I’ve been naughty lately. I haven’t posted for far too long and that just won’t do. There is a story behind why and it kind of turns into another long technogeek post so I apologize to those of you who aren’t as interested!
I haven’t posted because I ended up caving in and doing something stupid. I knew this would happen after being so vocal about my dislike of the iPhone 3GS pricing. I thought that I could be a good boy and wait for the next revolutionary change in the iPhone product line and pass on this evolutionary offering. I even thought I might be able to leave the iPhone and to back to my Nokia roots and live happily with a Symbian smartphone… Then my brother called and asked to buy my iPhone for a really fair price and the whole deal was off. I went and bought a new iPhone 3GS. I had convinced myself that I could live without it.
I was without my crackPhone for a week. A single week. After just 48 hours the deal was off. It was like my right arm had been severed just below the shoulder. I hadn’t realized that my day-to-day information was tied up in the stupid thing and I just couldn’t jump ship. Apple’s advertising push of “there’s an app for that” really defines the struggle I had to a T. The primary application which really brought the situation to light is an elegantly simple and free application called Balance which I use to keep track of my “fun money” checking account apart from my bill pay and savings accounts. I love this application to little bits and pieces all over and I really couldn’t find anything on the two competing platforms (S60 Symbian on Nokia and Android from Google) which I liked.
I also enjoy the fact that my credit union partners with the vendor who powers the Mobile Banking application which I use to pay bills with a very simple, sleek interface. In fact I have come to depend on the simple and sleek interfaces for most of my daily computing and communication functions including GPS, SMS, mail, scheduling, contact management, weather, social networking, news, reference, blogging (!!!), and last but not least (considering its an iDevice) media sharing and consumption. I know that most of these functions are available on every other smartphone on the market, but the unified design aesthetic which has emerged among the applications, cultivated and encouraged by Apple, is a key selling point for me.
This just shows how Apple has, yet again, figured out a way and developed it carefully, to keep people hooked. Unlike the original closed sandbox created with the iTunes Music Store and DRM (which was forced upon them by the music labels to an extent) which fenced you within the iPod ecosystem, Apple benefits from the very nature of software development being so involved with a single platform. They have provided a very powerful set of tools to lure developers, both brand spanking new and veteran developers, to develop some amazing (and some not so amazing) applications which now number in the tens of thousands. This abundance drives competition and provides numerous choices which serve almost every need imaginable.
Apple originally stated that dynamic web applications and Web 2.0 would be enough to drive independent innovation through the browser and no one would need to develop applications to run on the iPhone operating system. The sandbox was closed with a big sign nailed to the tree next to it saying, “No Independent Development Allowed!” Two things changed this. The first being the jailbreak community which started to grow, cultivating a market for unauthorized 3rd-party apps. People were able to see just how much was possible with the iPhone and demanded open development. The second issue being the new influx of smart devices which use the WebKit browser which powers Safari on the iPhone. Suddenly all these dynamic web applications benefit every platform, some of which had faster radios and chipsets, outpacing the performance the first and second generation iPhones.
Now I have to say that I firmly believe Apple did intend to open the platform to 3rd-party development from the beginning. I could spin numerous reasons and ideas as to why this wasn’t offered at the get-go, but I do believe that the situation evolved much more quickly and in more directions than Apple anticipated. Their hand was forced to a great extent and but they didn’t just roll over. They pulled something very clever out of their hat in traditional Apple style. They created the iPhone SDK and a simple, effective distribution model through the iTunes app store which took a lot of hassle out of the development, debugging, marketing, distribution and sales processes. Regular developers with ideas for applications could publish them straight to the market and not have to worry about the business end of things. There were still strings attached with limitations to the APIs available to developers and the sometimes cumbersome app approval process but it paved the way for hundreds and then thousands of developers to get busy.
Just one year later, with a store now packed full of tens of thousands of applications, Apple now has an effortless way of keeping people loyal while driving new adoption: a diverse and robust set of applications with compelling features and an easy way to keep consuming more. With an average of 20 apps downloaded per iPhone, people build up a personal portfolio of sorts made up of their “OMG-I-can’t-live-without-this” applications. The device becomes “sticky” or embedded into the daily functions of a person’s life. It enables certain convenient behaviors and habits and is in every meaning of the word, an addiction. Sure I could have lived without my iPhone, just like any one could technically function without internet access or a telephone. But would I want to? Absolutely not.