| Apple and Airlines - alike in so many ways | | Date Created: 17 Oct, 2004, 01:46 AM |
 In this long post, I want to look at issues of computing trust and safety, and eventually evoke comparisons between the airline industry and IT, especially Apple and Microsoft. I'll add links in the days to some.
Apple's recent quarterly earning's announcement which defied many of the analysts on Wall Street has seen its stocks rise. Not just the stock price but the esteem in which it is held as a company which can set itself apart from other computer makers.
Now, not all are positive about this outcome. Some say that Apple is losing the plot because so much of its earnings come from the iPod (to which I ask "and the problem with that is?"); others are saying it's losing its focus as a hardware company citing flat iMac sales (remember how Apple royally screwed up supply earlier awaiting the G5 iMac); while others predict imminent disaster as Apple makes itself attractive, in a back handed compliment, to virus writers because no "in the wild" variant has yet been found (compared to walking on the wild side for Windows users each time they switch on their PCs). This makes Apple's OS X an attractive target, they say, and Apple users are living in a fool's paradise.
Let's also not forgot how each time Dell, or Creative, or iRiver or Virgin or whomever releases an MP3 player, it is reflexively labelled an "iPod killer" - as if. How so many "experts" failed to see how the iPod would become this century's Walkman (whither Sony in all this? Nowhere.), or how even Mac-oriented commentators cried with dismay that the iPod Mini when released was $50 too expensive and in six months must be reduced in price (it hasn't and go take a trip to Tokyo to see the queues) amuses me.
Apple earns more than its share of critics and naysayers for all sorts of reasons, often not helped by horrendous stories of Mac fanatics making (Star) Trekkies look like occasional weekend hobbyists in between watching reruns of I Love Lucy.
As Apple's star continues to rise and thoughts turn to the possibility that - shock! horror! - its market share for its operating system may zoom towards double digits, I'm expecting more naysayers to leap out to clobber the Mac.
While Mac users were those crazy types as depicted in Apple's Think Different advertisement campaign, so impenetrable to corporate America enslaved to the Windows platform due to its capacity to "set standards" for word processing and spreadsheets (ironically first developed by Microsoft for the Macintosh OS), Apple was tolerated - just.
But now, behind the scenes, ready to catch the 800lb Gorilla off guard (it certainly swatted away the Department of Justice's intrusions into its business practices without raising so much of a sweat) are two other factors, neither of which challenge Apple's developmental path. These are Google and the Open Source movement, including Linux.
The former has just released a search application for Windows effectively gazumping Microsoft who dropped advanced file searching from its next system, Longhorn, in an effort to bring its release date forward; the latter has Microsoft much more worried than the former if one is to understand special Windows versions and pricing for certain world regions.
And Apple's success with its iTunes Music Store is more a dent in Microsoft's pride than a bottom line threat - unless the proliferation of Quicktime for Windows, needed for iTunes functionality - is rendered as a challenge to Microsoft's digital media aspirations. CEO Steve Balmer's swat at iPod owners stealing music to fill their 'Pods was a pretty rare public case of a breach of defense mechanisms. For which he quickly recanted via a PR spin doctor re-interpreting what he conveniently forgotten he'd said. Ain't defense mechanisms a marvellous thing?
We await the Microsoft Law of Three to see if it has what it takes to knock Apple of its #1 perch. (Industry analysts seem to agree that Microsoft's history is getting things "right" on the third go - if right means satisfying up to "good enough" standards those who know of no alternatives to its products.)
I'd say Microsoft is worried on a number of fronts including the increasing number of clued-in indepedent tech. writers not just stating boldly the failure of Microsoft to get its security act together but also mentioning Apple's advantages in the security domain in almost headline-sized print.
The seachange I have mentioned in other blog entries is a real phenomenon I believe and the next quarterly results will be quite telling. Listening to the Gillmor Gang today, one of the gang mentioned the possibility of data from Google indexing his PC's hard drive and finding its way back to Google for further analysis. He mentioned being unfazed by this potential breach of security as his past relationship with Google had led him to believe Google would continue to act in an honorable way - trust by deed (vs misdeed) had been established through past behaviours.
Conversely, he went on, the same could not be said for Microsoft given its behaviours in recent years. In effect, he wouldn't trust Microsoft to search his hard drive the way he would Google.
Apple has already offered the Open Source community a collaborative approach through its use of architectures like those found in OS X and Safari. Its behaviours are not trusted by all, however, especially worried retailers and small developers.
But its faithful followers who currently sit in front of their Mac with not a care in the world with regard to the plague of malware visiting the house that Bill built, are still in receipt of dire warnings which will increase in number. These warnings relate to OS X becoming a target for malware producers eager to take down another target.
Now I have no doubt there are some fine minds at work attempting to understand the motivations of virus and malware "developers". They act as Clarice to Hannibal Lecter, trying to get "inside their heads" so as to develop interventions or somehow close obvious "holes". Or to lure them to "honey pots" to catch 'em out.
