140 characters Because sometimes, 140 characters aren’t enough

I know I seem to spend a lot of time getting annoyed with Apple, and in particular their marketing and I’m sure that some people will wonder why.  Even if you’re not wondering I’m going to tell you anyway!

I had an epiphany the other day.  There are two companies which, while they seem to be the darlings of the public, I absolutely hate.  And I’ve realised that they have a lot in common.  The companies are Apple and Virgin.

Both companies have some fantastic products and have been truly successful in their chosen fields.  Both companies have made truly innovative products and led the way in so many different ways, but my problem is that they are whiners.

Rather than use their industry leading workforces and ideas to compete with established brands (or continue to innovate in those areas where they are the leaders), the management team of both Apple and Virgin seem to prefer belittling their competition and “stamping their feet” when someone comes out with something better, or work harder at achieving their goals.  They also both have a very strong idea of what they want as a company and the public just has to accept that this is the way that it is.

Now, I’m no business analyst and what I don’t know about marketing could be written in very big writing across the sky, but this approach does seem to work with some people.  The question is, is it connecting with enough people?  Well, the fact that Apple still only own 12% of the market share and Virgin Atlantic only have 31 Airports listed on their website suggests to me that it isn’t.  While the fans of the respective companies fight their corner vociferously it seems to me that they simply make more noise, but this doesn’t equate to more customers.  So, what do these companies do?

Well, Virgin decides to belittle it’s competition and suggest that it be better that they go bust and 40,000 Jobs be lost.  While Apple decides to offer what it’s competitors do too but pretend that it’s new and that only they have it (“There’s an app for that – ONLY on the iPhone” anyone?  All of the things that I mentioned in my “What’s so great about the iPhone?” post.)

I think what makes me annoyed is the fact that I know these companies could do so much and yet they just rest on their laurels.  Now I’ll admit I am most definitely a Google fan, but I think that a big part of this is because, even in this high-tech world where I can’t see a niche that isn’t already filled, they find them.  And they create simple, easy to use solutions.  Until GDocs we were happy to download MS Office or Open Office and either email documents to ourself or store them centrally, now the software’s online and you can edit a word processed document through your browser.  Want to keep a calendar/appointment diary, Outlook and Lotus Notes were the two main ways of doing this for businesses (or they’re the ones that I’ve had dealings with) but with GCal you were able to create an event quickly, simply – and because it was online and tied in with your GMail and Maps it just worked.  And now we have Google Wave.  I’ve had a play around with it and, although it’s not much use for me at the moment, I can see situations where it would be and am watching how it grows with interest!

Image taken from http://www.ryebrye.com/blog/

And then there is my beloved Android.  I’ll be the first to admit – I’m a geek.  When the iPhone was released I lusted after it, I lusted so hard.  But I waited, something about it didn’t feel right.  And then came the backlash – so many things that were found to be wrong with the iPhone.  There were so many “design over function” decisions that Apple made and I knew that I’d made the right choice.  Then Google announced that it would lead the Open Handset Alliance in creating Android – an Open Source operating system.  This was what I had waited for.  Now I could have a phone that gave me all of the advantages of the iPhone (internet connectivity, smartphone capabilities, apps etc…) BUT it was open source.  This meant that anyone could amend the code and make the phone do what they wanted.  Now, I’m not in any way a programmer and there’s no way that I could do it, but I was sure that someone would, and to date I haven’t been disappointed!

And of course, because it was led by Google that meant that my GMail, GCal maps and everything else all just fitted in, in my hand, without a problem – even my contacts could all be synced online – making it simple to keep on top of contacts and not being scared of losing my phone.  (Well, not for that reason anyway!)

Yes all the Apple fans talk about the fact that they can jailbreak their phones.  But this is frowned upon, and if Apple get their way – illegal.  Now I suppose you could talk about the cease and desist order Google served on Cyanogenmod but that was simply Google protecting their own closed source apps which have been closely tied to Android.  The whole point is that you can do whatever you like with Android – and that’s why I love it!

Maybe I’m on my own, then again, let’s see what the internet thinks:

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