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Apple's Mistake

paulgraham.com

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Re: Apple's Mistake

#131

Post by gcheong »

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…

It may not have started out as central to the experience, but I think that it's starting to quickly become just that and Apple knows this or at least they want it to be. So far all the recent iPhone commercials I've seen only focus on the thousands of apps you can get for the iphone - not the iphone's "awesome" feature set. I was looking at a friend's iphone the other day and I saw page after page of 3rd party applications. My wife wanted an iPod Touch because she saw some applications she wanted. Another person I know bought an iPod Touch just so they can run a bird identification program. I don't think these are unusual cases. What's funny is that in the beginning, Apple didn't even want to provide an API for native applications. They wanted all developers to use the Web API. When developers balked at that idea Apple reluctantly laid out plans for native applications.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#132

Post by tptacek »

ellyagg wrote: post #73
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 Insid…

All available evidence suggests that OSX developers love the technology. Fully agree with that.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#133

Post by gruseom »

Oldtimers have told me that they liked PCs better than Apples in the early 80s because they were more hackable: you could mix and match and tinker and make them do your own thing, while Apple's stuff was closed. Users loved Apple, but hackers didn't like their we-know-best mentality. If that's true, it may not be the first time Apple has made this mistake. Perhaps losing hackers was what caused them to lose to PCs the first time around.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#134

Post by augustus »

philwelch wrote: post #120
CamperBob wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a great incentive for developers of existing applications to keep updating their applications and getting it easily noticed by users. It was also a great incentive for developers to game the system and swamp the reviewers by submitting trivial updates every week to keep their apps at the top of the list. Tragedy of the commons.

Actually, I think it's a positive thing to the user, since it encourages incremental development. Anything that incentivizes "release fast and iterate often" incentivizes good development. On the other hand, it did tend to swamp the review process.

The lesser evil would have been to allow everyone an update at least once a month.

The current app store policies encourage developers to iterate apps i.e develop a bunch of apps in a month or two and hope one or two of them shoot to the top.

Developing compelling desktop level full featured apps over the long run are discouraged.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#136

Post by gcheong »

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 there might have been a difference between Mac-only programmers who, it could be argued, were leaving a lot of potential money on the table by not developing for Windows and therefore must be doing it mainly for love of the platform or the company (remember all the Boo's Steve Jobs got when he announced the "investment" from MS in Apple?), and developers who's main product was on Windows and who, perhaps reluctantly, also had to support a Mac version.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#137

Post by jsz0 »

"If software publishing didn't work in 1980, it works even less now"

The App Store is an experiment for Apple. The publishing model has worked pretty well for Nintendo, Sony, and now Microsoft in the console games market. It should be pretty clear that's what Apple wants on the iPhone. They may lose developers to other platforms but from their perspective there's plenty of others waiting to take their place. I say it's an experiment because Apple can ditch the closed model at anytime in the future when/if it starts to negatively impact iPhone sales. If they had started open it would be impossible to go closed at a later time.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#138

Post by tomjen2 »

I don't think it matters that Android is an orphan - it can't be implemented with more bugs/inconsistencies than javascript and yet there are free libraries to work around that today.

I see no reason to believe that geeks won't be able to work around any technical deficiency in Android - so long as no company has locked it down.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#139

Post by tshtf »

tjogin wrote: post #122
tshtf wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've owned two Windows Mobile phones over the past 5 years. Both allowed me complete access to install any third-party applications, in spite the fact they were on third-party cellular network. Same for Nokia. No application vetting whatsoever. Mobile platforms tend to separate critical functions in the radio from what a developer can do with the exposed APIs. Of course neither had an app store, but there were no con…

Apple's actual reason for the approval process is quality control. And by quality control, I mean everything from ensuring a lack of bugs to a polished interface and, last but certainly not least, lack of malware. Apple wants people to actually buy apps — imagine that. And how do you accomplish that? Make absolutely sure that users don't for even a second think that the app they're interested in might be crap or malw…

I agree with you entirely. My comment was in response to parents contention that lack of a vetting process put third party cellular networks at risk.

Re: Apple's Mistake

#140

Post by lucifer »

Paul, when you wrote this, did you mean by "programmer" anyone who started programming in the new century? Because Dave Winer -- and here I'm feeling like you did when you bought the iMac ;) -- wrote extensively on Apple's treatment of developers in the 90s. This is not news.
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