Apple's Exec Shakeup: 10 Necessary Fixes

Apple's Ping social network might have succeeded by being more open. It should have been integrated with Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. It should have had APIs for developers. It shouldn't have required an Apple ID.

Several Apple software applications exhibit the same reluctance to be open. The iBooks Author app, for example, requires content published in the native .ibooks format to be sold exclusively through Apple's iBookstore. The iWeb authoring application, now discontinued, created Web page code that wasn't fully portable to websites not hosted on Apple's MobileMe service. And the iAds Producer app can be used only as outlined in the license agreement, to create HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript ads and animations exclusively for Apple's iAds network.

With its new management structure, Apple has an opportunity to change the way it manages its business. If it wants to succeed as a service provider, it has to become more like Google, even as Google has been moving to become more like Apple. It doesn't have to change a lot, but it does need to make some adjustments. I suggest 10: