Former Apple Engineer Says Company Doesn’t Understand The Web

Former Apple engineer Patrick B. Gibson wants everyone to know that Apple may be great at product design, marketing and other gadget based areas but it fails miserably on internet projects.

Writing on his personal blog the former Apple employee reveals:

“Almost anything Apple does which involves the internet is a mess.”

If you have not thought about Apple’s internet failures Gibson provides some eye opening proof. For example the former employee notes that Apple can’t even update its online store without taking if offline. Gibson then explains that Apple’s store is built on “a mostly dead framework written almost 20 years ago,”

Gibson then notes that both MobileMe and Ping were heavily invested in by Apple, yet both closed their doors after failure to gain widespread acceptance.

While Apple’s Safari web browser is one of the best in class and iMessage has taken the world by storm, Gibson notes that the rest of Apple’s core internet business continues to suffer.

Patrick also explains in his blog posting that a former senior colleague believes:

“Google (GOOG) is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services.”

Patrick writes of the Google fiasco:

“Google, specifically Android, has been steadily improving its entire platform. To me, it still doesn’t have the same quality of polish and feel that Apple software does. However, it’s getting harder to argue that point, especially since their web services all tend to Just Work. Features like Google Now and near-instant voice commands are starting to give Android a serious leg up on iOS. Design is coming along as well. Android is still ugly, but it’s much less ugly than it was a few years ago. Google seems to be actively addressing this, and if Apple isn’t worried, they should be.”

So what does Patrick B. Gibson believe Apple  needs to do in order to succeed? Buy Twitter! Not for social media know-how but in an attempt to acquire the company’s staff of internet gurus.

[image via The Telegraph]