Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

37signals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 93 posts

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#51

Post by rimantas »

stanleydrew wrote: post #13
fjabre wrote: post #4

The problem is Apple has no real competition. They can do almost anything they want without fear of retribution because your average consumer has no idea what any of this means. That's bad news for all us pissed off developers since Apple's new platform will continue to be extremely popular in which case devs are forced to develop for it. Google seems to be inching towards being a real threat but they also seem extre…

There is tons of real competition. There will probably be 50 Android smartphones on the market by the end of the year, if not sooner. RIM and Symbian are still ahead, even if you see them as waning. Yes consumers have no idea what any of this means. But that actually works in favor of Apple's competitors. When an average consumer looks at the smartphone market, Apple may stand out, but the iPhone is still just one am…

  There is tons of competition on features and price.
That's exactly the problem. Apple does not compete on features and price, they compete on user experience.

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#52

Post by rimantas »

BudVVeezer wrote: post #21

Apple's focus is and always will be: 1) Apple, 2) Marketers, 3) Users, 4) Developers, and #4 has always been a distant one at best (anyone remember the Rhapsody fiasco?) Keep that ordering in mind, the latest changes make perfect sense.

  2) Marketers, 3) Users
3 is 2. The hype about iPhone and iPad was there before Apple said a word about these products.

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#53

Post by stanleydrew »

rimantas wrote: post #51
stanleydrew wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is tons of real competition. There will probably be 50 Android smartphones on the market by the end of the year, if not sooner. RIM and Symbian are still ahead, even if you see them as waning. Yes consumers have no idea what any of this means. But that actually works in favor of Apple's competitors. When an average consumer looks at the smartphone market, Apple may stand out, but the iPhone is still just one am…

There is tons of competition on features and price. That's exactly the problem. Apple does not compete on features and price, they compete on user experience.

I don't understand why that's a problem.

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#54

Post by stanleydrew »

tvon wrote: post #41
astine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still exist, but the situation is no longer the same as it was when the iPhone was announced. I believe that RiM and Symbian have improved since then.

Argh, accidental down vote... someone move that eject button!

It's really not that big a deal. No need to explain yourself.

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#55

Post by ars »

Tichy wrote: post #36
raganwald wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I understand your witty reply, what you're saying is that if you give your work product away, you are entitled to do as you please with the fruits of your labour. However, if you develop a proprietary product, you are not entitled to do as you please with it and must accommodate the needs of those who want to do something else with it and are unable to do so because of your licensing terms. Is that what "git cl…

No, what I mean is that the comparison of DHH and Apple falls flat. While DHH doesn't implement every feature he is requested to implement, everybody can just clone Rails and implement all features they desire (or pay people to do so). You can't just clone the iPhone and it's OS. Therefore I don't understand the claim that DHHs comments are hypocritical. And nobody is disputing that Apple is entitled to do with their…

In other words, he is not preventing you from doing something - he just won't do it himself.

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#56

Post by MWinther »

jasonlotito wrote: post #2

All are good points, but number 2 is the big one for me. That was my first thought when I heard what Apple was doing, and I think it's important to keep that in consideration. While I don't always agree with DHH, he makes some good, rational points here. It should be noted that most of these arguments have been made elsewhere, but it's a great summation.

It's fascinating. This is the way I look at them, as being on the side of people who agree with Apple on this one.

#1: Don't agree. Apple has 180,000 apps in their App store, maybe a good time to remove incentives for a new influx of non-programmer-written apps straight from Flash? Oh, they're getting rid of other stuff that also encourages people to use other tools than their own? I think they can live with that.

#2: They're not. Tell me where and when Apple said: "You will be able to develop for the iPhone using any and all tools of your choosing." They didn't. They're simply clarifying what's been their position all along, that XCode/Cocoa is the environment in which you create iPhone apps. Sure, other stuff have been able to sneak in stuff, but hardly with an Apple seal of approval. If you're using one of those tools without a suspicion Apple might not like it even before this, I'd say you're a bit naive.

#3: Irrelevant. Apple has told developers which tools they can use from the get-go. I imagine the existing cross-platform products have been too small to have been a priority, but here comes Adobe with something that creates iPhone apps straight from the desk of a designer. Yes, did you see the CS5 presentation? "Create iPhone apps without writing any code!" Sounds like great apps to me.

#4: Of course it's unfair. But there isn't any better way to enforce their rules. Naturally there'll be apps that fall through the cracks. But a "Aw, why can't I when that app could?" whine sounds very 7-year-old to me. They're putting up rules, if you follow them you should be fine. If someone does something that might be within the rules, but they're not sure, they might get rejected. If someone else tries the same thing, they might get rejected, regardless of whether the first guy was caught or not.

