There's No Way Around It, Apple Is In 'Reset,' Says Long-Time Apple Watcher Walt Mossberg
Mossberg was the personal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal for years. Recently, he started his own site, Re/code, with business partner, and fellow journalist Kara Swisher.
Through the years, Mossberg became friendly with Apple founder Steve Jobs.
His criticisms of Apple have a tendency to reverberate inside Apple. When Apple released MobileMe, its own email system, Mossberg panned the product because it had "too many flaws."
Shortly after Mossberg's criticism, Jobs stood on stage at Apple's headquarters and ripped the team behind MobileMe. "You've tarnished Apple's reputation," said Jobs. "You should hate each other for having let each other down ... Mossberg, our friend, is no longer writing good things about us."
He then fired the manager in front of the project on the spot.
We spoke with Mossberg last week, and asked him what he thinks of Apple right now.
"Apple is going through a reset. There's just no way around it," says Mossberg. "It's not necessarily a bad thing. But it was forced on them by somebody dying who was an extraordinary figure, so they're going through a reset."
A month ago, he wrote that it was time for Apple to release a new product. He says Apple wasn't too happy with that essay.
Mossberg also said that he thinks Apple should consider making iMessage work on Android. "In my opinion, they have an interesting decision - not unlike some Microsoft decisions that have had to be made - about whether something like FaceTime or something like iMessage wouldn't be even a bigger deal if they worked on everybody's platform."
And finally, he thinks that Apple may have to rethink iCloud. "Apple needs to get better in the cloud. Apple very deliberately - and this was very much Steve Jobs' point of view - Apple has concentrated its cloud efforts on being invisible. So in other words, stuff just would sync and appear," says Mossberg.
"But they have the point of view that they didn't want to create a big Dropbox-like repository in the cloud. They may have to change that, because I think people having a visible sense of where their stuff is in the cloud, of what to look for, matters."