NOREEN: Apple becomes its worst nightmare
Apple Computer has become the nerdy guy in the frumpy suit.
You’ve probably seen the television commercials in the past few years that depict the Apple guy as the hip, easy-going young man whose machines and software are user-friendly. He is standing next to a character in a baggy blue suit who looks vaguely like Microsoft magnate Bill Gates.
The message is that Apple is for cool hipsters, the underdog to the big mean bully, Microsoft. There was a time when that was more or less correct, but Apple’s market value surpassed Microsoft’s in May.
Apple did go through a time when Microsoft beat it down, but Apple has proved resilient and now has regained the stature it once had. That old underdog image just isn’t accurate any more.
Just ask Monument-based entrepreneur Mario Ciabarra, the real-life version of the young hip Internet innovator who this week won an important legal battle against the over-bearing quintessential blue meanie. That’s right: Ciabarra beat Apple.
Ciabarra owns Rock Your Phone, a store that markets new applications for Apple’s iPhone. Apple doesn’t like this because the company feels it is losing business that would flow to its own phone applications marketing. But this week the Library of Congress, which has the job of determining what constitutes copyright infringement in such cases, ruled in Ciabarra’s favor.
“Is it going to grow the business?” Ciabarra said of the ruling. “Long-term I think it will. But no one’s really going to challenge Apple’s monopoly. Apple continues to squash competition.”
Apple’s self image is one of the counter-culture revolutionary but the reality is something else.
Ciabarra says Apple should come around to understand that a bunch of little guys trying to find new ways to make iPhones cool eventually will help the company, not hurt it. Apple’s latest strategy has been to insist that any phone-related applications sold by some other company would nix iPhone warranties.
“They’re trying to use scare tactics now,” Ciabarra said, adding that if his software applications actually damaged iPhones, he would be out of business overnight.
But Ciabarra thinks there is a way to get Apple to behave differently. Although Apple has become the guy in the bad suit, Ciabarra believes that at Apple’s, uh, core, there still resides the entrepreneurial inventive spirit.
“Media pressure will make a difference,” he said. “Apple’s going to say, ‘is this really the company we want to be?’ ”
Maybe. But from here it appears to be a bit of leap to expect the corporate giant, the guy in the frumpy suit, to make a sincere effort to become the hipster in blue jeans and tennis shoes.
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