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Apple's Mistake

paulgraham.com

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Re: Apple's Mistake

#71

Post by tjogin »

JunkDNA wrote: post #61

Part of Paul's reasoning depends on Apps being central to the iPhone experience the same way software is central to the desktop experience. I'm not totally sure this is the case. While apps are certainly a major component to the iPhone, are they really the major factor in end-user adoption? With the exception of games, how many killer iPhone apps are there that don't already ship with the phone? The phone shipped for…

You're sort of right, but that's true for all other platforms as well, so it doesn't really tell us anything about the state of app use on the iPhone platform.

The OS bundled ones are the ones people use the most. Across the board.

If I had to guess, I'd say third party apps are just as often or more used on iPhone than on, say, Windows and Mac OS X. Simply because, on iPhone, a lot of web apps out there are used via a special-purpose iPhone app rather than the web interface.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#72

Post by nickpp »

Laptops displaced desktops?! You are deluded.

We develop on 8GB i7s with dual 24" screens. We have one at home and one at work, Remote Desktop-ing from each other.

Gigabit ethernet and optical fiber internet. No molasses wifi here.

We work FAST, we work HARD. But we use Windows 7 too, so we're not limited to Apple's crappy hardware either...

Re: Apple's Mistake

#73

Post by ellyagg »

tptacek wrote: post #29

Though I can't marshall any evidence to support this claim, it was specifically not my impression that Apple was a company pro developers loved working with before the iPhone.

I think the "can't marshall any evidence to support this claim" is pretty critical here, because the vast majority of developers who actually write software for the Mac have loved it since OS X came out. They've loved Cocoa and they loved that the IDE and development tools were made free.

And while there was a dead period due to the technically deficient underpinnings of the late Classic MacOS, before that, the Inside Macintosh days, I hear folks loved programming Apple too.

After having been deeply involved in the Mac dev community for the last 10 years, the implicit claim that Apple is a company pro developers do not love working with sounds, frankly, a little bizarre.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#77

Post by dschobel »

rtrunck wrote: post #23

Most of Apple's policies handling the app store make me somewhat believe they wanted their original plan to succeed, namely, making developers write web applications and not opening up the iPhone to native development.

I don't think that's right. They've made the app-store a central part of all iphone advertising campaigns.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#79

Post by petenixey »

The other huge irony about the app store approval process is the massive advantage that it ends up giving Apple's competition.

The app store is already far ahead of the competition but it could be factors further ahead with shorter cycle time.

Progress is a non linear function of cycle time. Apple are holding themselves back by many factors by artificially extending cycle time and making it far far easier for the other platforms to catch them up.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#80

Post by nickpp »

That mobile platform has already arrived. It's called Windows Mobile.

I was surprised too: my wife has a 3GS and I was planning to get one for myself too.

Instead I got a HTC Diamond2 which I plan to upgrade to a HTC HD2. I'm a developer, not a essay-writing millionaire. I like platforms that are Powerful, flexible and CUSTOMIZABLE to my taste. I like pretty too, but form has to follow function, not the other way around.

On WinMo, thanks to xda-developers I belong to an AMAZING (real, not wannabe) hacker culture and environment. The latest HTC ROMs are sleeker and better than the iPhone. More useful and immensely customizable.

My wife still has to click an "App" to get to her favorites... mine are on the first page. Which first page is GORGEOUS, not an old matrix of icons.

But the most important part... my phone is HACKABLE. My wife's is like my ps3: untouchable.

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