Why Steve Jobs' "Enforcement Routine" for Ads on Apple Devices Is Not the Dumbest Idea You Ever Heard

An Apple (APPL) patent application which proposes an “enforcement routine” built into an operating system that would disable an Apple device while the user is subjected to ads has received universally bad reviews.

But is this — as it appears on its face –  the stupidest idea Steve Jobs has ever had? Or is it a smart strategy that could extend computer usage to the Third World and other poor, under-technologized populations?

The New York Times panned it on Sunday (”Apple Wouldn’t Risk Its Cool Over a Gimmick, Would It?“). The Independent was more pithy:

Apple fans are calling it the cyber equivalent of the holiday time share sales pitch: attend a seminar for a few hours on our wonderful holiday village and we’ll give you a weekend there absolutely free.

And TechDirt said:

I remember discussing a nearly identical scheme around 1995 as a joke because it was so ridiculously stupid.

Here’s what the patent application actually says:

Among other disclosures, an operating system presents one or more advertisements to a user and disables one or more functions while the advertisement is being presented. At the end of the advertisement, the operating system again enables the function(s). The advertisement can be visual or audible. The presentation of the advertisement(s) can be made as part of an approach where the user obtains a good or service, such as the operating system, for free or at reduced cost.

That last sentence is the most interesting: It suggests that Apple is interested in distributing its devices and software free to anyone willing to make a tradeoff by sitting through some ads. This is a time-honored business strategy that has previously been fantastically successful. Radio worked that way for decades. So did broadcast TV. If you’ve ever read a free newspaper, like a weekly shopper or an Alt-weekly, then you’ve seen this model before.

In the same way that radio, broadcast TV and free newspapers once reached 90 percent of the population, so might laptops iPods and iPhones in Africa and Asia. With an installed base of users on freebies, how stupid would this idea then look as those populations become more affluent?

Read my BNET colleague Erik Sherman’s take.

Image by Flickr user acaben, CC.