Dear Apple fans, a plea for reason and civility.
blog.nodnod.net
blog.nodnod.net
It's entirely fair for Adobe to be right to attempt to lock developers into the Flash platform and for Apple to be right to attempt to lock developers into the iPhone platform.
It's entirely fair for Developers to be right to want the freedom to develop any app they want, any way they want to develop it, even if in aggregate such decisions kill iPhone and/or Apple. And it's entirely fair for Apple to want to ban apps that do not further Apple's interests, compete with its own developers when it further's Apple's interests, and impede or block outright development platforms that undermine its interests.
When all the name-calling stops, the parties involved have to either search for an equilibrium where everyone benefits or choose not to play with each other.
Imagine the uproar that would have happened if Microsoft had said you can only write windows apps in assembly.
It's not about Adobe. Or titanium. Or unity. It's about abuse of a monopoly in a category they created with a business decision that only serves to extend their monopoly.
In my opinion that's exactly when a regulator should step in.
An "effective monopoly" is not measured by market share alone, it's measured by barriers to entry. Ok, there are 130,000 iPhone apps, and that's a draw for iPhone. But how many of those are de-facto standards people cannot do without? I would argue that none are. Consider the Office Suite. What app for iPhone is just like Office Suite, one you have to have and can't get on any other mobile device?
What blocks developers fromn developing for Android, Symbian, or what-have you? Nothing. Can I buy a "mobile computer" from another carrier? Sure. Doe smy carrier (Rogers/Fido) lock me into iPhone? No, they are happy to sell me a Blackberry.
There is no monopoly.
The only devices comparable at the moment are android, and with a quick search iphone have slightly more than 80% of the market.
>An "effective monopoly" is not measured by market share alone, it's measured by barriers to entry.
One such barrier to entry is the lack of cross-platform applications. Another is Apples patent portfolio. Another is metcalfes law and how it relates to revenue of application developers, and their willingness to switch. Why would developers develop for symbian when they can make a killing on iphone applications (either writing for hire or selling)?
80% share, huge barriers to entry. Are you sure there isn't a monopoly?
Remember Apple are attacking this market in multiple directions: The have the ipod touch, iphone and ipad. Most applications written for them run across all devices. They are using a cunning take on cross-product economies of scale to further distance themselves from the competition due to lower costs and market saturation (ipod touch now outselling iphone for example). An ipX in every pocket? That's the dream.
Taking this into account we now have an 88% market share.
So apple have larger economies of scale which can drive profit high while keeping prices low.
The barrier to developing for other platforms will come down to the question of whether banning Flash apps and/or compiling Flash to Objective C effectively monopolizing applications.
I personally do not think so, but I am not a jurur.
As long as Apple permits the time-honored method of writing an application in C with #ifdef iPhone sprinkled throughout, there is no obstacle to writing one application that compiles for two or more platforms.
What they are trying to prohibit is writing one program that compiles for one platform (Flash) which happens to run on two or more mobile operating systems. They are not raising barriers to developing applications on multiple platforms, they are raising barriers to creating a new application platform that commoditizes their hardware by turning it into a rendering device on equal footing with its competition.
The difference between #ifdef and writing for Flash may seem small, but it comes down to information hiding. Flash insulates the developer from Apple's API. A FLash developer is free to know nothing about an iPhone or Android or anything else. He is a Flash developer. If Flash doesn't support some feature like detecting when the phone is shaken, the Flash developer may be blissfully unaware
A #ifdef programmer learns two or more platform APIs. Such a programmer is an iPhone developer. Even if they consciously try to avoid using features that are not present on all the platforms they target, they are probably aware of them and how much better their iPhone app could be if it used them.
I appreciate that you hold an opinion that Apple should be legally barred from trying to force people writing applications that happen to run on iPhone from being iPhone developers in the sense I describe, but I certainly can't fault them for trying.
You're saying that Apple is preventing you from developing for Android?
I am writing a Go game for "mobile computers." When I set out to do so, I had a variety of options available to me, and I selected web application as best for my purposes.
