Why Apple Needs the Web 2.0 Revolution

Yesterday, when Chris wrote here on Apple Matters about how the web application, Writely, may signal the end for Microsoft, he hit the nail right on the head.

Microsoft has a monopoly in three areas of the home consumer market: operating system, browser and office suite, with market share of each fueling the others. The more people use Windows, the more likely they are to use Internet Explorer. The more people use Microsoft Office, the more likely they are to use Windows. While this makes Microsoft an extremely powerful software company, it also means that making inroads in one area can make inroads in all of them. Microsoft’s monopoly is fuelled by this cycle of dependence, and the conventional wisdom has been that it is only as strong as its weakest link. That if someone could take control of one of these three pieces, Microsoft’s monopoly would start to fall apart.

Maybe the solution never was to break the cycle by building a competing product, but to establish an entire orthogonal system that renders Microsoft, at best, obsolete and at worst, redundant. That orthogonal solution is being built before our very eyes and has the potential to pull the rug from under Microsoft’s feet. That solution is web services.

What are the Web Services you speak of?
Web services, or what some people like to call, Web 2.0 is already here. Most likely, you are already using them. Think GMail or whatever web email service you use. You could easily download your email to Apple’s Mail or Mozilla’s Thunderbird, but there is still a tremendous benefit to having it archived and always available online. As we start to access the Internet from multiple devices and multiple locations, this need has become more acute.

Sun used to have a slogan: The network is the computer. With recent increases in available bandwidth, the financial clout and public mindshare of companies like Google and Yahoo, we are only a few steps away from the opportunity of having everything served to us on the Internet. Applications like Writely allow us to edit and manage documents from anywhere, Voo2do allows us to manage tasks, there are online calendars, collaboration tools, and a whole lot more.

Of course, not everything can move to the Internet. There are privacy and security concerns in addition to the time critical nature of certain applications that could only be served legitimately on a local machine. But for the average computer user the issue boils down to trust, and if the past is any guide, most users have already chosen to place an immense amount of trust in their ISPs and email providers. These services will really take off when a company can provide financial backing while preserving the trust of the people.

That is the prize Google and Yahoo are fighting for.

Where Apple comes in
That sounds great, you say. Everybody moves their non-critical applications and non-sensitive information to the great, big Web 2.0, but since Apple is not a player, what is the big deal?

Well, first of all, Apple is a player, though a poor one. With .Mac, Apple has had its foot in the web services arena for quite a while, but the mismanaged triple-whammy of high subscription cost, Macintosh dependence and Apple application dependence they have effectively taken themselves out of the market. But web services may still be what decides whether Apple floats or sinks.

In a world where most applications you use are used through your browser and a lot of your data you have lives online, if you are a Windows user, do you have any reasons to be one any more? A major reason for people sticking with it is that everything they use works on it already. Well, what if it worked everywhere? Web services would separate the applications from the underlying platform and with everything running on x86, would allow operating systems compete solely on the basis of their capabilities and price. Never again would someone choose Windows because all their stuff works on Windows. All they would need would be a browser.

The challenge for Apple then would be to have its computers be of a comparable price, still appear to be the better, cooler alternative and, most importantly, have all of their software support standard or pluggable interfaces with the wild web. Apple already does have an interface to web services; unfortunately it is only for their own .Mac services and, while it may help sell .Mac accounts, it surely does not help sell Macs. So iCal would synchronize with your web calendar, iPhoto with your online photo editing/management service, iTunes with whatever music repository or streaming service you choose and so on. Then, if the Apple community’s belief in the superior software and hardware design is correct, you sit back and watch the Macintosh sell itself.