The geeks don't matter

Oh yes, I said it, the geeks don't matter. Or maybe I should be more nuanced: As a consumer group, the geeks don't matter as much as they used to.

After the latest round of announcements from Apple about the iPhone, All over the internet, on blogs, FaceBook, Twitter and wherever you choose to point your browser, you'll find a whole lot of angry geeks. That is, if you are yourself a geek. Otherwise, you're probably not reading those articles.

People are angry that Apple is further building their closed system. That they are removing user's freedom to choose. That they are forcing developers to write Apple specific code by blocking cross-compilers and all that. They vent online making all sorts of arguments about how they won't use Apple products and how they have lost their trust in apple that has finally become as bad as Microsoft.

Vent and rant all you want. Rest assured however that it doesn't matter. It will not change Apple's decisions. You, me, the geeks, are not the main customer group for Apple. See, we never were. This is perfectly consistent with Apple's past behavior and strategy.

And geeks all over should be ready to suffer even more and get angrier. Not only are geeks not the main customer group for Apple. But they are bound to loose their status as the main customer group of most other technology companies as well. The biggest accomplishment of Apple over the past few years, culminating with this week's announcement, is to demonstrate that if you don't aim your technology product to a technologically savvy audience, you end-up making bucketloads of money.

This means that other technology companies will also realize that they can stop caring about the requests for openness from the technology elite. They can safely ignore this because it is much more lucrative to sell to the normals than it is to sell to the geeks.

Some will argue that this is not the best for the consumer. But then again, companies rarely do things because they are best for the consumer. They do things because they are best for themselves. (tobacco, agro-industry, oil companies, etc...) Why would a company like Apple (or Microsoft, or Google or Amazon) voluntarily limit the amount of revenue they can extract from their customers just to preserve their rights to choose the content that they consume or the way they consume it.

Consumers will continue to purchase proprietary devices with arbitrary limitations because they are not interested in how it works or why it works in a particular way. They just want to get something that satisfies their needs, that works and that they can afford.

I guess us geeks should get used to this. The era of large technology companies run by geeks building products for geeks is over.

Hey... we had a good run, it was fun while it lasted.