Has Apple Bitten Off More Than It Can Chew?

July 29, 2008 — -- Apple has staked its reputation on tight control of a few carefully designed, faultlessly executed products.

Now, as Apple expands its reach from computers into music, video, consumer electronics and phones, it's getting harder and harder for the company to make sure all of its products "just work," as its marketing slogan goes. Its growing army of customers is getting more difficult to satisfy, and they're finding a host of new problems, ranging from tapeless camcorder issues to buggy iPhones.

"Apple has always seen that their benefit is being a closed environment, but they've now put themselves in the position where a lot more people want to look at them, and those people are coming from domains where they're more used to openness, flexibility and more open systems," said Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney. "That's the crisis they're going to have to face this coming year: Am I going to continue being closed and controlled or am I going to open myself up?"

The list of customers Apple needs to keep happy is ever-growing: iPhone users, iTunes shoppers, iPod owners, MobileMe subscribers and Mac users. And the items all add up to one question: Has Apple bitten off more than it can chew?

The company's towering list of recent problems (collected from reader e-mails, forums and media reports) spell out deterioration of the general Apple user experience:

And on top of that, enraged Apple customers are uniting in Apple support forums -- particularly in the MobileMe and iPhone 3G threads. Some of the country's most famous tech columnists are displeased with Apple's recent behavior, too. A quick Google search of "Apple + it just works" bring up mockeries of the slogan in top results with headlines reading, "It just works indeed," and, "Will MobileMe 'just work' for the rest of us?"