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Wired magazine ran a couple of articles recently where they painted Apple and its proprietary vendor lock-in business models not just in a positive light, but in a congratulatory tone so nauseatingly over-the-top that I can't just stand by and ignore it. The articles in question basically centered around how breaking all of "the silicon valley rules" of getting ahead in the tech sector made Apple succeed. The comparisons with other companies were just ridiculous as well. Let's see some examples.

How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

Vista was built by a committee process? The iPhone and Mac OS X were each built by a single person (on top of the proven open source BSD core)? I would like to see anything but anecdotal information proving all three of these things.

The same author has another article up which I imagine is a sidebar called Breaking the Rules: Apple Succeeds By Defying 5 Core Valley Principles. Here he delineates the five rules that Apple broke and how breaking them all is why Apple is successful. I'd like to know where he got these "rules" because some of them just don't make sense in today's computing climate.

1. Embrace open platforms. He mentions Google Android, an unproven, only-on-paper phone development environment with no devices yet in production as an example. The "OS X experience" and the iPhone software only running on Apple systems seems awfully self-evident. Palm OS runs on Palm hardware, which can't run on anything else. Even the Palm models that run Windows Mobile can't ship with Palm OS on the same hardware. Windows Mobile runs on hardware that can't run anything else. Welcome to the world of embedded devices. As for OS X, Windows runs on the same Intel-based computer -- there's your open platform -- but I guess he's right that you can't get an OS X "theme" for other operating systems. So should this be "Don't allow others to copy your User Interface?" That seems to be Apple's only way to defend OSX and the iPhone.

But in actuality this rule does not apply to Apple. OSX and the iPhone's success is precisely because of open platforms they are connecting with. The big one is the web. Their browser is built on Webkit, an open source project. Their phone runs on a network that has a business requirement to be open only in the sense of it sending and receiving calls to other networks. While the cell networks are anything but open, they're certainly not requiring that everyone be on the same carrier to get their calls through. Apple would need to be its own, non-interoperable cell phone company to fit this rule.

2. Blog everything good and bad going on with your company. I'm paraphrasing, but guess who else isn't blogging everything right now? Palm, and lots of other companies who need to hold product research close to their vest in case it doesn't work out or in order to energize the market suddenly with an announcement of an upcoming product. I'm not impressed with the idea that this is a rule. Since I like to be surprised by good news instead of having companies announce something years ahead of time only to scare off competitors, I don't care about this rule, and you probably shouldn't either. Companies need to compete on delivered products, not vaporware and future products, right?

3. Don't exploit your market leader position. The author apparently thinks Microsoft suffered due to the antitrust lawsuit it basically won due to DOJ cowardice and spinelessness. Their latest feat -- bundling everything into the operating system -- continues to have a destructive effect on the software marketplace, and Apple's decision to do this as well by pushing Safari on iTunes users makes them look even worse than Microsoft. We know that when third party development is basically obliterated due to the actual and feared bundling of a homegrown competitor to their product into the OS by the OS vendor then innovation takes a distant backseat to marketing. Innovation falters and competitors are locked out by the additional firepower of withholding OS documentation and hooks to permit competitive performance of a competing product.

4. Love your customers. Apple pleasing itself is daring its customer base to revolt, and while brand strength may make them more immune to churn, there's no saying how long it that will be the case. Microsoft's brand has recently declined greatly perhaps due to public frustration with what they're offering, or perhaps due to the unconscious recognition that open standards and open platforms mean they can go somewhere other than Windows -- say, the web, or Mac OS or even Linux handhelds or subnotebooks -- to do their basic computing. Apple shouldn't be congratulated for abusing its customers. It makes them look antiquated and reactionary.

5. Coddle your employees. This is so seriously 1990s that I'm surprised it is even mentioned here. The perks he talks about no doubt hail from very well-to-do companies like Google and such, so I wouldn't even think of this as a rule of silicon valley. Who can afford such things? Maybe Apple can, but if you can keep your employees motivated by your corporate vision then you don't have to coddle them nearly as much. Leadership and charisma like that is very hard to come by, and that's probably where all the coddling money gets spent in that case.

All of this might come across making you think I hate Apple's Mac OS X, its iTunes, and its iPhone. By themselves they are admirable achievements for a company that was so close to extinction at the hand of Microsoft. While it's arguable that Microsoft has a lot more to gain from Apple's health than any of us do, it also needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Yes, Apple is playing like Microsoft plays and it appears to be working for them. Is it working for consumers? Sure, up to a point.

I'm also willing to put forward that computing professionals intimately familiar with the age-old question of "who owns your data" -- those who know succumbling to proprietary systems and vendor lock-in mean loss of control over one's computing destiny -- may be suspending their principles in return for a slick user interface, solid OS core, and sexy telephone, partially because they aren't coming from Microsoft. Those individuals have answered the question of freedom by squinting a little bit and deciding to ask "freedom from what, exactly", letting Apple fit the bill as their knight in shining white armor while ignoring the fact that they're still signing up for a feudal existence.

I recently told a friend that it seemed to me that choosing Mac OS over Windows was choosing to still be a slave but have a different master. While it may feel better for a while to have an attractive and debonair master, abuse is still abuse. Wired's fawning and adoration can't change that.