Relentless

Tim Ricchuiti gives his take on an Apple that has no problem Sherlocking some third-party developers and implementing other features similarly as competitors have.

But I also don’t think Apple spends a significant amount of time worrying about whether a given move on their part will take a chunk out of someone else’s business.

And here’s the thing: that’s exactly what I want as a consumer of Apple products.

I’ve been tossing around this idea in my head for the past two weeks, and basically, it comes down to this: I’m much more comfortable with an Apple that makes the best improvements to iOS they can, implementing the best features they can think of, than I am with an Apple that avoids good ideas simply because they weren’t the first to get there.

I buy Apple products because of their eye for hardware and software design, their relentless, iterative improvements, and their ruthless competitiveness in the market. Not because they’re nice or charitable.

Does this make Apple evil? No, I don't think so. It makes them competitive. And in any sort of competition, be it a business or a football game, someone is going to be edged out. You may say that it isn't fair for Apple to add things that exist within their own development community. I say if they didn't do that, OS X or iOS would never improve.

Let's take the Safari Reader with Reading List feature that Apple demoed. That hedges in on a bit of Instapaper's turf. But is Marco worried? Nope. Marco thinks it will actually bring him more business.

Back to Tim's thoughts, how about Apple stealing from competitors?

To me, the fact the Apple implemented notitifications so similarly to Android tells me that it really is the best way to do notifications. ‘Cause if Apple could have possible done it any other way, don’t you think they would have? As John Gruber put it on the The Talk Show, kudos to Android: they got it right.

I think Tim hit the nail on the head. Android got it mostly right. Apple took that idea and made a few improvements. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see Google take some of those changes Apple made and roll them back into Android. And hey, for anyone complaining about Apple ripping off Android…well, Android is "open".

Apple’s going to do what they need to in order to continue to expand their platform. If it means a few toes get stubbed along the way (or perhaps even hacked off), then so be it.

Relentless.