Competition energizes us; it squeezes out our best performances, leads us to innovation we never thought possible in isolation, all thanks to the terror that the other guy is going to eat our lunch. Capitalism, on the occasions it actually works, is limited warfare. That's the idea. That's how you fight the common enemies of ineptitude and complacency. Every successful tech company understands this.
But what kind of wars has Silicon Valley been fighting lately? Wimpy ones. Apple and Google, up until Monday, had been a damp squib. The companies have stalked around each other for years. They gradually disentangled from various agreements. Apple's Maps app tried to replace Google Maps. Apple sued Samsung at a snail's pace over mostly out-of-date phones, and over features that had really been ripped off by Google. Call that a battle of ideas?
Now, Apple vs. Microsoft back in the day — that was a war.
In case you forgot how that went down, kids, let me remind you: Apple got complacent about its technical superiority; Bill Gates flagrantly stole its graphical user interface; Apple got its head pounded so hard in the marketplace, and was so near death, it had to buy back its co-founder, battle-scarred and wiser from his own post-Apple conflict. What happened next justified the entire war in the eyes of history; we'll be studying its genius for decades to come.
The co-founder lulled Gates to sleep in 1997 by selling him a chunk of Apple and declaring the war over. In fact, we now know, he was rebuilding his forces and preparing to do battle with Microsoft on a brand new platform, with a sudden surprise surgical strike called the iPhone. Windows phone never stood a chance. One fell swoop, and the competitive landscape was irrevocably altered. (But just to be sure, Apple dropped another bomb with the iPad, a device to which a new Microsoft leader has finally brought tribute in the form of his top product suite.)
Now, despite Tim Cook's traditional, almost affectionate dig at Windows during Monday's WWDC keynote, Microsoft has made common cause with Apple against their mutual enemy. Early users of Mac OS X Yosemite have learned that its brand-new uber-smart Spotlight search — the front-and-center box that finds all things everywhere, the one that begs to relieve you of the inconvenience of a browser-based Google search — is powered by Bing.
Is Bing better than Google? It doesn't need to be. Most of the time when we search, it's for something very basic. And fundamentally, the best search engine is the one that's right in front of your eyes.
Apple is gearing up for an all-out assault on Google, and it needs all the help it can get. According to the battle plan very subtly outlined just under the surface of the keynote, this assault is to be conducted according to the same principle that defeated Microsoft and reversed the position of the two companies: Why try to dominate one platform when you can dominate cross-platform — the territory where Apple does best?
What you heard in that keynote were the first shots, softening up the enemy. In stark contrast to the affection of the sole "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac"-style knock on Windows, you heard Tim Cook describe Android as a "toxic hellstew of vulnerabilities." (He was quoting a ZDNet article by a self-described Android fan, but still — them's fighting words.)
At that one dark moment in an otherwise upbeat and humorous affair, Apple painted a nightmare picture of a platform that contained 99% of the mobile world's malware. It was a place into which millions stumbled "by mistake," where your safety and the safety of your family was at risk, where a Byzantine mess of different old versions of the operating system, and cellphone carriers that were slow to upgrade phones, kept its users enslaved by "ancient history." (Evidently, some of that Android history — specifically the predictive text keyboard — wasn't too ancient for Apple to swipe it.)
But Android wasn't the sole target of the keynote. Apple signaled that the war would come on all fronts at once Apple signaled that the war would come on all fronts at once. The Safari browser, we were told repeatedly, was faster and more efficient by all metrics than Google Chrome. Maps was mentioned just long enough to make it clear the company wasn't conceding defeat on that front, and would keep working at it till they have a better product (and if you've used the Maps app recently, you might start to suspect they're not far off.) And of course, there was that Spotlight Bing search tech, which could divert millions of dollars in search ad revenue away from Google's coffers.
The most important weapon on display was the notion of instantaneous cross-platform interoperability — or in the slightly more user-friendly Craig Federighi term, "continuity" between all your Apple devices. Get a call on your phone, answer it on your laptop. Send texts and audio messages and video from wherever to whomever. Every screen you pick up, so long as it has an Apple logo on the back, is the same screen. Mac OS X or iOS? It barely matters any more.
Somehow I doubt there will ever be something called Mac OS XI. Just call it the Apple OS, and make it smart enough to switch functions based on the device: this is undoubtedly on Apple's product roadmap. The one OS to rule them all, with a brand new ultra-efficient programming language and plenty of other goodies for the all-important developers. Because ultimately, this war is being fought for their hearts and minds as much as for those of users.
What we're waiting to see is how Google strikes back. Larry Page surely knows his company's weakness in this fight — it is the leader of a large but balkanized and often backward Android nation, riddled with unacceptable levels of malware. There is not nearly enough continuity possible between Android devices as they currently stand, let alone Android devices and Chromebooks. The company bet big on wearables, on Google Glass, with little to show for it so far. How will Page, one of the smartest CEOs on the planet, counteract these problems? How will he shore up his defenses? Who, in short, is the Apple and who is the Microsoft in this particular scenario?
It doesn't matter. Either way, users win as the technology on both sides gets better and better. Grab the popcorn. This is going to be a good war.
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