Apple’s Content Push Only Highlights a Lack of Focus (Premium)

Apple CEO Tim Cook is by all accounts a nice guy. But it’s time for new leadership at this rudderless company, which is now drunkenly bouncing from project to project, looking for its next big hit.

This is a bit weird to write, but I actually feel bad for Apple right now. Sure, the company is on top of the world in many ways, certainly financially. But it really has lost its way. One could point to all kinds of examples—the f#$k you to its customers that was the new MacBook Pro is the most recent and obvious—but nothing says “lack of vision” quite like Apple’s decision to become a content maker. Yeah. They’re making their own TV shows now.

For Microsoft longtimers like myself, watching Apple make the same mistakes that the Redmond software giant made back in its own heyday is a bit strange. You may recall that Microsoft’s mantra at the time was that they would not become another IBM. But just as surely as they are now doing exactly that, so too is Apple becoming the next Microsoft. And you have to believe this is exactly what they tell themselves they will never do.

Apple, here’s a mirror.

Microsoft, like Apple, once pursued an in-house content strategy. Because this is the type of thing you do when you’re on the top of the world, no one has the courage or intestinal fortitude to say no to the CEO, and you are convinced of your superiority despite racking up a number of defeats that, quite frankly, should have been more troubling to the executive leadership by this point.

They’ll figure it out eventually, but if Apple continues following Microsoft’s path—and I bet it will—that realization will come too late.

Microsoft’s content push, by the way, came in the early days of the Internet era, back when the firm was still trying to “embrace and extend” Internet technologies and give Internet Explorer and MSN artificial boosts in the market. Those efforts actually succeeded for a while—you can read any Netscape obituary for the details—but Microsoft’s content push, alas, did not.

There are two great examples of this push that I recall clearly. The first was MSNBC, a joint project to create a cable news channel with NBC. Which, by the way, already had a cable news channel. And an Internet-based content strategy that involved an IE Channel Bar and a silly “web magazine” called Mungo Park. Both date back over 20 years, to 1996.

These kinds of content pushes reek of hubris and a complete and utter misunderstanding of your role in the world. For Apple, that role is clear: Create nearly perfect devices that people love. And then expand on that relationship by making companion products and services that make people love those devices even more.

Creating original video content, as Apple is doing, will not cause its customers to love Apple more. It will just cause confusion. It will be a distraction. And like its failed attempts at building cars, there’s a comeuppance waiting where the company will finally discover two basic truths: There is an entire industry that’s been making this stuff for longer than Apple’s been a company, and they’re really good at it. And there is no money to be made here by an outsider that no one, in this world, at least, cares about at all. In fact, they are openly opposed to you.

Apple, like Microsoft 20 years ago, has enough money to weather this stupid and pointless effort. And it will move past it, will note that there is such a rich ecosystem of content around its devices that it simply doesn’t need to bother. But for the short term, it’s like Apple feels like it needs to spend—waste, really—money on something. That its inability to create the next iPhone—sorry, iPad and Apple Watch—is drawing too much negative commentary. That impression could become reality.

Well, sorry Apple. But this push into content is just more of the same: You’re not innovating. You’re not finding your next big product. You’re just passing the time and trying to figure out yet another way to drain your customers’ wallets when, in fact, you simply don’t need to bother, and you’re looking desperate.

Sad? You bet. But perhaps inevitable. Like a child, companies often need to grow up at their own pace. And Apple will get there. Just like Microsoft did.