Apple is absolutely reducing the number of options for developing applications on multiple platforms available to the developer. Clearly there are still some left, so no they are not preventing it but in some sense they are hampering it.
That may not be enough to be considered anti-competitive, and they may not have a monopoly, but I certainly appreciate that developers may not like it. But not liking something doesn't mean it's wrong or illegal.
If Apple starts bundling a Go application with iPhone I won't like that either!
This is what I think is lost by so many here and elsewhere. I personally don't like the licensing change, but I don't think it's illegal or immoral. That's the attitude that I can't stand. The argument shouldn't be "They can't do that!", it should be "they shouldn't do that, it's dumb".
I'm not sure that it is in the best interest of Apple in the long term to limit the toolkits developers can use. But those are the terms of playing ball with Apple. I suspect that most developers will just abide by the new rules, but Apple is setting itself up to miss out on some apps because of it. I think they just calculated that they have enough critical mass to not care.
In order to define a monopoly, you need to define a market. In your comment, you define the market as "mobile mini-computers". I have no idea what this means. Do you? I mean, are you able to articulate your definition of the market in terms that a court would accept?
Short version: Apple doesn't have a dominant position in any market other than the market for Apple products. That is not an antitrust/anti-competition scenario.
You need to read up on this subject.
My definition would be a somewhere along the lines of mobile computer, not necessarily a phone, with a centralised application store. Note that because of the ipod/ipad they are in a different market than a smartphone. I think this is entirely justified. And Apple rules this market.
But it pisses me off. (It pisses me off because, a priori, I don't think business should be done that way -- but the reason why is sort of beside the point.) And if I can help make even a tiny amount of trouble for Apple over it I'm definitely going to.
The end.
At one point Adobe and Apple were closely aligned. Adobe saw the writing on the wall and bailed on Apple. Jobs came on board introduced OSX and things were whisper quiet. I was there using 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2, it didn't get "good enough" until 10.2. Adobe didn't move most of their products to OS X until CS2, dropped SKUs for some items, and froze development on others <cough>Flash</cough>.
If Jobs learned anything it was never let another company direct your product development. Because Macs were used in creative design markets most users didn't see a need to upgrade from OS9. Photoshop wasn't on OSX, not was Flash, Illustrator etc.
I don't agree with jobs, but he is correct up to a point. He won't let Flash hinder the development of iPhoneOS. Developers are caught in the middle though. He could have singled out Adobe and let developers continue to use Mono, Unity, Titanium. But contracts are quite blunt instruments, define it to narrow and companies can walk around it; too loose and you get the current situation.
Anyway it's like investing in the US. Everyone will bitch about the terms but they'll continue shoveling money (or development time in this case) until there is no money to be made.
It's very difficult not to express complete and utter disdain and contempt for people like Gruber who expresses such an unbelievable idiotic opinion, that are then used by Apple management to justify to themselves why their decision is correct. Sometimes its only natural question to question someones motives when their reasoning is so illogical. Maybe he is that blinded by his fanboyism that he's willing to accept any limits to freedom.
Sorry, it just makes me sick. I've never been a Microsoft fan, but they've never ever made a decision that was this abusive to their developers or anyone. And yes, that includes their terrible choice of bundling IE with windows (people still at least had a choice).
It's very difficult to respond in an objective manner to something that you feel emotional about. Some of the best advice that I have heard over the years is to try to take yourself out of a situation and imagine that you are observing two people are arguing about the subject. What advice would you give to each of them and how does this impact the subject at hand. Bear in mind that you wouldn't necessarily advise either of them to call the other guy an idiot (even if it's true) if that would just make the other guy angry.
I found this PG essay to be thought provoking too: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
Give the rhetoric a break. It's you who is being contemptuous.
Step back, chill and see the forest for the trees.
Apple fan's love Apple products because they are good. They look great. They work great. They feel like they were made for you.
For me the lesson is: create better products. Make people love your product. Make it for them.
There's already a process for eliminating poor quality applications for the iPhone. It's just not used to a good enough effect. Jobs said the iPhone has over 50,000 games -he left out that 45,950 of them suck. Mandating use of the official SDK won't change that.