Someone who calls themselves an Apple developer and who doesn't work for Apple needs to consider expanding their horizons. Mobile developer? That's a little better. Or just, developer. It's a great time to be a developer.
John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
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Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
#22It would be interesting to know, why being an Apple developer is favourable to being any other type of a developer? For example, android market share is already larger than Apple devices, and people still spend lots of time in front of traditional web browsers. You can still make fortunes and/or have an interesting career with other platforms and technologies too.
Gruber's right because the mobile market is expanding. However, his loyalty to Apple keeps him from saying what he really should have said: Get into mobile (Apple AND Android), hard and fast.
About 77 million of the "big two" (60 million Android, 17 million iPhone) smartphones shipped in Q3 2011. Apple has a huge install base, but it's not Apple's game anymore - Android has more than 3x Apple's marketshare, and is on a meteoric rise in contrast to iOS's slow marketshare decline. More and more customers are being introduced to mobile devices, and we're still in the early stages of the mobile landgrab. There's a lot to be won, but it's disingenuous to focus on Apple as the nexus of that growth.
Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
#23[deleted]
Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
#24>This is like being a Rock and roll musician in the late sixties. This is like being a film maker in the seventies following Scorsese, Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas (when he was a saint). That's a hilarious sell. Better not mention the bigger, even faster growing Android market.
Faster growing, copycat infested, low paying market?
Not that you shouldn't develop for it (hell, >1 million activations/day), but the climate over there is very different.
Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
#25I usually find Gruber's tone to be arrogant and unnecessarily facetious. But I think his analogy is great.. "This is like being a Rock and roll musician in the late sixties. This is like being a film maker in the seventies..."
I don't think that analogy really works because there is not much distinction between "Apple developers" and other developers. There is no barrier to start developing on Apple platforms and there probably won't be for the next big platform. Low barrier to entry is one key factor of a platform's success.
Sure there are barriers. A few that come to mind include the $99 per year Apple developer program fee, which is necessary to distribute apps, the Mac OS requirement, and the objective c hurdle. These may seem more like inconvenience barriers, but they do keep people away from the development pool.
Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
#26Gruber is like a person who really enjoys eating cupcakes. He knows all about cupcakes, and even goes so far as to think he knows how to make them. He's probably baked a few things here and there. Sadly, he also thinks his 'expertise' on all things cupcakes makes him an all round bonafide chef.
He is more like a person who likes cupcakes from exclusively one cupcake company and thinks cupcakes made by anybody else are dross.
Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
#27It would be interesting to know, why being an Apple developer is favourable to being any other type of a developer? For example, android market share is already larger than Apple devices, and people still spend lots of time in front of traditional web browsers. You can still make fortunes and/or have an interesting career with other platforms and technologies too.
In a word: Gruber. His bias towards Apple is unmatched.
He is completely out of his mind. George Lucas, a Saint? Along with Saint Thomas, Saint John, etc.? Words have no meaning anymore... Even Confucius would be pissed of. (When asked what he would do first if given a prime minister position, he say he would rectify the words.)
Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
#28>This is like being a Rock and roll musician in the late sixties. This is like being a film maker in the seventies following Scorsese, Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas (when he was a saint). That's a hilarious sell. Better not mention the bigger, even faster growing Android market.
Faster growing, copycat infested, low paying market? Not that you shouldn't develop for it (hell, >1 million activations/day), but the climate over there is very different.
Much bigger in the developing world which is where the economic center of gravity is shifting to. So better long-term prospects unless trends reverse. But, yes, copycats are likely a bigger problem in Androidland.
Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
#29"One simple way to look at it is that there are far more people who've never bought an iPhone and who've never bought an iPad, who will in the next five years than all of us who've already bought at least one to this point." That's one simple way to look at it. Another slightly less simple way is that the ones that already have Apple devices are the savviest, hippest, and spendiest consumers around, and you can't pos…
I disagree, though based on the attitude of your comment I'm not sure if you'll take my point.
Here in Dublin, at least, iPhones are becoming extremely popular, even with the losertechnicians of the world. Businessmen with no tech skills are replacing Blackberries with them, teenagers are flocking to get them, and there are even dodgy-looking iPhone accessory shops in bad neighbourhoods.
Over here, since around the start of this summer, the iPhone 4 has been available for free on a 40 euro per month contract with unlimited data and enough minutes/texts for the vast majority of people, on pretty much every network. That's a really good deal, and a huge number of people bought into it, figuring that they spend at least that on credit anyway.
When the iPad 2 launched over here, there was a period of 8 months where you could not find ANY, at all, even in the authorized resellers that Apple likes the most. At any one time there might have been one for sale in the whole city.
Android is gaining momentum here too, and I don't know figures for any of this, but I definitely haven't seem them on as many non-hackers as I have iPhones.
In conclusion, no, the people who have iPhones are not the Apple-savvy hipsters. At least in this city.
Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
#30"One simple way to look at it is that there are far more people who've never bought an iPhone and who've never bought an iPad, who will in the next five years than all of us who've already bought at least one to this point." That's one simple way to look at it. Another slightly less simple way is that the ones that already have Apple devices are the savviest, hippest, and spendiest consumers around, and you can't pos…
hippest
I have a handful of uncles/aunts who'd disagree.