PC Magazine - 2009 11.pdf - Libertad Zero

SASCHA SEGANA World WithoutApple?Imagine there’s no Apple. Overhere in the U.S., that is a very hardthing to do. But in technologicallyadvanced, mobile-crazy SouthKorea, there’s more iRiver thaniPhone. In fact, there are no iPhones at all,no Apple stores, and far, far fewer iPods onthe Seoul subway than I’ve seen riding thesubway in New York.That made me think: What if Steve Jobshad never returned to Apple, and the companyhad crumbled as was widely expectedin the 1990s, or just stayed a second-tier PCmaker? Would the world’s tech market looka little more like Korea’s?Obviously, Apple’s design innovationshave had an effect on everyone in computingand media—even on the gadgets I sawin Korea. But it’s not as if Apple inventedthe touch screen, the media player, or themobile Web browser. Most of Apple’s innovationswould have happened anyway; theyjust might have happened differently.Here are some ideas based on what I sawin South Korea.Triumph of the KeyboardKoreans, like Americans, love flip phones.But that hasn’t kept them off the Web. Theysurf on flip phones, text on flip phones, andwatch TV on flip phones. Here in the U.S., welove flip phones, phones with full keyboards,and iPhones. As I’ve said before, touch keyboardsare fundamentally flawed; we putup with typing on a touch keyboard onlybecause we love the rest of the iPhone’s features.An Apple-less world would have a lotmore physical keyboards in it.More Diversity, Less DRMYes, Korea has its faults. For example, oneof the ways the country has kept Apple outis through laws that favor domestic manufacturers.But ironically, that protectionismseems to have created more diversity thanthe iPod monoculture you see in big U.S. cities.I saw people tapping on big-screen WindowsCE media players, typing on thingsthat looked like tiny laptops with tinier keyboards,and listening to music on both traditionalflip phones and iRiver MP3 players.44 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION NOVEMBER 2009