Apropos the discussion of a few days ago, Stephen Fry – yes that Stephen Fry – has some interesting observations on his blog about the iPhone. Apple is now doing what we all (well almost all) wish Microsoft would have done, which is to at least make beautiful things from its proprietary approach to all things.
Apple seem to have learned the lesson that keeping prices low might end up doing them more favours than gouging and losing any hope of creating industry standards. They might have learned that Microsoft’s success – if not it’s conduct, their own failure in failing to set the standard in the 1980s and or from the sale of ink-jet printers where sales of platforms are subsidised by the demand they generate for further purchases.
But, like me, Fry can’t help salivating about how it all might go down if Apple went the next step and made its platform more open.