When Steve Jobs utter , multitude listen . Of course , that ’s no warranty they ’ll like what he says , specially when it ’s their business he ’s ragging on . The Apple CEO took advantage ofhis rare appearanceon the ship’s company ’s quarterly fiscal resultant role conference call toblast a phone number of competitors , including BlackBerry - maker Research In Motion and Google .
But in business , as in politics , it ’s all about spin , so the injured parties have gone on the defensive to attempt and wrest control of the conversation — some more successfully than others .
Research In Motion
“ We ’ve now passed RIM . And I do n’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future . ” job did n’t mince Bible in compliments to the BlackBerry manufacturer , arguing that the company would have to bequeath its comfort zona and become a software platform proprietor in orderliness to survive in the current grocery store .
RIM co - CEO Jim Balsillie run off little time inposting a rebuttal on the company ’s blog , claim issue with everything from Jobs ’s dismissal of the 7 - column inch tablet kind factor to his rephrasing of Google ’s “ capable versus unopen ” contention . But at thrust of Balsillie ’s argument was Apple ’s so - called “ realism distortion field . ”
“ We think many customers are set about stock of being told what to conceive by Apple , ” Balsillie writes . “ As common , whether the subject is antennas , Flash or shipments , there is more to the story and sooner or after , even mass inside the distortion champaign will begin to begrudge being state half a story . ”
As evidence of Apple ’s selective contention , Balsillie says that the company skew Book of Numbers by comparing its one-quarter , which ended in September , with RIM ’s most recent quarter , which ended in August , ignoring “ that industriousness demand in September is typically stronger than summertime months . ” The RIM co - CEO also says that the society anticipates between 13.8 and 14.4 million BlackBerries to be shipped in RIM ’s current quarter , which conclude in later November .
Some of the arguments levy in Balsillie ’s post call a bit empty . For example , the co - CEO argued that RIM “ knows ” that 7 - inch tablets will be “ a bighearted portion of the market , ” but devote that the society has yet to shipanytablet , it seems somewhat more assumptive than Jobs ’s argument , which is punt by more than 4 million iPad sales . And in response to Jobs ’s light-minded remark on Adobe Flash , Balsillie contribute that “ customer want to fully enter the overwhelming majority of web sites that expend Flash”—this despite the fact that though both RIM and Adobe have promised Flash support on the BlackBerry , it has yet to materialize .
One tip that Balsillie did n’t even gravel to examine and address was the disparity in third - company package : Jobs touted the more than 300,000 apps available for Io and suggest that RIM would have a tough time convincing developers to summate the BlackBerry in plus to developing for iOS and Android . Balsillie publish in his post only that developer “ want more options , ” without especially speak why the current and previous variation of BlackBerry ’s OS did n’t seem to extend a convincing option to Android and iOS .
Still , with take over cite to the “ reality deformation field ” figure and his archeological site at the iPhone 4 feeler issue , Balsillie ’s statement comes perilously close to looking like the resentful arguments of a smartphone platform that some recent surveys show rapidly dwindling . There ’s no dubiousness that Balsillie ’s no less trying to deform reality — it just turns out that Apple and Steve Jobs are good at it .
“ We see tremendous economic value at ingest Apple , rather than our users , be the systems integrator , ” said Jobs on Monday . “ We believe this a huge strength of our access compared to Google ’s : when selling the drug user who want their machine to just work , we believe that integrated will trump fragment every meter . ”
The peak of Jobs ’s screed on Android swing to the sum of the philosophical differences between Apple and Google . And while Apple put its best foot forward in take its contestation made by Steve Jobs , Google ’s supporter come in the rather ill - advised contour of its frailty president of engineering Andy Rubin . Rubin , a former Apple engineer , went on to found Android , which was later on take on by Google . Rubin took the opportunity to sample and refute Jobs in a mere 140 characters witha tweet from his brand new Twitter account :
the definition of opened : “ mkdir android ; cd humanoid ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make ”
For those not well poetise in the arcane verses of the control transmission line , Iconfactory chief developer Craig Hockenberry postedthis translation :
Andy Rubin ’s tweet for non - tekki : Make a folder for the Android projection ; Download the source code into that leaflet ; Build the product .
Of course , the very fact that Rubin ’s reply had to be read into English does n’t do much to counter Steve Jobs ’s argument that consumer favor an integrated , “ it just form ” product . It also potentially reenforce Jobs ’s period that Android is a heavily fragmentize chopine , given that the stub of Rubin ’s tweet is that anybody can download and adapt Android to their needs .
There ’s a intellect you do n’t needfully let just anybody make public statements for your society : what seems like a really convincing argument to an railroad engineer is n’t inevitably the kind of thing a consumer is going to appreciate — or perhaps even understand .
TweetDeck
As one example of the difficulty developing for a platform as fragmented as Android , Jobs cited Twitter client developer TweetDeck , which late launched its software system on Android . But this is one station where Jobs ’s curveball may not have fall apart quite the direction he stand for .
“ Twitter customer [ TweetDeck ] lately launched their app for Android , ” said Jobs . “ They reported that they had to fight with more than a hundred dissimilar translation of Android software on 244 different French telephone . The multiple hardware and software iterations present developers with a daunting challenge . ”
That comment seems to have halt from a chartpublished by the TweetDeck folksshowing the huge telephone number of Android French telephone and operating system version used by their genus Beta tester . ( And it ’s an astounding number : 100 of phones running XII of operating organization discrepancy . )
But TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworthchimed in on Twitterto say that Jobs lease the data out of circumstance , writing “ Did we at any percentage point say it was a incubus developing on Android ? Errr nope , no we did n’t . It was n’t . ” As the initial TweetDeck web log spot articulate , “ From our view it ’s fairly coolheaded to have our app work on such a wide-eyed diverseness of devices and Android OS variation . ” Dodsworth afterwards add that the company had only two developer work on the Android version .
Does it invalidate Jobs ’s level that Android is fragmented ? Not of necessity : there ’s intelligibly a lot of proliferation of Android hardware and computer software , and a twosome of high profile case of antagonistic software goes a long way to make Jobs ’s contestation for him . But TweetDeck‘s response show that perhaps the attempt is n’t quite as unmanageable as the Apple CEO would have people believe .
