Recently, Apple delivered what is quite arguably, the world’s greatest phone. The only downside to the phone was the poor Maps app. Sadly, many people have used this as a reason to mock the once untarnished Apple reputation.
On the previous versions of their phones, Apple used Google Maps. This marriage of technology worked well. It was functional and yet wonderful at the same time. Then, Apple ruined a good thing. Conspiracy theorists claim that Apple did this purposely to get back at their business rival. Consumers, according to the theory, were just an unwilling pawn in the exercise.
Google isn’t the only big company that Apple has done business with. In fact, there are apps for Twitter and for Facebook. However, using a Google+ app would have made better business sense for Apple than a face book app.
Although Google+ does not have as many users currently as face book, the number of users is growing at an incredible rate. In fact, the social network is growing faster than face book ever did. Perhaps more importantly, Google+ is very user friendly unlike face book. For this reason alone, I predict that it will have a better future in the long term.
By now you are probably saying to yourself “but face book has a large number of users”. You probably think that this is a good reason for Apple to have an app on its newest phone. Using that same argument, you’d be at a loss to explain why Apple removed Google’s YouTube app. YouTube is incredibly popular with Apple users. In fact, it was one of the most popular apps on the 2007 version of the iPhone. Yet it was removed on the iOS 6 phone.
Of course, you can always download the latest YouTube app for your phone. However, that isn’t the point of this argument. For whatever reason, Google is out.
Many experts in the industry claim that this is a recurring pattern with Apple. These experts point to the 1990’s when it seemed that Apple was focused on destroying Microsoft. Apparently, nothing was learned by the company from those lessons. Apple is repeating its own history again.
Apple is not the first company to become obsessed with destroying the competition. Certainly it isn’t the first company to hurt its customers while trying to achieve its goal of destroying the competition.
However, it should be pointed out that these types of vindictive battles don’t usually end well for either company. It is time for Apple to bury the hatchet and move onto a kinder, gentler business philosophy. This philosophy should entail putting the needs of consumers front and center.
Steve Jobs, one of the most successful CEO’s of Apple was successful primarily because he was good at working with other companies.
One of the first things that he did as CEO of Apple was to de-escalate the tensions with Microsoft. The details of the agreements that he reached are irrelevant. The important thing was that he was willing to work with the competition for the good of his company and for the good of the consumer.
It would serve Apple well to follow the examples set by Steve Jobs instead of the pattern that it set in the 1990’s.
