Apple's “evil/genius” plan to punk the Web and gild the iPad
There were two awkward moments yesterday at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference. A few sites have already made much of Steve Jobs' wireless networking difficulties during his demonstration.
Context & Ripple Effects
WWDC 2010 lands mid-feud: Apple has spent months refusing Flash on the iPad, a standoff that began drawing mainstream attention back in February when the iPad magnified Apple's Flash feud into a public fight with Adobe. The same week, Jobs was already rehearsing the closed-platform pitch on stage — his Wall Street Journal iPad demo showed how much of the device's appeal depends on content deals rather than the open Web.
The commercial backdrop explains why analysts read yesterday's keynote as strategy rather than accident: iPads launched in Japan and the UK in late May to overnight queues, a consumer survey found roughly one in three would-be netbook buyers instead waited for an iPad, AT&T reports the iPhone displacing laptop purchases in enterprises, and Apple just opened the iBookstore to self-publishing authors. The 'evil/genius' label circulating after the keynote captures the reading that each of these moves strengthens the device by weakening the browser.
First-order effects
- Adobe's position worsens immediately: with Jobs demonstrating on stage that Apple's platform story works without Flash — even amid the wireless glitches several sites seized on — developers at WWDC face pressure to ship HTML5 or native iPad apps rather than wait out the standoff.
- Publishers already caught in the middle feel the squeeze tighten; Condé Nast's Wired iPad launch last month put it squarely between Apple and Adobe, and every WWDC signal pushes more of them toward Apple-only distribution.
Second-order effects
- Netbook makers lose the low-end buyer directly: with a third of wavering netbook shoppers converting to iPad, Asus, Acer and their Intel supplier must respond either on price or by accelerating their own tablet designs.
- Content intermediaries lose leverage as Apple builds direct channels — the new self-published iBookstore bypasses traditional publishing gatekeepers just as the App Store did to carrier storefronts, forcing rivals like Amazon and Google to defend their own distribution terms.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the industry splits between a browser-defined Web and an app-defined one, with Apple applying the closed-ecosystem template it built around the iPod — hardware plus store plus curated content — to general-purpose computing.
- Standards bodies and regulators eventually become the arbiters: the more purchasing and media consumption migrate behind single-vendor storefronts, the louder the calls for interoperability rules that no hardware maker currently has an incentive to welcome.
The trend: Consumer computing is shifting from a browser-centered open Web toward device-anchored app ecosystems, with Apple using the iPad's momentum to set the terms for content, commerce, and development.