Comment by dejb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dejb | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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