It's Sunday, the weekend after Apple's WWDC 2007 event, and as an Apple shareholder, I have to say that for the first time in a long time I'm concerned about the company.
First, there's the "Safari on Windows" announcement. I'm sorry, but I don't even like Safari on the Mac. (The only thing I do like about Safari that I've seen recently is the ability to pull a tab out into a separate window, but hey, how do I put it back?) When I've looked at Safari I always thought "old, limited functionality, no plug-ins". Like many others I use Firefox instead. So why would I want to use Safari on Windows? (Oh, and then your app tries to use Mac standards on the Windows platform? What's up with that?!)
(And why does Apple want to pick a fight with the Mozilla/Firefox community by showing a chart that shows Firefox going away and being replaced by Safari??? If you want to go after the market share change your freaking chart to go after IE's share, and leave the good guys alone.)
Second, there's the "shit sandwich" (term used on daringfireball.net) of developing Web 2.0 applications on the iPhone. As everyone else has said so eloquently, if you don't know how to let developers create applications for the iPhone yet, just tell us that, don't try to sugarcoat it. And how is it great that Apple creates the "best google maps client" by not using Web 2.0 technologies, but we're supposed to? (And oh by the way, why is it that developers can't create applications for a phone, but it is safe for us to create them for the Mac?)
Third, there's the "nothing new" at the WWDC. The presentation was a repeat of last year's, leading me to believe that attendance will be down next year. And the new features that Steve Jobs didn't want Microsoft copying? Nothing exciting really panned out there, did it? (And did you hear the hush fall over the crowd when it turned out the "green grass" desktop background wasn't a joke?)
So, as a shareholder, I'm concerned that Steve Jobs uses way too many superlatives to describe (a) Safari and (b) Web 2.0 applications as a developer solution on the iPhone, and that WWDC 2007 seemed an awful lot like WWDC 2006. As a former business owner, Apple looks like a company that is stretched too thin, and they're trying to use marketing spin to make up for a lack of forward progress on anything but internal development of the iPhone.
books by alvin
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