.” Should that be ‘what you put in the box’ or ‘the box itself including what runs on it’ or ‘the ecosystem that the box is part of?’
Did Apple 3.0 say that?!
Apple does control access, as do our national parks or hotels and entertainment venues.
Sounds pretty open to me, Fred.
Add to that — most Apps in the App Store are free with the primary intent of getting connected to customers on a beloved platform.
The cash can come later convincing people of the value to part with it.
How many razor blades would you like with that free razor?
I didn’t see anybody filing anti-trust against Gillette.
The interesting kinds of regulation that could be proposed include:
(1) separating Mac OS from Apple hardware, requiring Apple to license it to other hardware vendors
(2) removing the App Store from Apple
(3) forcing Apple to implement ‘open standard’ interfaces for their software. (Apple could probably respond, “Our OS can conform to the POSIX standard” but I can assure you an app built as a ‘strictly conforming POSIX application’ would not be something you’d want to use….)
Formally, the definition I remember for “open system” is “one whose components conform to interface specifications that are defined by publicly available configuration managed documents and for which there exist a notion of conformance. It is best if conformance to those interfaces can be tested through a third party verification process.”
In a way I’m pleased to see these governmental robber barons turning up the heat. Sooner, rather than later, rules, regulations and/or laws will be generated that will Companies something to actually fight against (starting with Arizona) that will end up in the SCOTUS.
As currently comprised (with no changes in sight for several years) these regulation initiatives will be dead on arrival.