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Apple = Microsoft?

By redjac ⋅ June 18, 2009 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

I just downloaded the latest version of the iPhone software, and have been playing around with some of the nifty new features. The two biggies for me right now are copy and paste, and universal search. And as I do so, I can’t help noticing that Apple’s philosophy with the iPhone is the same as Microsoft’s with Windows and office… let smaller, more nimble players innovate the features, and then come in later and trounce them with the force of your implementation.

That Apple is, in the OS wars, the victim of this philosophy makes it all the more ironic. Another feature of the new firmware (which is unavailable to me as I’m on a 2G iPhone) is the availability of MMS, which is implemented in a fashion clearly superior to all of the regular-ass cell phones that had it, oh, 30 years ago. Or the upcoming availability of video… better on the iPhone than on the many handsets that had it years ago. Remember that the iPhone itself was only introduced in 2007, a full 7 years after even Microsoft made it’s Pocket PC Platform available for phones.

Rare is the person who argues that Apple doesn’t take UI design and make an honest woman out of her. But can today’s technorati really afford to hitch themselves to a platform that lags so far behind?