#318  31st May 2024

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference to kick off June 10 with Keynote address

No surprise: Keynote will be June 10 at 10am PDT (19:00 CEST) followed by the Platforms State of the Union at 1pm PDT (22:00 CEST).

Can anyone but a tech giant build the next big thing?

If the world’s tech giants have gotten so big and so powerful that nobody else can even afford the table stakes, we all lose.

Back in the 90s and early 2000s the Windows/Intel dominance in computing was so great, that nobody else could afford the table stakes either. Apple was barely hanging on with low single digit market shares.

Apple could have embraced the Windows dominance. For a long time, many pundits claimed Apple's only hope for survival was to build hardware or software for Windows, or both. They actually did, Safari and iTunes were available on Windows. Instead, Apple chose to focus on building integrated platforms where they owned and controlled both the hardware and software.

Microsoft's dominance in desktop and "work" computing was never broken. Windows still enjoys more than 70% share of that market. Maybe far more, depending on where and how you count.

Smart phones, led by the iPhone, didn't "level the playing field" — they created a new one.

Microsoft tried to transfer their desktop dominance to the smart phone field, and for a while, everyone took it for granted they would, because... well, business would always choose Microsoft products, right? Nevertheless, the various incarnations of Windows Phone hardware and software never took off. After those failures, Microsoft re-oriented under new management and now succeeds mostly in services.

Now however, the situation is different. Apple especially has tight control over which hardware features are exposed to third-party developers through the APIs and by controlling which apps get on the App Store. Google's approach with Android is only marginally better. Even during Apple's darkest times, Microsoft never had that kind of control.

Part of the excitement around machine learning algorithms and LLMs comes from the hope that these might be the "next playing field." Whether this is true or not, we are and will be using our phones to access that playing field. Smart speakers and other gadgets you have to remember to charge and bring with you have been around for a while and they are at best able to supplement the phone, not replace it. Apple and Google remain as gatekeepers.

Alternative Marketplaces and direct web installations only address part of that control. As long as third party developers cannot access and use the same features as first party tools can, they will always be at a severe disadvantage.

There are parts of the DMA that address APIs and hardware access. Most of the regulations that are attempting to fix this seem crude and amateurish, because they are. Everybody involved, the legislators, the gatekeepers, and the third parties are still figuring out how this is supposed to work.

Apple's ability to own and control their platforms is what saved them from the brink of extinction and to being one of the largest corporations in the world. It will be hard for them to let go and adapt to manage the platforms in a way that profits them, the end users, and the third parties.