What Apple Fans and Haters Still Don't Understand

What Apple Fans and Haters Still Don't Understand

As always, after every presentation from the company at 1 Infinite Loop, the internet fills with "white noise" consisting of both ecstatic cheers and cries of hatred.

As usual, the bulk of the internet audience focuses on what seems most important to them — megapixels, the processor, multitasking. And everyone misses what Jobs is practically saying outright:

• Retina Display + iBooks vs. Amazon + Kindle / Barnes & Noble + Nook / ...
• $1 billion vs. Android Marketplace
• FaceTime vs. Skype
• Gyroscope vs. Nintendo DS / Sony PSP

For those who still don't get it, read on.

Retina Display + iBooks + eBay vs. Amazon + Kindle / Barnes & Noble + Nook / ...

During the presentation, Jobs shares a wealth of interesting information that can be easily combined to draw conclusions.

1. iBooks + iBookStore

To date, about 5 million books have been sold — 2.5 per iPad. So what? If you take Jobs at his word, those books already account for 22% of (presumably electronic) books sold by the four largest publishers in the US.

22% in just eight weeks of the iPad's existence. If this trend continues, Apple will easily capture if not the majority, then a significant portion of the e-book market. Considering that over the past two years this market has been growing like wildfire (176%) and is projected to reach $500 million in 2010, this is a very tasty piece of the pie.

2. iPad

In eight weeks, Apple sold 2 million iPads. Amazon has done everything possible to hide sales figures for the Kindle, but it's believed that in total, over two years of the e-reader's existence, they sold... 3 million units.

Meanwhile, Amazon holds 60% of the American e-reader market. A discouraging comparison for the market leader, especially given the unexpected(?) popularity of iBookStore.

3. Magazines

In addition to reading books, many e-readers also advertise the ability to read your favorite magazines and newspapers (for example).

Here, there's really nothing to discuss. Just watch the demonstration of Wired magazine for iPad (the link has 5 videos — I recommend watching all of them).

4. Retina Display

It's no coincidence that Jobs starts by talking at length about letters and text rendering. It's no coincidence that the first thing he shows is a page from an online publication with text (not photos). It's no coincidence that he mentions that the human eye can distinguish no more than 300 dots per inch, while the new iPhone's screen has 326 dots per inch.

All of this boils down to a simple proposition: "We're giving you a beautiful alternative to e-ink." And the hint is very transparent: expect this screen on iPads next year.

During the iPhone 4 presentation, Bezos (Amazon's president) must have been downing sedatives by the gallon. Amazon offers nothing even remotely comparable. And even if they did, the next point works against them.

$1 Billion vs. Android Marketplace

This part of the presentation should have made developers' hearts beat faster. "We've paid app developers in the AppStore approximately $1 billion."

This is a direct blow to the Android Marketplace. Many developers (and especially game developers) complain about the impossibility of earning any significant money on Android. Indeed, the policy of "we'll refund the app within 24 hours" delights users but hits many developers hard. And Apple is perfectly aware of this.

A billion dollars for everyone, and no one leaves empty-handed. Who would refuse a chance to grab a piece of that pie?

FaceTime vs. Skype

"Pfft. Wi-Fi only. Only iPhone 4 to iPhone 4. How can you call this junk an innovation?" That's roughly how the Apple haters describe video calls.

But let's watch this presentation for just a minute longer and see what Jobs is actually offering. He's proposing nothing less than standardizing the FaceTime protocol. He's proposing to make it an open standard and says that it's already based on well-known, accessible, and open standards (what he calls "alphabet soup" in the presentation).

So give it a year or two, and we might start communicating Android ↔ iPhone with no one objecting. Apple just needs to negotiate with carriers about 3G. And FaceTime's penetration onto desktops may also just be a matter of time.

Gyroscope vs. Nintendo DS / Sony PSP

When the iPhone came out with an accelerometer, it too was "unnecessary." Turns out it was not only necessary but actively used in various apps and — most importantly — in games.

During the iPhoneOS 4 presentation, Jobs showed a curious slide:

Just think about these numbers.

Around 50 million iPhones have been sold worldwide, about 60 million PSPs, and around 129 million Nintendo DS units. The iPhone (and now the iPad) have become direct competitors to portable gaming consoles. And they offer additional capabilities — the accelerometer, and now the gyroscope too.

The iPhone and iPad certainly can't match the specialized processor of the PSP, but Apple is pulling the blanket of casual gaming toward itself — a market that could reach $13 billion.

So What?

Amid all the arguments about megapixels, multitasking, processor speeds, metal bodies, and so on, the debaters miss the most important thing. Apple (at least for now) is not setting out to start technical revolutions. In fact, they never really have (everything Apple shows was either implemented before them or has been known for decades — see multitouch).

Apple does things differently. They offer a user-friendly product that not only creates a new market ("tablets") but also invades other markets (e-books, casual games, and before that — with the iPod — the music market). And they manage to do this effortlessly, casually, while steadily increasing sales momentum and capturing new niches.

This is what should interest us as developers and users — not the technical specifications of devices that already look like identical twins. What these devices enable their companies to do — now that is a very, very interesting question.