Fred Vogelstein - Battle of the Titans - How the Fight to the Death Between Apple and Google is Transforming our Lives

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

WilliamCollinsBooks.com

First published as Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution in Great Britain by William Collins in 2013

First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2013

Copyright © Fred Vogelstein 2013

Fred Vogelstein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780007448401

Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007448418

Version: 2014-10-01

For Evelyn, Sam, and Beatrice

Contents

Cover

Title Page BATTLE OF THE TITANS Fred Vogelstein

Copyright Copyright Copyright Dedication Introduction 1. The Moon Mission 2. The iPhone Is Good. Android Will Be Better. 3. Twenty-Four Weeks, Three Days, and Three Hours Until Launch 4. I Thought We Were Friends 5. The Consequences of Betrayal 6. Android Everywhere 7. The iPad Changes Everything—Again 8. “Mr. Quinn, Please, Don’t Make Me Sanction You.” 9. Remember Convergence? It’s Happening 10. Changing the World One Screen at a Time A Note on My Reporting Notes Index Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher William Collins An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB WilliamCollinsBooks.com First published as Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution in Great Britain by William Collins in 2013 First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2013 Copyright © Fred Vogelstein 2013 Fred Vogelstein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Source ISBN: 9780007448401 Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007448418 Version: 2014-10-01

Dedication Dedication Dedication Introduction 1. The Moon Mission 2. The iPhone Is Good. Android Will Be Better. 3. Twenty-Four Weeks, Three Days, and Three Hours Until Launch 4. I Thought We Were Friends 5. The Consequences of Betrayal 6. Android Everywhere 7. The iPad Changes Everything—Again 8. “Mr. Quinn, Please, Don’t Make Me Sanction You.” 9. Remember Convergence? It’s Happening 10. Changing the World One Screen at a Time A Note on My Reporting Notes Index Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher For Evelyn, Sam, and Beatrice

Introduction

1. The Moon Mission

2. The iPhone Is Good. Android Will Be Better.

3. Twenty-Four Weeks, Three Days, and Three Hours Until Launch

4. I Thought We Were Friends

5. The Consequences of Betrayal

6. Android Everywhere

7. The iPad Changes Everything—Again

8. “Mr. Quinn, Please, Don’t Make Me Sanction You.”

9. Remember Convergence? It’s Happening

10. Changing the World One Screen at a Time

A Note on My Reporting

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

When Steve Jobs stood before the world at the beginning of 2007 and said he was going to reinvent the cell phone, the expectations were modest—at best. Jobs had upended the music business with the iPod and iTunes. But taking on the cell phone industry? That seemed unlikely. The wireless carriers, who controlled the market, had been foiling cell phone innovators for years. And the iPhone, while cool looking, seemed no match for their iron grip on the industry. It was more expensive than most phones out there. And it was arguably less capable. It ran on a slower cell/data network. And it required users to type on a virtual, not a physical, keyboard. To some critics, that meant the iPhone was dead on arrival.

If anything, Jobs undersold the iPhone that day. It truly was a breakthrough. The iPhone wasn’t really a phone, but the first mainstream pocket computer that made calls. With its touchscreen, it did so many things that other phones could never do that consumers overlooked its shortcomings. Consumers got used to the virtual keyboard, and Apple continued to make it better and better. It cut the price to equal that of other phones. It quickly upgraded the slower cell/data radios to make its technology competitive. It developed displays with unheard-of resolutions. It bought a chip design company to make sure the iPhone was always the fastest device out there. It rolled out a completely new version of the iPhone software every year. And it designed iconic television ads—as it had done for the iPod—that made consumers feel special about owning one.

The subsequent frenzy of demand gave Apple and Jobs the leverage to turn the tables on the wireless carriers and start telling them what to do. More important, it ignited a technology revolution that today touches almost every corner of civilization. The iPhone has become 1one of the most popular cell phones of all time, selling more than 135 million units in 2012 alone. It has become the platform for a new and hugely profitable software industry—phone apps—that has generated more than $10 billion in total revenues since starting five years ago, in 2008. And the iPhone has become the source of an entire rethink of how humans interact with machines—with their fingers instead of buttons or a mouse. The iPhone and its progeny—the iPod Touch and the iPad—haven’t just changed the way the world thinks about cell phones, they have changed the way the world thinks about computers for the first time in a generation, arguably since the advent of the Macintosh in 1984.