the onda

Anyone with little boys knows that what passes for modern day crack cocaine with them is the combination of two great franchises: Lego and Star Wars. Whoever thought of that cross licensing deal deserved his marketing bonus for the year (which he's probably spending on endless Lego Star Wars sets for his kids).

Having spent the week chasing down misplaced Clone Troopers, I got to thinking about a potential equivalent big-boy combination of two great franchises: Apple's fantastic hardware & software design with Google's openness and Internet services DNA. Why is it that we're made to choose between fantastic devices with unparalleled fit and finish but totalitarian control points, or sloppy designed-by-committee but wonderfully generative platforms like Android or Chrome?

People of both sides of the open vs. closed debate have argued that each company's products result from their starting philosophies, that closed begets more finished products, and open requires tolerance of more "generic" experiences.

I call bullshit on that.

Instead of philosophies, I think we need to focus on a much simpler cause— one based on simple economics. It's been a long time since Apple has had to be open in their approach to a product for business reasons. At the launch of OS X, the alternative to being open (with an OS that was easy to port to, attractive to Linux/Unix developers, enticing to ISVs) was being broke. So the company was incented to do the right thing. Similarly, until the iPhone ran away from the pack, Google had little incentive to do anything but get a checkbox in the mobile OS category of their strategy slide— but as is clear with the Nexus (and likely with the Incredible and all future high end Android phones), they are now playing up to Apple's level on mobile fit and finish (at least to a couple of revs back).

I'm hoping that the take-over-the-world stuff we saw this week from Facebook (with Microsoft cheering on from the sidelines) will wake these guys up so some deeper economic motivation to stop fighting and figure out how to do the Lego/Lucas love dance. At the very least, I'm tired of having to choose.