#5: Not sure this ia a very good argument either. For me, I develop for Apple products because I love the platform, and I think there are quite a lot of other apps that have been hanging around with Apple because we feel that is the best platform in the world. Not perfect, but best. And I like it when Apple says that what we've learned during the years of sticking by the company because of that conviction, rather than some sense of duty, is going to pay off. Sure, Apple could release the platform to any and all languages out there, implement C#, Java and whatever else might be popular right now. But that would seem to me to cater to the populist crowd, rather than the faithful, so to speak. And those programmers are the same programmers that will move away from the platform when something else catches their fancy. I think Apple wants people like Omni Group rather than the "Oh, lord, another device, another language, who cares? I guess I'll _have_ to learn it, then."-crowd.

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#57

Post by tmsh »

> 5. For developers it’s about more than just business

I imagine Jobs might reply, 'for business it's about more than just developers'. Adobe's proprietary attempt at creating a cross-platform layer is thwarted. And Apple counts on having enough developers for new apps who already have a background in (or are willing to learn or relearn) Objective-C, C, C++ and JavaScript. It's simple and pragmatic.

That said, I'm a developer and I generally only use FOSS products for software. But I give Steve Jobs and his advisors more and more credit for business intelligence.

A lot of these comments are about Android. Could be that Apple learned from Sun's mistakes, whereas Google wasn't old enough to be around for the full cycle of that. I love Lua and Scheme. I wouldn't be surprised if senior engineers at Apple also love various different VMs, etc. And yet they would fully support this strategic move by Apple.

Why? Steve Jobs' genius has less to do with his douchey presentations and more to do with seeing the big picture dozens of business quarters before everyone else. When you've been seeing that far ahead for three decades, and have all the experience and confidence from succeeding with that like fourteen times, controversial decisions like with Section 3.3.1 aren't as difficult. They are one of 50 decisions that you've made 6 months ago with many different things in mind that won't be released to the public for quite some time -- many of them involving hardly black-and-white tradeoffs (see the Wikipedia entry for Jobs quoting Wayne Gretzky).

Apple has a model that works for them. And free software, free digital rights management, openness -- if it gets in the way of their business strategy, by default they're going to plan around it.

If you really want Apple to change their policy, get the CEOs of businesses who develop apps to voice concern to Jobs. Show that Flash and Lua and Mono or whatever are mature enough technologies from a business standpoint. Make the argument that it's too much of a gamble for the iPhone/iPad 3GS to be without flash support with other tablets on the rise. (Apple is of course betting on HTML5 pretty heavily.)

I guess my point is that: 'Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy' is a good start. But those are mostly developer-based arguments. As a developer whose not in the embedded space, I have no idea what the business strategy arguments would be. But as a developer, I know when a client's use of a library's interface is slighty off. Or something like that. Maybe I don't even know that. Anyhoo.

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#58

Post by MWinther »

mrkurt wrote: post #43
pohl wrote: post #42

#1 is a bizarre argument. I can't weed my garden unless it is already free of weeds?

It would be more like taking out flowers in an attempt to free your garden of weeds. :)

Actually, rather more like saying "We won't accept another shipment of flowers mixed up with weeds until we sort the weeds from the flowers we already have."

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#59

Post by MWinther »

Tichy wrote: post #36
raganwald wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I understand your witty reply, what you're saying is that if you give your work product away, you are entitled to do as you please with the fruits of your labour. However, if you develop a proprietary product, you are not entitled to do as you please with it and must accommodate the needs of those who want to do something else with it and are unable to do so because of your licensing terms. Is that what "git cl…

No, what I mean is that the comparison of DHH and Apple falls flat. While DHH doesn't implement every feature he is requested to implement, everybody can just clone Rails and implement all features they desire (or pay people to do so). You can't just clone the iPhone and it's OS. Therefore I don't understand the claim that DHHs comments are hypocritical. And nobody is disputing that Apple is entitled to do with their…

I'd say that for most people, cloning Rails isn't an option if the devs won't put it in there. Having access to code is the same thing as being able to implement new stuff in the product for a relatively small amount of users or even developers, either due to knowledge or time.

Re: Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy

#60

Post by confuzatron »

glhaynes wrote: post #27
GrandMasterBirt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I been saying this ever since I first got wind of the new TOS. We went away from Windows because MS was holing a leash on us with their API lock-in. Now we're 1-up ing that with Apple's new TOS which takes the MS lock-in to a whole new level. People say "oh but it will keep the already crap x-platform apps out" to which I say "Yes it will keep the would-be flashy x-platform POS games/crap apps out, but it will also k…

This is exactly the thinking that Apple doesn't want going into App Store apps: "I'll just put up this good-enough piece of crap because that's all I have time/money to do." They've got a ton of businesses wanting to be on iPhone so they're willing to lose those businesses that will only put out crap. I agree with you that putting out a piece of crap might make the most sense for your business. But it's not what Appl…

Apple don't want crap apps in the appstore? Have you /seen/ the appstore?

I'm sorry, but the undiluted denial-of-reality from the more extreme Apple apologists is making me dizzy.

Post reply on HN