iPhone Showcasing Apple’s new Flexibility (or What Apple Learned from the original Mac)

You remember when the iPhone was first announced amid the hype and excitement there was also a ton of people complaining that the iPhone was making all the mistakes of the original Mac. Those people had a point. The iPhone was closed off, Apple expected people to write apps for the iPhone via the web. Web apps are nifty idea but with the speed of the edge network it was a cumbersome method and the path to financial compensation wasn't clear. Other complaints included the price, $499 for the 4 GB version seemed ridiculous in a world where phones went for free with a contract. Who, besides geeks with a lot of disposable income, would be able to buy the thing?

You know that Apple has responded to the critiques. The 3G iPhone got the slow edge network out of the way. Battery life didn't evaporate to nothing which was kind of odd since that was the reason Steve Jobs said 3G wasn't included in the first place. The price was dropped a few months after the initial release and then slashed when the 3G was released. Web apps, which never really seemed to catch on (goodbye world's latest attempt at a thin client), were replaced by the App store. As far as compensation for development went the developers and Apple split the profits.

Clearly Apple was responding to the market but Apple responding to the market is something the company hasn't always done. Generally, Apple goes its own way and ignores what people want or at least what people think they want. Why hasn't the company done this with the iPhone? Why hasn't there been a big 'screw you people we're keeping the FireWire ports at Cupertino' with the iPhone? Because Steve Jobs learned his lesson with the Mac.

Before the original Mac came out Apple insiders were sure the thing would be a home run.. Their confidence was justified, it was a computer anyone could use. The desktop metaphor made a lot sense (at the time) and you didn't have to remember arcane commands to use the thing, just pointing and clicking. The Mac was released and after an initial surge of sales people stopped buying the thing. There's a good chance that the Mac would've been a spectacular flop if an Apple salesman hadn't loaned an early Mac to Paul Brainerd who then developed Aldus PageMaker for it.

When Aldus Pagemaker came out the Mac finally had a killer app and while the machine never reached the heights that Steve Jobs thought it would it did become a viable computing platform. So where did the Mac go wrong? The lack of software was one factor but there were a plethora of other problems as well. The original Mac was essentially crippled by lack of memory. At the machines coming out party Steve had to use a Mac plus because the original Mac was hamstrung by the amount of memory inside. It didn't have to be that way, by the time the Mac came on the scene memory prices had dropped but, since Apple didn't anticipate the reduction in cost, the Mac shipped with the paltry 128k. You'll note that when the iPhone came out no one complained about the lack of power. It performed exactly as advertised, the experience wasn't one of frustration.

The Mac also suffered from the image that it was a toy. Apple was painfully aware of this issue and didn't put a game on the machine (unless you count the completely awesome slidey puzzle thing) precisely to avoid people thinking that it was a toy for the well heeled. But it went deeper than that. The Mac had a nine-inch screen where most computer monitors were much bigger. Sure the Mac had more resolution that the larger screen but expecting people to realize you'd see more on the Mac's screen than an 12 inch PC monitor was asking for too much tech knowledge among consumers. Note that the iPhone is all screen,  Apple decided not to get out screened again.

The last thing to note about the original Mac was the failure to be responsive to the market. Macs cost twice as much as a PC but Apple never seemed to notice. When the company should've been trying to drive adoption the company chose to focus on driving profits in a big way apparently realizing too late that early adoption could drive later profits. You'll note the iPhone is very competitively priced.

The answer of why Apple is being so flexible with the iPhone when the company hasn't been flexible before is obvious. Apple learned a lot from the Mac. Apple learned that being way ahead in technology is great but that just gets write ups in magazines. To truly define a new platform it is necessary to be aware of people's objections and be responsive to them. Apple won't cede tis platform without a full on fight. Can Apple get outperformed in the cell phone market by RIM or Google? Perhaps, but not if the company stays as responsive as it has been so far.