The argument has often been that OS X is too small a target for these "developers" to get their jollies from attacking. Others have said OS X with its Unix base (code + diverse community) is an inherently safer system. And I use the word "system" invoking a variety of possible meanings and contexts.
And others have also said that while Microsoft remains the prime target because it represents the worst or best of corporate America depending on your viewpoint. The history of the cracker is a long and evolved one and "hacktivism" is alive and well to bolster philosophies and make statements, political and personal.
Apple at this stage does not attract this kind of animosity or activism, from what I can see.
And yet, if you look at its marketing and advertising, it makes little or nothing of its security advantages. What it does is quite subdued. It does not draw comparisons to its users' current immunity to the PC Zombie and malware phenomena that plague Windows users. There is of course no shortage of others who make loud noises touting this advantage on webpages on Apple's behalf, not that Apple asks them to, I suppose.
I have been involved in helping my local Mac user group develop a brochure and it has focussed my attention on why Apple would like not want much made of the spyware/adware/malware challenges Windows users confront daily.
I wonder if it's because Apple is like the airline industry. From my time spent working in that environment (which long ago lost any sense of glamour and exotica unless you travel first class internationally) I saw safety in action. That's because I was involved in disaster preparation protocols, and separately, fear of flying programs.
Here I reveal a that my daily contact with Windows is to run my Virtual Reality software and Biofeedback hardware, neither of which offered me any other platform of choice, to assist fearful flyers.
Notice how airlines do not play the "We're safer - check our records" marketing game? Yet for some of the 1 in 6 to 1 in 12 fearful flyers, an airline's safety record is a primary consideration. As it is for business travellers.
They don't playh that game in the cut throat airline industry because they know how swiftly public sentiment could change should an incident occur for an airline, even if it is eventually shown not to be the airline's fault.
In other words, the travelling public won't care too much that an incident investigation showed another airline was at fault for a mid-air collision, or an air traffic controller got it wrong, or natural factors like extreme weather overwhelmed the safety net.
A single incident involving a fatality could see a perfect record go up in smoke along with the travelling public's faith in the airline's safety capacity.
Australia plays host to the safest airlines in the world if fatalities are the measure of safety, and you will not see them tout this fact. Airlines use euphemisms to convey safety, such as "youngest fleet", "first class maintenance facilities", "on time performance" and so on.
But all airlines know that their safety is not measured so much in miles travelled per passenger carried, or flights undertaken. Each year, their safety departments secretly meet to discuss issues that present challenges to the industry as a whole, such as the reliability of engines, performance of new aircraft types, anti-hijacking strategies, crew resource management, and so on.
For them, airline safety means some airlines are accepted into alliances and others rejected or ejected. Safety is more measured by "fender benders": little breaches of the safety envelope and procedural errors that occur regularly are cause of utmost alarm because they suggest systemic failure of the safety culture that makes commercial aviation as safe and trustworthy as it is. Only elevators and escalators are safer forms of mass transit.
Investigating and ameliorating small procedural errors is how the system remains safe and for which the travelling public rightly expects first class standards of operation. To invoke a sociological analysis of crime, you don't leave a broken window unrepaired in a building unless you want more vandalism to occur. Repair it immediately, or cover up the graffiti urgently, as the New York Transit system discovered, goes a long way in crime prevention.
Apple seems to follow this safety philosophy in a pro-active fashion releasing security updates well before most of its users are aware of the issue. When it appeared to have left a security hole open for "too long" last year it attracted a welter of criticism. It was if its own "broken windows" philosophy had been breached; for some it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Whatever, the Mac community was angered at their perception of Apple "doing a Microsoft" and even more angered with the PR flunky-speak that followed.
It was not Apple's best performance, and represented a near-miss in terms of public trust. I doubt it will happen again, especially in today's environment where Apple's oasis of safety will become increasingly attractive to Windows refugees.
The other airline metaphor I want to mention is this: the aviation world is pretty cut-throat, each trying to out-market the other. But it is also a very collaborative industry, making deals with competitors when it is commercially viable. They lend each other parts, help competitors' stranded passengers, and hire out training facilities and personnel.
Things get nasty when one airline moves into another's highly profitable monopoly region where lack of competition keeps fares artificially high. Then the dirty tricks books are dusted off and things can get mean.
Apple (and Linux) is moving ever more into Microsoft's monopoly territory, as well as carving out new ones in its own innovative way. It's providing safer computing, a better experience, and seamless connections e.g., the iLife suite, and the digital hub concept.
The more it is seen to be encroaching on the monopolist's territory, the nastier will become the fight. And judging from those comments in Friday's Gillmor Gang regarding Microsoft's past behaviour and its trustworthiness - or lack of - things could get very nasty indeed. While Apple stayed at 2% market share, only pride was hurt. Billions of cash in reserve provides a neat salve for such abrasions.
Should Apple once more approach even 10%, things will get very interesting. Because for that to happen, you can bet Google, Linux and the Open Source players will be taking even bigger chunks out of Microsoft's flesh. Apple's increasing market share would then be merely a barometric predictor of a perfect storm on the horizon for Microsoft. |
|
|
|
