Hey Apple, you need to move away from your strategic walled garden approach

After a 5-month encounter with Android (Sony Xperia Z3 compact) I switched back to the iPhone (6s).

My reasons would fill an article by its own, but let’s just say both operating systems have their pros and cons — the perfectionist in me has decided he needs the feeling of tidiness, more polished user experience and superior app quality that comes with the Apple ecosystem and hardware.

While I would say the ecosystems getting closer and closer, the gap in hardware is still relevant: The incredible fast fingerprint sensor, new possibilities in touch interactions and the top-of-the-notch camera with natural looking images are reasons on its own.

But: As hardware features get more and more commoditized, Apple will need to play their biggest differentiator — the integration of hardware and software. In fact you can see this strength at work with the afore mentioned 6s features. Now enter the cloud department.

Here ist the list of services (or jobs to be done) and how I substituted them on my iPhone.

Replaced Apple services:

• Apple Mail — Google Inbox App
• Calendar — Google Calendar App
• Contacts — FullContact App
• Safari — Google App (when I open the browser manually it’s in almost all cases a Google search)
• iCloud Photo Library — Google Photos & Flickr
• iCloud Drive — Google Drive & Dropbox
• iTunes Match — Google Music
• Apple Music — Amazon Prime Music (good enough for me)
• iCloud Notes — Evernote
• iTunes Movies — Amazon Prime Instant Video
• iBooks — Amazon Kindle
• Apple Maps — Google Maps

Remaining Apple services:

• iCloud Backup
• Find my iPhone

Apple Services that are part-time replaced (meaning they get used alongside):

• Siri — Google Now
• FaceTime — Google Hangouts
• iMessage — WhatsApp & Facebook Messenger

It was surprising for me how many Apple services are disabled now. The service distribution looks like 75% Google, 10% Amazon, 10% Facebook “conglomerate”, 5% Apple.

Not using Apple services on an Apple device results in a lot of disadvantages. For example I’m not able to control my music with Siri or make a lot of shortcuts with Workflows. Despite that I favor the added benefits and features above the deep integration — this should be a huge warning sign for Apple.

Dear Tim Cook, how could/should you react?

1. Make your services best-in-class and reliable (they’re probably working on that right now)
2. Make your services accessible anywhere, preferably with native apps (they’re probably not working on that, except Apple Music)
3. Let the user decide which service they want to use and offer APIs at the system level (they’re probably not working on that)

How it could work

Don’t get me wrong, I think with an Apple device you can get the most complete package at the moment — but some strategic decisions should be rethought for the long-term future — otherwise you’ll see (at least) me switching again.

Originally published on November 15, 2015.