Apple seems to love trying things out in public. They launch a technology and then sit back and see what happens. They watch and learn. Later, you will almost always see that technology develop and spread to their other products.
Apple has realized that the next battle is the user experience. Circumstances have played into their hands on this one, since they have always been about the user experience. They were definitely before their time, kind of prophetic, but now their time has come.
Microsoft is still bigger, but they are struggling. Dell has the server advantage, but they are already a lesser company. Google is Apple’s friend and a very interesting ally, but they are on different paths. Nokia has lost the game, I doubt they will be able to rise above this, but who knows. (more on this in other articles)
The AppStore is one of these teaser products. It totally makes sense to become the one stop store for all things iPhone since they make the product. Sure, some people are complaining a little and will try to find ways around it, but for the user it is a winner. Look at iTunes. The ease of use is what makes it work, and of course that the catalogue is so extensive. They even conquered podcasts. That was an amazing move.
But the AppStore won’t stop at the iPhone. The next step will be to sell software for the Mac online. It has been done for years, mostly for small shareware apps, but not from a centralized service. Next up are the bigger Apps. Internet connections are fast, I’m guessing people already use the PDF manuals more than the paper ones. Everything is going digital that can. Apple will force guys like Adobe to come along too.
They’ve made it really difficult for Adobe already, by breaking CS2 and CS3 apps with Leopard. Even now, more than 6 months after Leopard was released, they haven’t “managed” to fix the problems. Then there was Flash on the iPhone. They made Adobe the bad guy.
So there you have it. Very interesting times.
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