All sorts of people are upset at Apple these days. And all sorts of people are insisting that Apple “hasn’t learned the lessons from the past” or is otherwise heading down some path of doom. Because, well, you know, ummm.. “open” is just… umm.. well, it’s just as good as it is undefined, apparently.

Apple hasn’t changed. Apple’s been this way for a long time. Well, at least since Steve Jobs’ return. And it’s done them very well.

Something that amazes me is how Steve Jobs consistently does things that just aren’t supposed to work, according to various pundits and self-styled high priests of various dubious belief systems and self-proclaimed experts in the business.

How could Apple think they could be a serious contender against Sony in the portable music player market? They really need to stop wasting time on that and put their resources into building an MS Office competitor and going for the enterprise. And how could they be so silly to think they could charge 99 cents for a song in a very high quality format when, with a lot of digging on torrent sites, you might be able to find some poorly compressed version of your favorite song? That Steve Jobs just must be crazy.

We heard the same thing about the iPhone.

We’ve been hearing the same thing about the iPad. The remarkable thing about the iPad is one’s ability to understand what the device even is seems inversely related to their technical knowledge. It’s amazing to me how many people who write on these topics for a living keep trying to compare it to a laptop or netbook, and seem unable to understand why the iPad isn’t a TabletPC from 2003.

Unable to fathom these mysteries they take the always unhelpful position that interest in such a device is due to mere “hype” or perhaps just sheer stupidity on the part of the consumers or perhaps Apple management. Let me put it simply: If you believe that the lack of a USB port on the iPad was either a design oversight, the result of a sneaky plan to hold back on this to stimulate sales of iPad 2.0, or that Steve Jobs is just an idiot.

Helpful hint: if you seriously believe that, perhaps you’re not quite as clever as you imagine. Put another way, the degree to which you think you are smarter than Steve Jobs is probably inversely related to your actual intelligence.

From reading the tech pundits for several years, particularly following the release of the iPad, I’m quite convinced we’re dealing with a community of people who clearly don’t get it.

As of late, many of them are very upset at Steve Jobs. The reasons are always murky, and their talk is constantly filled with strange phrases and a lot of emotional rhetoric. Apple is just doing things “wrong”, they are trying to create “a walled garden” (no idea why this is a pejorative term), they are too “closed”, and so many other things.

Worse yet, Apple is surrounded by this unreasonable “cult” of people who are apparently stupid enough to buy an iPad that lacks a USB port. A bunch of people who are apparently unable to realize the high degree of likelihood that they just might have an emergency print job and come across a printer they can utilize that is not networked. It happens a lot, it would seem.

But if we are to find the elements of a cult, we need look no further than the fanatical Apple haters. Cults consists primarily of being united by strange, unsubstantiated sacred postulates which are totally and thoroughly ungrounded but endlessly repeated as if they were unquestionably true.

Cults are also known for being composed of people who are undeterred when their prophecies fail to come true. In fact, they frequently become ever more fanatical.

Since returning to Apple, Steve Jobs has shown that many sacred beliefs that people have are simply groundless. It was just simply OBVIOUS that the idea that a single company could manufacture the hardware, create the software, sell direct, and make money selling music.. well, it was just OBVIOUS that could never work.

Openness is just better. We can’t define what we mean by it, but we know its better. Openness just leads to more innovation, you see. It just does. It’s just good. Always and for everyone. Open systems are just better.

The entire open source movement seems to be infected with a lot of very, very poorly understood memes and ill-digested notions from cybernetics and other 1950s thought that have crystalized (or more accurately, encrusted) into a rigid set of sacred postulates that people fight for without ever seeming to be able to explain to anyone why these things are good.

Perhaps it’s time we stop telling Apple how the world works, what they should do, how they should be. Perhaps we should look at the iPad and ask ourselves, “could there be some good reasons why there isn’t a USB port on this thing?” And perhaps we should look at the success of Apple and entertain the possibility, as remarkable as it may seem, that perhaps some of our beliefs about progress, technology, and computing may possibly be in need of revision.

I like my Mac and I like my iPhone. These things didn’t come into the world spontaneously through the random efforts of a bunch of people inebriated on the works of Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds.

Does it want to be the company we want it to be? Or the one it wants to be?

Are those desires the same? I highly doubt it.

I think Apple would be happier with 10% market share free to innovate, do things its way, and provide innovation leadership, than 40% but bowing to the goals of other affected parties.

Android, WinPhone, Symbian and Blackberry, may ultimately relegate iPhone to influencer (as happened with the Mac) rather than market share leader, but that won’t bother Apple if it hasn’t had to compromise its core philosophies.

I think we’re pushing **it uphill trying to convince or expect Apple to bend to our objectives. But no harm in trying!

Apple will be at Web 2 if it fits with its philosophies.

And maybe that’s how you need to sell them on the idea. Show them how it fits them, not us.

Could you come to my birthday party? I realize there’s nothing in it for you, but it’ll make me popular and let me brag to all my friends.

Seriously, without you the party will be mostly irrelevant. (Randall will bore us to death reading from notecards again.)

And you should really care what me and my friends say about you. Because we’re bloggers. And we’re important.

So please, come to my party. And bring a clown for the kids. Thank you.

-Bryan

Apple has always known that in the fast changing world of technology, for any company, however large, to thrive, it must act like a small business, be nimble, able to turn on a dime when the weather changes, making those bold radical changes often at the cost of upsetting or cutting existing business relationships.

So they won’t commit to anything more than they absolutely have to, and they are right. And perhaps keeping customers happy is more important than making “friends” in the industry.

http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/04/an-open-letter-to-john-battelle.html