7. Clarify Policies In The App Store.
The iPhone App Store is a smash success. Introduced in the summer, the App Store opened the iPhone and iPod Touch to sanctioned third-party applications for the first time. Until then, users who wanted to add additional applications to their iPhones and Touches had to either use limited, JavaScript apps that ran in the device's mobile Web browser, or hack their devices by "jailbreaking" them, a risky process which Apple fights with every firmware update.
But the App Store opened the iPhone and Touch, and users and developers responded in a stampede. By December, users had downloaded 300 million apps out of the 10,000 available in the App Store, according to ads placed in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times by Apple.
The App Store is a trade-off for developers. On the one hand, developers get access to Apple's sophisticated online sales and distribution system. No need to set up their own Web stores and provide installation instructions, Apple handles all that. But that access comes at a price; Apple takes a 30% cut of sales off the top.
And Apple places restrictions on the kinds of applications it will distribute. For example, Apple rejected Podcaster, an app for automatically downloading podcasts wirelessly, saying it duplicates the functionality of the desktop version of iTunes, according to the developer writing on his own blog. He added:
Apple had nothing in the terms prohibiting developers from duplicating features currently available on desktop application. I followed all the guidelines and made sure everything is in the correct place. Yet Apple denies me because I allow users to download podcasts just like iTunes.
The developer noted that Apple allows many other applications that duplicate functionality available in the iPhone -- calculators, weather apps, even other applications that download podcasts -- and accused Apple of being unfair and inconsistent.
Likewise, Apple rejected MailWrangler, a dedicated Gmail client for the iPhone, because it duplicated functionality available in the built-in Mail client.
The seemingly-arbitrary rules for screening apps makes it a gamble for professional developers to work on software for the App Store, said John Gruber at his Apple blog Daring Fireball. Developers can't trust Apple, he said.
I believe that a closed, controlled App Store can work, but by definition that requires developers to place trust in Apple. The problem is that Apple is managing the App Store in certain untrustworthy ways. And I mean trust more in the sense of stability than honesty — like in the way you need to trust a ladder before you'll climb it.
Here is a complete list of what Apple must do to increase developers' trust in the App Store system:
1. State the rules.
2. Follow the rules.
Apple changed controversial developer policies at the app store before, in October, when it dropped an NDA requirement that developers said prevented them from sharing tips even with other developers bound by the NDA.
The company has done a fantastic job with the App Store, so much so that competitors Research in Motion, Microsoft, Google, and Palm are imitating the strategy. But success carries with it a unique risk -- that you'll think you're perfect, you're doing everything right, and resist change and new ideas. Apple needs to make the policies at the app store fair and transparent to developers.
8. Improve Enterprise Support
Apple isn't an enterprise company -- it's a company that happens to sell a significant amount of product into the enterprise. Welch, the Apple enthusiast, IT manager, and blogger and journalist, lays out the strange-bedfellows relationship between Apple and the enterprise.
IT managers demand that their vendors are predictable. They demand to be able to sit down with their vendors and get detailed briefings on product plans, months and years ahead. IT managers demand that vendors never stop supporting features once supported, and they demand to collaborate with vendors on designing upcoming products
That's not how Apple works. Apple likes to surprise and dazzle customers, keeping products secret until they're ready to ship. Apple drops features immediately when the company feels those features are obsolete, from the missing floppy drives on the first iMac, a decade ago, to the missing optical drive on the MacBook Air last year.
Apple will never go along with the changes needed to become a true enterprise company.
This month, Apple took a big step, announcing that it's eliminating DRM from its music store. But that still leaves video and audiobooks. And for consumers who've already bought DRMed music, upgrading is costly -- Apple will collect a $1.8 billion music tax if consumers upgrade all the DRMed iTunes music that's been sold -- and it's a hassle.
Apple needs to take a stand and eliminate DRM from its products, and provide people who've already bought DRMed products a cheap and easy way to upgrade.
What does Apple stand to gain from it? They'll give up the cost of developing and supporting cumbersome and useless DRM technology, and the time, money and hassle spent on having to update the technology when the inevitable bugs appear.
And they also avoid a potentially catastrophic customer-service problem. For now, only a tiny fraction of the public cares at all about DRM. Why should they? Apple has a monopoly on the media market, which makes Apple's DRM mostly invisible. "But if somehow the iPod ever falls out of favor with the general public there will be an outcry like no other when they realize they can't play any of their songs on the new player of choice," writes MG Siegler in a FriendFeed discussion.
He adds that Apple is doing whatever it can to kill DRM. They need to keep it up.
10. Stay Classy, Apple
Apple's products beats the competition on quality across the board. Even as the economy slid downward Apple reported profits rose to $1.14 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 27, as sales increased 27%, driven primarily by iPhone and Mac computer sales, according to an October earnings statement. The company also said that it had surpassed during the quarter its goal of selling 10 million iPhones this year. While overall Mac sales fell behind sales of PCs running Windows in November, MacBook sales outstripped Windows notebooks, increasing 22% year-over-year, compared with 15% for Windows.
The iPhone alone is a smash it, the most popular phone in the US, according to market researchers NPD.
To be sure, the outlook for 2009 is sober for Apple -- but what company doesn't have a sober outlook for 2009?
Apple's success comes from a couple of defining characteristics.
The company often succeeds by defying popular opinion and expert wisdom -- things that "everybody knows" Apple needs to do. The blog CounterNotions has a list of 10 blunders Apple avoided over its history, decisions that made the company great. Many of the mistakes required Apple to defy expert advice, including avoiding licensing Mac OS X to clone vendors, and refraining from selling a Tablet PC before its time.
Another defining characteristic of Apple: The company embraces change -- indeed, it's afraid of not changing, Daring Fireball's Gruber writes. "Where other CEOs can't bring themselves to do something different, Jobs can't bring himself to keep doing the same thing," Gruber says.
So the final bit of advice for Apple is to continue to trust its own judgment, and prosper by selling great products.
