Apple and it's tight control over the iPhone

by phil on Wednesday Jun 25, 2008 12:39 AM

The mobile phone is an ambient social accessory. It's like another limb or organ. As a result, HCI (Human Computer Interaction) issues have to be of supreme priority, and unless you have an aggressive CDO (Chief Design Officer), you need a CEO who is on the inside, a CDO. I heard at Apple, they just let everybody obey the Design department. You can't execute that, at least not right now, without the command-and-control society that Apple has. There is just so much harmony between the iPhone hardware, software, its network (Steve Jobs got AT&T to make special technology provisions for the iPhone), its music ecosystem, and coming-soon, it's app ecosystem. All these companies trying to make iPhone killers put out music stores and app stores, or touch in their devices, but without the corresponding ecosystems that have taken years of independent evolution and vetting, how can they compete?