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Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

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Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#111

Post by michael_dorfman »

cousin_it wrote: post #105
michael_dorfman wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Steve's response, I imagine would be: if you want to sell your app in my store, it's my business. If you don't like my rules, develop for a different platform. Seriously: if Barnes and Noble decides it only wants to sell fiction by authors whose last names begin with "Q", wouldn't we just consider it a bone-headed move, and not the cause for moral outrage? The iPhone is not the only smartphone on the market, and…

I really can't see why folks are getting their knickers in a twist. Your use of demeaning language doesn't make your opponents wrong. wouldn't we just consider it a bone-headed move, and not the cause for moral outrage? It's both. Legality != morality. A business practice can be perfectly legal but immoral. Of course you can say anything Apple does is moral because it's within their rights, but there are also other w…

OK, then explain the consequences to me.

A store-owner decides he wants to put an arbitrary restriction on the types of items he sells in his store. Let's say, perhaps, that a grocery store decides to stock only Organic produce.

What's the moral harm?

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#112

Post by michael_dorfman »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #108
michael_dorfman wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Steve's response, I imagine would be: if you want to sell your app in my store, it's my business. If you don't like my rules, develop for a different platform. Seriously: if Barnes and Noble decides it only wants to sell fiction by authors whose last names begin with "Q", wouldn't we just consider it a bone-headed move, and not the cause for moral outrage? The iPhone is not the only smartphone on the market, and…

See, that's because you're not affected. My last name does happen to start with a Q, and I happen to like Barnes and Noble. So WTF would I let them stop me? Yes, I would be very much PO'd about it, and make a hissy-fit.

You're right, it's an imperfect analogy.

Let's say, instead: Barnes and Noble decides they only want to sell non-fiction books.

Sure, it's arbitrary, and it's probably bad business, but: it's their store.

Now, suppose you are a fiction writer.

Still going to throw that hissy fit?

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#113

Post by rbanffy »

warfangle wrote: post #17

While this sucks for iPhone developers who want to branch out / use other languages (clojure, etc), it might persuade these developers to move over to the Android platform. Especially given the several Android tablets forthcoming...

I suspect someone will build an Objective-C/iPhone API to Java/Android translator.

If you stick to the basics, as most applications tend to do, it's not even hard.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#114

Post by rimantas »

jrockway wrote: post #109
rimantas wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, compilers are fundamental to CS. Have you heard about Clang and LLVM? Do you know who is behind that project?

Not Apple's iPhone team. Clang is some crazy engineers at Apple. Apple's new policies are straight from the top.

The parent talked about Apple. So did I. By the way, what are your sources? You look so damn well informed about what's going on at Apple.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#115

Post by fauigerzigerk »

fab13n wrote: post #64
warfangle wrote: post #17

While this sucks for iPhone developers who want to branch out / use other languages (clojure, etc), it might persuade these developers to move over to the Android platform. Especially given the several Android tablets forthcoming...

Apple is of course conscious of this trade-off (attractiveness of the platform+customer base vs. unattractiveness of being treated like shit by Apple). The thing is, they can easily back off when they will have to : today, most app developers won't snob the iPhone even if they're treated miserably. If they can't afford Android+iPhone portability, most of them will choose iPhone-only over Android-only. If/when a compe…

I think you are largely right, but don't forget that this pragmatic business view of the world does not dominate every phase in every hacker's life.

Apple would be well advised to take note of the emotional sea change that helped sweep IBM and later Microsoft from their all powerful positions.

Being hated is not a good position to be in for anyone, regardless of how powerful they may be at one point in time.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#116

Post by rbanffy »

peterarmstrong wrote: post #12
charlesju wrote: post #6

I really doubt that this particular rule is aimed at the masses. Steve Jobs could care less about things like PhoneGap and random IDEs. In my opinion this is a strategic method to create optionality in case it needs to go into outright war against Adobe.

That doesn't make it anything short of disgusting -- it's worse than anything MS ever did.

> it's worse than anything MS ever did.

Perhaps for some values of "ever".

Now, seriously, this is a boneheaded, monopoly-exploiting, move.

If Apple wanted to one-up Microsoft, they would demand that every cell-phone operator that sells iPhones to drop all Android phones. On a second step, they would demand telcos to stop selling phones from manufacturers that offered Android-based phones.

That would be a truly Microsoftian move.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#117

Post by cousin_it »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #111
cousin_it wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't see why folks are getting their knickers in a twist. Your use of demeaning language doesn't make your opponents wrong. wouldn't we just consider it a bone-headed move, and not the cause for moral outrage? It's both. Legality != morality. A business practice can be perfectly legal but immoral. Of course you can say anything Apple does is moral because it's within their rights, but there are also other w…

OK, then explain the consequences to me. A store-owner decides he wants to put an arbitrary restriction on the types of items he sells in his store. Let's say, perhaps, that a grocery store decides to stock only Organic produce. What's the moral harm?

It's proportional to market share. I think we both agree that such a move would be immoral for a monopolist (making developers stupid... stifling progress... blah blah). Assume it causes X amount of moral harm. Then someone with 50% market share would cause X/2 moral harm by the exact same mechanisms. 1% market share, X/100 moral harm. Think of it as voting for Hitler: less evil than being Hitler, but still evil.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#118

Post by Zak »

theli0nheart wrote: post #98

Hasn't anyone else realized that this rule is totally unenforceable? How is Apple going to find out if something was originally written with Unity3D or Clojure? Everything is submitted to them as a binary. You can't inspect a binary and figure out what language the code that generated it was originally written in. So seriously, what's the problem here? Either there is none or I'm missing something.

    $ ghc --make helloworld.hs
    $ strings helloworld|grep ghc|wc -l
    19
    $ csc helloworld.scm
    $ strings helloworld|grep chicken|wc -l
    1
There are more telltales that might be harder to mask. Other tools have similar giveaways. It wouldn't be hard to set up an automated test for the most common ones.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#119

Post by rimantas »

reynolds wrote: post #89
rimantas wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, correction: yesterday they introduced iPhone OS 4 with background services. How Flash is fundamental in CS is still a mystery to me.

It's not necessarily Flash that's fundamental in computer science. It's compiler technology that's the computer science part.

And apple is doing a lot in that field: Clang, LLVM, Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL. Amazing how many fail to see the forest behind the tree. Apple releases iPad and that's the end of computers, Apple bans Flash, and suddenly it's shutting down CS.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#120

Post by rbanffy »

akmiller wrote: post #81
tptacek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I will use my operating system monopoly to put you out of business if you don't assist me in putting an unrelated competitor of ours out of business" is worse to you than "you may only use Objective C to develop on this device"? I don't like Objective C either, but I don't take it that far.

Microsoft, as all companies would, is going to use their successful product(s) to push other products that they create. They had 95%+ of the OS market and simply wanted to push the use of their browser to those individuals. That doesn't and never has seemed like a dirty tactic to me. Apple pushes its own products over its competitors on the iPhone. You won't see Opera on the default dock bar on the iPhone anytime soo…

> Microsoft, as all companies would, is going to use their successful product(s) to push other products that they create

Please, keep in mind that if the successful product is effectively a monopoly, then this conduct is not only immoral. It's also illegal.

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