Is Apple Doomed to Repeat the Mistakes of the 1990s?
In a move widely regarded as impetuous, Apple (AAPL) is suing HTC over alleged infringement on its UI patents. Much of the tech industry has reacted in disgust. But what hasn't been said is that this is the exact kind of technological avarice that nearly sunk Apple in the 1990s. Is Mac history doomed to repeat?
The patented technology at the center of the dispute, multi-touch, is what Apple calls the pinch-to-zoom and swipe-to-scroll technology that has become synonymous with the iPhone OS. It's also (apparently) regarded as the One True Way forward in touch-based computing for all Apple's competitors, too. Farhad Manjoo of Slate.com says that by suing HTC, Apple is "standing in the way" of the "future of computing." My colleague Erik Sherman has argued that Apple's litigiousness will prove to be bad for the entire industry. RealNetworks Chairman Rob Glaser says Apple's successful vertical market will incite a "slower pace of innovation" in the mobile sector.
Whether or not those predictions come true, the real idiocy of the Apple patent war is that it's yet another story of Apple building an incredible technology, only to strangle it to death and open a breach for competitors who will make billions stealing the show.
Just like the early Macintosh computers in the late 80s, the iPhone has been an indisputably disruptive product. (Remember the days when a smartphone meant a tactile keyboard?) Back when the Macintosh was the unalloyed leader in the PC market, many in the industry wondered why Apple wouldn't license its operating system to other vendors and establish themselves as a true industry standard. (Indeed, under CEO John Sculley in the late 1980s, they almost did, but the move was nixed by an overzealous project manager, Jean-Louis Gassee, who thought the Macintosh so infinitely superior that he could not conceive of any real competition.)
In 2007, the story was the same. Armed with such a revolutionary and popular product, many of us wondered, why would Apple limit itself so aggressively by keeping the iPhone exclusively on AT&T (ATT)? Of course, we outsiders aren't privy to the agreement that Apple and AT&T drew up, so there's no sense in speculating about that factors that drove that decision. But we do know that Apple, like any company, makes its own future. And it clearly decided on a future of verticals.
The thing that reeks about the Apple-HTC lawsuit is that it doesn't feel like the Apple that Jobs built and then rebuilt in the late 90s. Wil Shipley, an eminent Mac developer since the early days, said as much on his blog on March 3rd:
But when you sue someone for doing something you do yourself, you become one of the bad guys. Can you name a company you admire that spends its time enforcing patents, instead of innovating? Remember the pirate flag you flew over Apple's headquarters when you were building the Mac? Is Apple part of the Navy now?Another vocal Mac developer, John Gruber of DaringFireball, has theorized that this decision is so saliently bizarre because it's driven by emotion, not business acumen.
Jobs is offended by HTC's products, not worried about them. I can understand the indignation, or at least imagine that I can. Apple's press releases tend to be remarkably terse and plainspoken, at least by the standards of modern corporate communication. And when Jobs is quoted in them, the words are carefully chosen and meaningful, worthy of being carefully parsed -- not at all like the bromides attributed to CEOs from most companies in most PRs. The PR announcing these suits against HTC is no exception... That's not the language of a licensing dispute or the beginning of a polite negotiation. That's the language of a man aggrieved.Meanwhile, multi-touch is getting more complicated. 9to5Mac is reporting that the iPad contains software provisions for new, yet-unseen types of gestures like a "long press" and "three-tap" touches. Should Apple succeed in owning multi-touch all to itself, competitors like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) will employ other means of touch-based manipulation. A few years down the road, with Google, Microsoft, perhaps Palm (PALM) and other competitors sharing a bag of semi-standard gestures, Apple will once again become the once-elite, now-arcane competitor that feels foreign and weird to non-Apple users (as Macs do to Windows users). For a company that has reconstituted itself under the banner of "Switch," this is not brilliant strategy.
Google's Android OS, once thought a lame imitator (like Windows 3.0/3.1 back in the early Clinton days) is now growing "ridiculously fast," to quote Phandroid.com, citing recent comScore numbers. Like Windows back in 1993-1994, Android is gaining a slow following, and may simply be awaiting its "Windows 95" moment when it finally bursts into ubiquity. Incredible technologies like Skype via Android on Verizon phones are waiting catalysts. And where will Apple be? Behind again, having acted as the plowshare only to miss out on the harvest.