MOBODOJO

I just got done reading Mark Gibb’s Backspin piece on the iPad, and I have to agree with him on a number of counts. Well, except one. Is Apple a monopoly in waiting? Is Apple on the fringes of Federal destruction because its violating Anti Trust laws? Are the wolves lingering in the trees waiting for the right moment to unleash their judicial fury?

No.

I’m not saying that Apple should be allowed to continue its current, as Mark puts it, “walled garden strategy”. No company should be allowed to control that much of any market (ahem… Microsoft!) while at the same time controlling the reins of the entirety of said market. I submit, however, that Apple is not stupid and there are reasons to believe this.

1. Apple has been slowly and methodically winning back market share from Microsoft and has made itself an extraordinarily powerful entity with some very cunning market and product moves. Apple’s core (no pun intended) business has always been computers, but their bread and butter is the iPod. They know that. They also have no intention of blowing this position with a ridiculous claim of Anti Trust.
2. Apple won the record industry by hobbling music with DRM. Now that’s mostly gone, so you can put your iTunes music on any player that supports AAC, and most of them do. It may not be as seamless to sync a non-iPod, but its not that hard, and would be a very hard position to try and win with that in court.
3. Apple only controls a very small portion of the desktop and laptop market, despite being the top retailer for such systems now quarter after quarter. Apple’s very sharp lawyers need only indicate Microsoft’s marketshare and previous Anti Trust issues compared to their own marketshare to indicate how ludicrous the concept is that they are a monopoly.
4. Apple does use and contributes greatly to open source projects, most notably Darwin which lies at the core of its own OS, Mac OS X, and supports a number of open source initiatives. Most recently with the arrival of the iPad it has stated that the device specifically supports the ePub standard, which you can read about at WikiPedia.

Again, Apple is not stupid. They have, in my estimation, cleverly positioned themselves to be in that unique place where they are wanted and deemed needed, but aren’t required. That, I believe as I am not a lawyer and simply don’t know, is likely the difference between being an industry giant and being “invited” to Anti Trust depositions.

What did we do wrong? Was it something we said or something we didn’t do? What failing of ours was worse than all others to warrant you ignoring the fact that there is an enterprise market out there? Honestly, if its something we did, we want to know about it so we can make up for whatever bad thing we don’t know we did. Hell, we must have done something to piss Steve off, because the enterprise is simply ignored by Apple. Sure, they pander to us in the form of Apple-branded 1U rackmount servers as sleek and powerful as their appearance suggests, but they don’t care for us.

So it must be that Apple doesn’t have a corporate identity which it can expose to the world. Any good company which serves enterprise has a clear identity. They certainly get banged around a lot by competition, but you can’t buy an identity like Cisco has, very well known for their enterprise switching equipment. Cisco made complex networking solutions when people needed them, and that built their identity for them. Apple, so far, has chosen to completely ignore the fact that it even sells servers. The XServe is like Apple’s red-headed stepchild.

Its not that Apple doesn’t make a distinction, though. They have recently unveiled a version of the Mac Mini which is designed to be a tiny, desktop server, but that doesn’t give them enterprise cred. It gives them cred with the SMBs who were already using Mac Minis as servers. Now you can just buy one all ready to go. That’s fine, really. Its not much of an identity, but Apple seems to think they can get by with that. Meanwhile, they have these ridiculously kickass XServe’s sitting around with no real market identity around them and no real marketing campaign to push them. The XServe isn’t even that expensive, as servers go.

So, my question is, why does Apple deserve to sell servers? Why don’t they just shut that one-horse town down and move on to the CE space where they really want to be. I have a feeling they might, but I’d like to see them try before just giving up. All they need to do is get the word out that Apple servers are prime for small to medium sized virtualization projects, MAMP-based server farms, and are a fantastic alternative to a Windows-based domain controller in Mac shops. I have to say, though, that its telling how many Mac shops I see which have Windows-based servers.

I can’t really imagine that Apple is pleased with that. I have a feeling that Steve Jobs just puts it out of his mind and acts like its not there. That kind of treatment didn’t work for the red-headed stepchild, either.

I’m rather surprised at the number of you who read my pre-launch article about what is now known as the Apple iPad was not going to be. Don’t get me wrong! I was pleased, but surprised nonetheless because I posted it the day before Steve Jobs trotted it out. Thank you much for reading.

Now, as you may have noted, I got a few points wrong, and I freely admit that. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t try to second guess Steve Jobs. Jobsian Law dictates that no other individual or group of individuals in any combination will ever determine the combination of thoughts in Mr. Jobs head.

One thing I was pleased to guess right on the nose, though, was the price. I did say US$500, and WHAM! (just like in the presentation), it starts at US$499. I had a very strong gut feeling that the price point which “leaked” was a smokescreen, a red herring if you will, to get enough information out there, but give everyone a real jolt when the real price was revealed.

If you’ve watched the keynote as I have, you will detect a very strong reaction to the real starting price. Mssr. Steve was right about the pundits, and he fooled us all. I’m just glad that it didn’t work the other way around. To see this super slick device pass for US$1,500 would have been heartbreaking.

There is one thing I would like to say about one of my predictions. It is a giant iPod Touch. I don’t know yet how I feel about that yet. I watched the keynote and the video and I’m pleased with the result, but did it really have to be a SuperSized iPod Touch (just add US$499, please!) and not something new and revolutionary? Its possible I’m just re-judging it. Listen to MacBreak Weekly over at TWIT.tv. Episode #177 is a special recap of the day and they have some interesting thoughts.