With Apple's recent announcement of their direct sales of not just smartphones, but phone & plan bundles, mainstream customers are about to experience a big, visible change in mobile business models. While lots of articles do a great job comparing Apple's new iPhone Upgrade Plan to similar carrier-specific offerings, there's another issue at hand behind the scenes as Apple closes the loop of the iPhone experience.
I keep coming back to the question of "how does nature handle IP?" The closest I can think of is our creation of APIs. Organisms don't walk around with their genetic code sort of displayed for everyone to see, what makes them unique. But there is massive and constant interaction between organisms and their environment, and exchange of information. I think APIs, in a way, are sort of an interesting way of thinking about that. You display enough information about your internal code that others can really interact [with it], and build upon it effectively, without giving away the whole farm—which probably wouldn't even be useful. The other organisms don't even need to know your entire code. That piece is interesting to me.
