Apple – Control freak or protector of the people?

A lot has been said about Apple’s desire for control and what has been interpreted by many as an unnecessary exertion of power over their app store. But it boils down to this… if you spent a decade building an ecosystem of trust, a space where consumers could with almost a certainty understand the value (or valet) proposition being offered them, would you allow Adobe, Google or anybody else to say, hey nice ecosystem you built there, we’ll have it, I think you would resist as well.

In the future brave new world, will we be able to trust that our children are growing up in an age appropriate zone of media exposure on content that is not controlled by big media but by people media?

It is vital that an eight year old be an eight year old, and a ten year old be a ten year old in their media consumption. How can we achieve that in the current tech eco-systems? Microsoft’s is a dismal failure, Google seems to be an articulate, professorial alternative but they are strangely detached from humanity in their DNA – so great ideas, but no human resonance at a consumer level and Ubuntu is playing desperate catch up but is not even on most people’s radar yet.

Will we be able to trust corporations that stand for nothing but platitudes, empty promises and rapacious business practices with defending our choice of values, content and privacy and the complex relationship that exists between them?

In the emerging social cortex, the world is discovering new ways of doing things, but one of the big impacts of the net generation has been the rise of easy to produce and distribute content without thought to planning and debating the social spaces in which these would happen. Its like we discovered theatre and then decided to perform a particular variety of porn theatre right in the middle of the street where children might be passing by. I am not suggesting that such a group shouldn’t freely indulge themselves, but we obviously wouldn’t allow that where children may be present. The struggle to define these intangible intersections with our corporeal world and to govern them is one of the great failures of modern civic and political leadership.

Apple is a company that has clearly been thinking about the consequences of technology. How does it change our world, and how do we need to protect our humanity within that new space. And their desire for control is about managing that trust relationship.

And clearly consumers do trust Apple. Unthinkingly, Apple users respond to calls to action from the Mothership, not because they are mindless fanbois, but because each step along the Apple journey is evolutionary. Install an OS update, your device will be faster, smoother, do more! Invest in iTunes valeting your music collection for you in 2001 and today you are a shiny, happy music consumer complete with album art and ratings meta data with an experience in software and hardware that just gets better each year.

Compare that trajectory with that of competitors… well you can’t because no such other focused approach exists. A couple of months ago after playing with Google’s Nexus One Android handset, I came to the conclusion that I would rather be a subject in the Kingdom of Jobs that a citizen in the democracy of Google. Sure you had choice in Google’s platform, but no vision. Apple’s eco-system offers a vision AND choice. As a result it is consistent, compelling and clear.

A large part of the misunderstanding of the Apple brand is as a result of absolute mismanagement of the brand in South Africa. Due to a complex mix of history, economics and relative priorities, South Africa is a major media market that is simply ignored by the Apple executives in Cupertino and as a result, South African consumers have no idea of the compelling power of the eco-system, and media owners and planners who are all being advised by specialists in the status quo are being told the brand is elitist, expensive and will never be mainstream in South Africa.

Tell that to the 100 million new users of Apple iPhone devices over the past 3 years and the 20m or so people who committed to buying new Macs over that period, all using it happily, free of viruses, malware and without instruction manuals. Have you watched a 3 year old with an iPad? We have! and we believe that this is the device that the African media market was waiting for… something that was so simple to use, that you just picked it up and DID stuff with your fingers.

The Apple community are so highly transactional that it is almost second nature. The trust that Apple has built in “it just all works” means massive payoffs in lubricating the transactional space in their eco-system. People buy apps on impulse like sweets, often with the same lasting value ie. their is no consumer fear of the consequences of their choice on their device… very different to PC’s and traditional handsets.

The way Apple users behave are a harbinger of future patterns of consumer behavior. The iPad is akin to a piece of alien technology teleported in 10 years from the future. The people who are using it are going to change their behaviour in new and unforeseen ways. If you want to understand the consumer of the future, start examining the behaviour of these Apple users… they are distinct and unique enough to require a specialist approach as a media space.

Apple, in their mobile devices, are a mass consumer brand and nothing about South Africa, our people or our culture makes us special. When Apple is ready, and when Apple comes, Africans will respond to a brand as resonant to them as to a kindergarten teacher in San Francisco. And don’t doubt that Apple is coming.