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Why Can't We Be Friends? An Apple Google Truce Should Include App Standards

This article is more than 10 years old.

If Tim Cook and Larry Page are indeed talking peace, as Reuters reported this morning, the implications could be significant. Apple's iOS and Google's Android are fairly comparable (which is not to say identical) application platforms that cover just about any functionality a user might need. They are, however, only somewhat interoperable.

If you are like me, you have your feet (or hands or head) in both circles, aware that the Venn intersection is fairly small. Gmail works seamlessly with Google calendars, but not the iOS calendar app. Music purchased on the iTunes store is now readily accessible on iOS, but only through arcane third party apps on Android. If you have both kinds of devices in your household, or if you're an Apple hardware loyalist who likes Google's desktop apps, you're in a bit of an awkward position.

I find myself between that rock and hard place. As a digital creative, most of my tools are native to Apple hardware, but for productivity, I like the speed and simplicity of Google's apps. This is the point of view from which I looked at this morning's "peace" report. Why can't they just get along and make my life easier?

The situation is not dissimilar from the browser wars of the turn of the century when Microsoft's Internet Explorer went its own way and created hell for web developers who had to code for different browsers. The web standards movement, led by Jeffrey Zeldman and others (great interview with Zeldman here, on The Great Discontent), paved the way for the large chunk of app development that can now be done in HTML 5, CSS3 and JavaScript and work on all platforms.

But although developers can package web standard code into native applications in many ways (see my quick synopsis of contemporary mobile app development methods, courtesy of General Assembly's Peter Bell, here), consumers cannot really use apps on different platforms in a seamless way.

So here's a request to Cook and Page. Make peace by making some foundational standards that both platform's apps will comply with. And while you're at it, bring Microsoft and Amazon into the discussions, as well. What consumers want, and what Apple and Google for the most part deliver, are things that just work, without much explicit configuration.

"Convention over configuration," is a motto of agile web developers, and Apple and Google could take that advice. If our everyday personal data, email, browsing history, app local storage, music, videos, photos, etc. were encrypted and portable to any "modern" device, then our hardware decisions could be unhinged from our software platform decisions.

As long as hardware serves as a "lock-in" for software it will really be impossible to tease out the patent tangle. Apple built iOS out first, but Google jucied Android's growth by making it free to hardware manufacturers. Those are two distinct strategies to build essentially the same thing. Apple emphasizes paid content and Google makes its money on advertising supported services. Again, two ways to do the same thing. Add Microsoft and Amazon to the mix and you have potentially four branches of flow for the same kinds of information and functions.

This diversity is good for users, but the lack of interoperability serves as an excess friction that is holding back even greater growth. It is unclear from the Reuters report how far-ranging the discussions between Apple and Google are at this point. Between Apple's win against Samsung and its reduced reliance on Google's software in iOS 6, the company is in a position of strength.

But the case can be made (in fact, I have made it) that Google's data platform is, ultimately, superior to Apple's. All of the user interface design magic in the world can't hide the fact that Google Now gets it right more often, and in many more situations, than Siri. And that is just one example. If consumers prefer Google's platform (as they have shown in terms of Android's market share, patent considerations aside), then the way forward for Apple's continued growth is through cooperation, not warfare.

Over all of this, like a Shakespearian ghost, Steve Jobs' memory hangs like a disapproving fog. Does that matter? Can the new leader liberate himself from the previous leader's grudge? The next act is about to begin...

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