Hacker News Reader

Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

Not to be the bearer of bad news here, guys, but I very much doubt that this is going to do much to slow apple down.

Their core user base for the iPhone seems to be not geeks, but teenage girls. Even if it WAS just geeks, we make up a minuscule percentage of the population. Chances are that if I told one of my sisters, or my mother (who all have iPhones) about this, they would roll their eyes a bit, add an entry or two to the "brother is a conspiracy nut" column, and point me to the latest "omg cute!" app that they downloaded.

The iPhone and the appstore are not going anywhere. If developers like us stop building things for it, people who value cash more than they value principles will take our place.

As much as it sucks, this is the world that we live in.

View on HN

What are you talking about? Just 6 months ago this place was so thick with iPhone devotees you couldn't swing a metaphorical light sabre app without hitting one. I don't think think there are too many 'cutesy type' teenage girls on HN (although it would explain some things).

Unfortunately geekdom was just as taken in as everybody else - perhaps more so and they were disproportionately responsible for it's rapid growth. Geeks are more likely to

- be early apoptors

- blog, tweet, talk about gadgets

- be believed by non geeks when it comes to technical areas and products

Most importantly they are the ones who develop the software that makes the platform actually useful. Without geeks there's no 'App for that'.

This gives them (us) substantial influence. How to you think Firefox gain it's market share. Of course now that the iPhone has momentum they aren't so dependant on the approval of geeks. But over time if they don't attract developers and if they keep removing software then the platform will stagnate. Combine that with geeks putting their weight behind another platform and change could be effected fairly quickly.

It's true that geeks are early adopters, but that doesn't mean that every popular technology product is due to geeks giving their stamp of approval. The iPhone has passed the point where geeks opinions matter for much...marketing and the fact that everyone has the iPhone now means that most people see it as a cool tech device, not as something they should ask their geek friend for advice on.

During the initial phases of adoption, yes, you are absolutely correct. Geeks provide a sort of "buffer" for the rest of the public; we test things and report on what is the best.

The iPhone has reached a point where it isn't going to matter what we say anymore. Look at windows, how long have we all been screaming from the rooftops that it is garbage? How much affect has it had? Some, maybe, sure...but people look at their computers, realize that they can more-or-less get what they need done done, and then they forget about it and go on with their lives.

People are NOT going to give up the iPhone on some silly ideological ground. Yes, this pisses me off, no I won't be buying an iPhone, yes apple is moving further and further away from something that I want, but NONE of this matters to my mom.

Windows was at more than 90% of of desktop market but the iPhone would be less than 30% of smart phones not to mention phones where they would be way less than 10%. The only reason it feels like they are at a Windows level of dominance is all the hype that has been coming mostly from geek types.

Most of the population has yet to buy any smartphone. The market is still up for grabs. The non scalability of both the compulsory 'app store' model and the single hardware manufacturer model will inevitably lead Apple to be a niche player just like it is in the world of desktops in my opinion. The only question is how much time this aberration will waste before we can get a proper mobile software ecosystem going.

Look at windows, how long have we all been screaming from the rooftops that it is garbage? ---

For so long, that Windows actually became good, and that made the screaming irrelevant. I think that's what's going to happen to the iPhone too.

Version 1.0 was pathetic compared to other modern smartphones, but they released early and with each iteration made it better. Even though it is worse to develop for, the phone is getting better and better.

Windows still doesn't have a coherent way of managing installed applications of various versions, and various degrees of conflict, ie, a package manager and they probably never will... Just saying...

It does. .msi installers act as atomic packages like other systems. Windows doesn't have a centralized system, nor does it enforce the use of msis. But they exist and provide a very nice way of managing resources.

The issue with a centralized system, of course, is licensing. Microsoft can't really have such a system because every developer wants to do their own thing.

They don't enforce .msi any more than debian (or ubuntu) enforce .debs. The lack of centralization just means almost nobody bothers to use msi and just rolls their own self-extracting archive.

The difference is that .msi doesn't handle dependencies, multiple versions or conflicts in a coherant centralized and useful way.

The current structure of the msi installers leaves them much like their exe counterparts. If this is package management then I'm going back to LFS and using make files.

Developers! Developers! Developers!

Even at the peak of Windows' dominance, Microsoft never forgot that applications were the reason everyone bought a Windows PC instead of a Mac (or 'nix on the server side). No matter how great OS X is, the kids wouldn't be buying Macbooks if they weren't sure it could run Word and $100-\epsilon\%$ of web apps would be usable from Safari or Firefox. Today, people still linger on Windows XP because everything still runs on it.

I don't think any truly killer mobile apps have emerged yet, but when they do, Apple and Google will need to start pampering mobile developers more than they have been.

I think that's a little defeatist. Apple caved when it came to developing full blown apps for the iPhone due to the outcry from developers. Remember, they originally only wanted to allow Safari based development.

I'd love to see some creative, coordinated protest from the iPhone developer community. The best conference protest I can remember was when indigenous Australians stood up and turned their backs on our former Prime Minister John Howard. Imagine if that happened at Apple's WWDC, it would send a powerful and embarrassing message.

Apple is becoming increasingly belligerent and rely on the fanatical loyalty of their developers to simply keep taking it. At some point it's time to take your hand off the stove.

"Apple caved when it came to developing full blown apps for the iPhone due to the outcry from developers. Remember, they originally only wanted to allow Safari based development."

I personally don't think that this is true. I don't think they did develop the full SDK for the iPhone from the point when the reaction to "Safari only apps" was bad. They just were not finished with the SDK. Apple does this a lot. They only release stuff which is reasonably ready to be released. A half-assed release of the SDK would have been worse than a late SDK IMHO.

There are tons of teenage girls with macbooks and yet none of them have a censored dictionary.dmg

"Apple, the choice of dumb people."

It worked for Wal-Mart.

"Their core user base for the iPhone seems to be not geeks, but teenage girls."

I tend to think of the core Apple demographic heavily overlapping the Daily Show with John Stewart demographic. And can you imagine how much fun Stewart could have with them, and how quickly Apple could go from the hip and cool tech company to the uncool, busy body, Sarah Palin censoring books in Alaska libraries company?

Geeks write the cool applications. Geeks who love their iPhone.

Remove that love and you're left with a mobile consumer market as full of ingenuity as the business of custom-tailoring b2b enterprise applications.

What if the government wanted all dictionaries to be curse-word-free? Will the publishing companies involved just sit back and accept the move as " this is the world that we live in"?

I have a feeling they would. Wiktionary and the like probably wouldn't - they don't have a profit motive and are more concerned about universal rights and access to information.

No they wouldn't. Oxford English and such like take their duty seriously. It's their responsibility as scolars to represent the English language being used at the time of publication.

Sure if you hit em with a stick for a bit they might relent but there would be a struggle.

I don't see how this question is relevant.

As this thread makes clear, there are ample other platforms if we dislike Apple's policies. Anyone is free to purchase, or develop for, Android or Windows Mobile or RIM.

Government regulation is a whole other animal, because they ensure that there cannot be any alternative to compete and let the best idea win. That's the problem with government action, but that's also a different discussion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com