When The Apple Grows, So Do The Worms

I have always been a big follower of not only Apple products and services but more of as a company itself. Apple’s ability to give it’s users what they want, how they want it, and deliver its service and support better and more productively than any other company in its niche has ever possibly been able to do.

As the company grows, its strives to keep out the worms.

Apple has always had fun, exciting, and most of all: innovative products. Back in the day you could always tell a mac from any other computer on the market. Whether it was the desktop that reminded you of the PiXAR lamp or the trippy color clamshell notebooks, Apple has always been defferent. Plus, they always “Just worked.” Although I never owned a mac myself but I had the pleasure of using them often.

Even with their branch off to the music industry with their iPod, Apple showed that they still had it going. A revolutionary way of playing music plus a kick ass advertising campaign that allowed for its entrance into today’s widespread pop culture. Using what Apple already had they integrated an easy to use music store combined with Apples gift of writing amazing code to assist their products well. Apple has always been a good company for one reason and one reason only (aside of innovative and creative ideas). Now this reason, to some, is the same for its downfall, but I’ll get to that in a second. Apples main thing it has going for its is its choice and ability to be 100% proprietary. Apple always had the ability to control their market because their systems only worked with their software and their software only worked with their systems.

This idea was great from a support and development standpoint, because Apple could develop their products exactly how they wanted and support them as easily as they made them.

Think of it this way, your brother, who is a PC user, is having a problem with his computer. He calls Microsoft in the middle of India to get WinXP support, not only can he not tell what the operator is telling him, the operator really doesn’t know much. They don’t know what kind of computer he is using, the system specs, what accessories and expansions he has installed, not to mention the plethora of installed demos and spyware installed by the vendor of the machine. And on top of that, chances our your brother doesn’t know much about his computer either. Now, on the other side, your sister, and avid Mac user, calls Apple and instantly the operator knows that because she is running her system (with probably only 1 or 2 areas of customization possible that only affects the speed of the machine) with version whatever of MacOS and is running this machine. Because they have manufactured their own parts and written their own software, they are easier informed and equipped to support it.

The problem comes in when Apple looses it’s ability to have this proprietary control over its market. This doesn’t come by fault of Apple directly due to any mess up of their own surprisingly, their expansion and growth. With Apples recent dive into the music industry and even more recently into the mobile communications industry, Apple has been itself in a position where forming cooperate partnerships and and relying on companies like AT&T and Intel to be just as strong as they are to provide their users with the same quality support has they had when they were mostly proprietary. Without this ability, Apple feel as if Apple will loose its edge in its ability to be as creative and as innovative as they have in the past.

We all love comics right?

Is Apple going anywhere anytime soon? Yeah, right! Apple will be able to keep us entertained for quite some time so there’s no reason for concern just yet. I’m pretty sure the public will stay excited with Apple’s ability to release glass trackpads and color changing iPods for just a little while longer.

~Cory