Daniel Lyons: ‘Apple Is What Microsoft Was — Bigfoot’

Dan Lyons’s first piece for Newsweek is out:

Just as Microsoft controls both the operating system and the applications that run on top of it, Apple owns popular hardware platforms (iPod, iPhone) and operates the only store that can sell music, movies and software programs for those platforms. Apple sets prices and takes 30 percent of the money.

That is true for iPhone apps, but it’s not true for movies and music. This makes his argument weaker: the iPod’s support for music and movies from sources other than the Apple Store is an example the App Store could follow. Apple should be so lucky as to have the App Store be as successful as their music store.

(And, as many readers have pointed out via email, it’s of course also not true that Apple “sets prices” on the App Store apps.)

★ Sunday, 7 September 2008