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Serving at the Pleasure of the King

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Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#31

Post by adabsurdo »

I think the Apple app store policies is the bigger problem, because Apple is using it to control not just quality, but content, and forcing applications to use its payment gateway; which in itself, wouldn't much of a problem if they didn't take this gigantic 30% cut (10x more than other payment gateways), and prevented you from knowing your customer.

This is truely unprecendented. Microsoft could screw you by cloning your app, but they never blocked third-party applications, nor tried to be the commerce gateway to the internet.

If Apple succeeds in making webapps obsolete, and competition cannot be strong enough to force it to be fairer and more reasonable in its app store policy, than to me an ipad/iphone app world sounds like a regression from the webapp world.

And this is why I never understand why so many Apple users want Android & Windows to fail. As a customer, you should want other platforms to be succesful, so that we don't end up again with a monopolistic platform that screws us all. Didn't we try this before??

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#32

Post by kgreg80 »

Vivtek wrote: post #21
troels wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft, as evil as they may be, have always had a rather open eco system. Even when Windows was at its prime, you didn't have to get permission to develop or install applications on the platform.

True - I was responding to his assertion midway that if Windows had preempted a popular app, people would scream. It's just not true.

Remember when hordes of WinZip enthusiasts flooded messageboards with angry complaints after XP was released with that functionality built in? Neither do I.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#33

Post by thomasjoulin »

Vivtek wrote: post #22
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with point number 2. From Apple's perspective, it's deleting temporary storage (after all, they're called Caches and tmp. You wouldn't store anything important on /tmp on your desktop, would you?) The "correct" place to put user data on iOS 5+ is any place that syncs with iCloud. That's the crux on this issue: iOS 5 is Apple's assertion that App Store users are their customers, not the app developer's cust…

Ah, I see - well, chalk that up to my having very little knowledge about the iOS ecosystem. I think my larger point still stands, that Apple's arrogant assertion of ownership of everything is going to bite them; arguably this is just telling everybody where they have to store their data. With Apple. And honestly, if /tmp were the only filesystem I were allowed to touch, then yeah, I'd try to do something with it. Tha…

That's not the only folder. There's the Documents folder, but the whole drama is that this folder is backed up on iCloud, which is not necessary for offline data. Not a big deal in my opinion. Apple should and probably will add an Offline folder and all of this will be over like the Antena gate

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#35

Post by tsotha »

cstross wrote: post #30

If Microsoft added a feature to Windows that duplicated a popular application's functionality, developers would be screaming bloody murder and rioting in the, er, blogs and web forums Utter rot. This used to happen all the time in the 1980s and 1990s, before the DoJ anti trust lawsuit really got rolling. It was most obvious in office apps (ever wonder where the third-party spelling checkers and grammar checkers went?…

>This used to happen all the time in the 1980s and 1990s, before the DoJ anti trust lawsuit really got rolling.

Yes, and the reason for the DOJ anti-trust lawsuit? Developers were screaming bloody murder.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#37

Post by 0x12 »

cstross wrote: post #30

If Microsoft added a feature to Windows that duplicated a popular application's functionality, developers would be screaming bloody murder and rioting in the, er, blogs and web forums Utter rot. This used to happen all the time in the 1980s and 1990s, before the DoJ anti trust lawsuit really got rolling. It was most obvious in office apps (ever wonder where the third-party spelling checkers and grammar checkers went?…

Back then every big company was doing this, or attempted to do this. The goal was to dominate the desktop and get as much grip on the end user as possible. Proprietary file formats for just about everything. Remember Desqview (by QuarterDeck)? DR DOS? GEM (also DR)? OS/2 (IBM)? NetWare (Novell)? All those companies did what Microsoft was doing with one small difference, they stopped at the OS or Desktop layer and never saw beyond that, to the applications. They saw the system as the ideal place to dominate and they set themselves up for being slaughtered.

The combination of dominating two or more levels is what made it lethal, OS/GUI/Application companies aplenty back then but only one company that did them all and that used its own internal knowledge in order to make life very hard for the competition. And the final key in the lock was the Application level and nobody that made it big in the systems sphere ever got there besides Microsoft.

Microsoft may have lost their anti-trust lawsuit but the damage was done and it won them the war until the web came along.

If Sir Tim should be remembered for anything at all it was for breaking the stranglehold Microsoft had on personal computing, freeing us from the Application level headlock.

Oh, and in my time we didn't have walking sticks.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#38

Post by mechanical_fish »

Did Apple really once provide a direct link to Instapaper as the inspiration for their new built-in features?

If so, did they actually ask Marco before they took that link out?

If so, did Marco ask them to take it out?

And, if he did - which, having heard Marco speak on this topic, I do not assume, but merely suppose - was that the right call?

My understanding was that an App Store developer might kill for that kind of free publicity. Could it be, for example, that Apple stopped linking Instapaper so as to avoid playing favorites? Might one of Instapaper's competitors have complained about that link?

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#39

Post by thorstadt »

ciudilo wrote: post #26
dsr_ wrote: post #2

Even ordinary users are beginning to understand this. My sister was upset at Amazon because the Kindle app on her iPod would not let her buy books directly. After she found out that Apple was demanding a 30% cut of those sales, she changed her mind. Now she's unhappy with Apple. I understand the impulse to look at however many millions of IOS devices and to immediately want to get into that market, but the long tail…

30% cut only applies to subscriptions so in this case it is Amazon's choice to sell books on their website and not from app directly.

The 30% applies to all in-app purchases, and attempting to circumvent IAP is against Apple's guidelines.

http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle/ref=cm_cd_ttp_ef_tft_tp?_...

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#40

Post by 0x12 »

When you are developing for a platform that is active on multiple layers (say, both OS, GUI or APP) then you are essentially validating the market for whatever you come up with. You have to calculate that in, if you are successful you will have competition, and if you are very successful the entity controlling the market will re-implement what you have already proven works.

If you develop something that is just an 'add on' or a missing feature you are setting yourself up for eventual trouble.

Such products have a life cycle and you can't reasonably expect the situation to continue unchanging forever.

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