John Battelle has been openly and vocally critical of the iPad. He first criticized its "distribution lock-in model", then denounced its proprietary application development environment. I follow his blog and I read “The Search,” but I’m really scratching my head on this. This sounds like the interests of an independent blogger rather than the interests of mass consumers and the media ecosystem.
Battelle accuses Apple of returning to the world of old media, driven by distribution lock-in rather than content and intent. A world where big media giants use their deep pockets to buy distribution and box out new players with great ideas. He points out that the innovations of the web, search, and social were able to claim victory against the old media stronghold. I think most of us agree with this and are thankful of the way we’re able to connect to content today. But he suggests that somehow Apple has now defeated search and social against the greater good? C’mon.
The native web today – with search, social, flash, ajax - has changed our lives forever, but it also has two limitations. First, it doesn’t work well on connected devices beyond the PC. Not surprising given that it was all built for PCs, where users have large screens, sit two feet away, and use a keyboard. We all remember the crappy experience we had when we first used the Internet on our mobile phone, and we all remember the magic we felt when we first used our iPhone. Frankly, no one wanted to search or tweet (assume for the sake of the point that Twitter existed then) on the first generation of connected mobile devices. In fact, these problems are still ridden across the TV and radio devices we have in our homes. The second limitation is monetization. Despite 15 years of development, funding of thousands of start-up, use from hundreds of millions of users, monetization of content on the web is pretty pathetic. And when there’s no money, there’s no investment. When there’s no investment, consumers lose.
With the iPhone and now the iPad, Apple has come up with a paradigm that breaks through these limitations to connect new devices with an optimized user experience. Apple knows that to crack a new paradigm they need to please end-users, potentially at the expense of developers. They don’t wait for standards to emerge because consumers will lose in the mean time (the ecosystem loses too). They understand the economics of devices, software, and media; and they know they all need revenue to drive sustainable innovation. Apple helped turn around the music industry, they compelled users to buy phones, and they’ve fueled a multi-billion dollar mobile application industry. Now the iPad may get consumers to actually pay for newspapers and magazines online. Sorry if they didn’t play by the rules of search and social. Perhaps they simply played by the rules of innovation and value creation.
Of course, this is a new pioneering category, and none of us really knows how it’s going to play out. But I do know one thing - my iPad is shipping on April 3rd.
