From Neil Shah’s “Apple’s PaaS,” posted last week by Counterpoint Research:
Apple is bold & brilliant.
Since the launch of the first iPhone & iOS 12 years ago, Apple has transformed into a company sitting on a gold mine of more than a billion premium users. It has a strong understanding of how to respect and protect those users, while extracting the gold in a timely manner…
We are now in the 15th year of the iOS platform update and for the past five years, Apple has astutely started building its focus and narrative around “privacy”.
The privacy narrative has been deliberate and cleverly executed, providing many benefits – the biggest of which is building “trust”. This is usually the toughest part as companies need to “walk the talk”; Apple has been relentless with its engineering to bake in the privacy layer across its entire ecosystem.
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- Position “privacy as a fundamental right” for the users
- Commence the “privacy plumbing” work across the products for better flow of “trust”
- Unveil piece by piece privacy features with every update
- Go on offense and double-down on a privacy-centricity updates this week at its annual WWDC21 conference
- With trust gained, begin to monetize with Privacy-as-a-Service and more
My take: Shah gets it. In this context, the scary, trackers-go-poof ad Apple aired just before WWDC feels like the planting of a flag.
Positive feedback about Apple, feels rare these days, so I appreciate it.
PaaS also = Privacy as a Strategy.
I still think the word is safety, more than privacy.
‘Open’ sound cool. As Cat Stevens said, “But then a lot of nice things turn bad out there. Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world.”
Governments tend to extend their control, whether it’s increasing their territory or just control of their subjects. Recognizing this, Jefferson was against a Bill of Rights because the rights listed would be the only ones the government didn’t eventually take.
On my previous point: Privacy is clearly a current differentiator for Apple. My concern is how far legislatures and administrators will go to reducing that Apple advantage. That’s much more likely to be done as a side effect of ill-conceived legislation/regulation, than for any explicit “Let’s go break Apple” intent. The previously proposed “Apple must establish an encryption back door for use by government investigators” is a classic example of “ill-conceived’
…viewing your customers as humans instead of data contraband.
Think different —
In-House IT at major firms wanted no part of Mac. Lawyer’s kids begged for them so I taught Photoshop and Pagemaker from 5:30p to 10p weeknights. Lawyers needed training so I taught them about security, reliability & ease of use. Tyson’s Corner Apple store was the 1st for several reasons.
When rich DC lawyers get home they use Macs.