Steve Jobs: Architecture, Platforms, and the Big Picture, Part 3

by Ken Orr

I certainly got people's attention when I raised the question of "open" versus "closed" architectures (see "Steve Jobs: Architecture, Platforms, and the Big Picture," 25 October 2007, and "Steve Jobs: Architecture, Platforms, and the Big Picture, Part 2," 8 November 2007). I'd like to finish this series by addressing a couple of questions around architectures. First, "closed architectures" work best when two things exist: (1) an elegant architecture and (2) the organization that puts forth the standard has to have some sort of market dominance (think IBM at its peak, Microsoft, and, of course, Apple). Today, people are much more interested in Apple's standard because of Apple's success in the last five or six years.