Apple vs. Google - Closed Versus Open Systems - Book Club #19: "Steve Jobs"

Steve Jobs always held the same approach when it came to Apple and it’s products - he wanted to create an integrated system that was controlled by Apple from end to end. He believed that doing so would result in a far superior and much easier user experience (UX) than any other tech product. Many people would take sides in this debate and it definitely got heated over the years as Apple fought internally and externally against those who said they should open up their software and license it out.

---

Current Book & Quotes From: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

 
 

---

This debate got especially heated back in 2010 when the iPad was released. Google was beginning to embody a role that Microsoft had taken about 30 years prior - Google was touting open systems while trying to tear down Apple’s ideals of having an integrated system that is closed in order to have a better user experience.

Jon Fortt (Fortune) said this about Apple’s closed systems:

“Closed systems get a bad rap, but they work beautifully and users benefit. Probably no one in tech has proved this more convincingly than Steve Jobs. By bundling hardware, software, and services, and controlling them tightly, Apple is consistently able to get the jump on its rivals and roll out polished products.” They agreed that the iPad would be the clearest test of this question since the original Macintosh. “Apple has taken its control-freak rep to a whole new level with the A4 chip that powers the thing,” wrote Fortt. “Cupertino now has absolute say over the silicon, device, operating system, App Store, and payment system.”

Steve Wozniak (Apple’s Co-Founder) had a hacker’s mentality and originally fought with Jobs over having a more open system back when Apple was releasing it’s first products. His opinion about open systems changed with time and experience:

“A reporter asked him about the closed nature of Apple’s ecosystem. “Apple gets you into their playpen and keeps you there, but there are some advantages to that,” he replied. “I like open systems, but I’m a hacker. But most people want things that are easy to use. Steve’s genius is that he knows how to make things simple, and that sometimes requires controlling everything.”

Included in the book was a truly amazing story that Jobs heard from Michael Noer (Forbes). The story illustrates the amazing potential of the iPad and also the phenomenally simple user experience that results from creating an integrated, closed system:

“Noer was reading a science fiction novel on his iPad while staying at a dairy farm in a rural area north of Bogotá, Colombia, when a poor six-year-old boy who cleaned the stables came up to him. Curious, Noer handed him the device. With no instruction, and never having seen a computer before, the boy started using it intuitively. He began swiping the screen, launching apps, playing a pinball game. “Steve Jobs has designed a powerful computer that an illiterate six-year-old can use without instruction,” Noer wrote. “If that isn’t magical, I don’t know what is.”

Apps - Closed or Open?

Apps were no exception to Jobs’s controlling nature of having a closed system. When the iPhone originally came out, many people within Apple spent a long time convincing Jobs that he should allow outside developers free access to create apps and share them via an App Store on the iPhone. They said it would spur innovation and if they didn’t do it, then another company will and it will take over iPhone’s market share. Jobs was resistant to the idea of developers creating apps for his beautifully integrated product, but he eventually relented - provided that Apple would still remain in control of which apps were allowed to make it to the Store.

“The apps also allowed the platform to be sort of open, in a very controlled way, to outside developers who wanted to create software and content for it—open, that is, like a carefully curated and gated community garden.”

“Jobs soon figured out that there was a way to have the best of both worlds. He would permit outsiders to write apps, but they would have to meet strict standards, be tested and approved by Apple, and be sold only through the iTunes Store. It was a way to reap the advantage of empowering thousands of software developers while retaining enough control to protect the integrity of the iPhone and the simplicity of the customer experience. “It was an absolutely magical solution that hit the sweet spot,” said Levinson. “It gave us the benefits of openness while retaining end-to-end control.”

Bill Gates’s Take on The Issue

30 years prior to the iPad’s launch and the heated battle between Apple and Google on closed vs. open systems, Microsoft had the same approach as Google - to create an open system and let people freely innovate on top of the platform. Now Gates was on the sidelines watching the same war being fought between Apple and Google. His take on the issue remains slightly similar to before, but I can tell a shift in his tone towards closed systems. He’s not completely opposed to them, but he still prefers and believes in open systems long-term:

“There are some benefits to being more closed, in terms of how much you control the experience, and certainly at times he’s had the benefit of that,” Gates told me. But refusing to license the Apple iOS, he added, gave competitors like Android the chance to gain greater volume. In addition, he argued, competition among a variety of devices and manufacturers leads to greater consumer choice and more innovation. “These companies are not all building pyramids next to Central Park,” he said, poking fun at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store, “but they are coming up with innovations based on competing for consumers.” Most of the improvements in PCs, Gates pointed out, came because consumers had a lot of choices, and that would someday be the case in the world of mobile devices. “Eventually, I think, open will succeed, but that’s where I come from. In the long run, the coherence thing, you can’t stay with that.”

Did Apple Succeed With Their Closed System?

The answer to this question is extremely obvious in hindsight - Apple has dominated the tech market in many different ways from news outlets to music to personal computers to tablets to phones to apps and the list goes on. The iPad was no exception, even in this time of heated debate over the closed nature of what Apple had created:

“In less than a month Apple sold one million iPads. That was twice as fast as it took the iPhone to reach that mark. By March 2011, nine months after its release, fifteen million had been sold. By some measures it became the most successful consumer product launch in history.”

---

Here's the Question of The Day, don't forget to post your answers in the comments!

What's your take on the Open Vs. Closed Debate? Do you think tech products should all be open-source and accessible by devs and users to create the experience they want? Or do you think having a closed experience allows for an easier user experience and accessibility for the massses?

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to leave your thoughts below and I look forward to seeing you in the comments!

-