Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss • Hacker News Board

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#31

Post by declan » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #10

GrinningFool wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did subsidize a number of major apps that come over to BlackBerry.

On the other hand, it's probably cheaper to buy a congressman or senator than it is to pay a developer to port an app.

Exactly right. I noticed this many times when living in DC. There's even a study that puts numbers on the ROI for politician-purchasing:

"In a recent study, researchers Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz calculated the total amount the corporations saved from the lower tax rate. They compared the taxes saved to the amount the firms spent lobbying for the law. Their research showed the return on lobbying for those multinational corporations was 22,000 percent. That means for every dollar spent on lobbying, the companies got $220 in tax benefits." http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forget-s...

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#32

Post by declan » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

ksk wrote: post #8

Wow, that's a horrible headline. Did anyone actually read the letter? His position is far less extreme. All hes essentially advocating for is open protocols so that popular services aren't locked down to a single platform. It's an interesting question whether government should mandate interoperability.

I did read the letter and his position is extreme: the BBC captured it accurately.

Anytime you write a letter to Congress that includes the phrase "must be mandated" -- as Blackberry's CEO did -- it's abundantly clear you're asking for a new law.

Now, I admit the question of whether or not this particular proposed law is extreme or not is a judgment call, but forcing programmers (at gunpoint?) to develop for other platforms seems a bit extreme to me. Also not a recipe for very good code. :)

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#33

Post by declan » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

wtracy wrote: post #26

hvs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what he says: Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them.

So his position seems to be that either these services should provide native clients for these platforms, or else they should expose APIs to let third-party developers create native clients. That's still not a position I'm comfortable with. (I wish everybody exposed APIs to third-party clients, but I understand how hard that can be.) On the other hand, it's a lot more reasonable than unconditionally forcing devs to p…

Well, his actual letter doesn't mention the phrase "API," so reading such a request into it seems like a stretch: http://blogs.blackberry.com/2015/01/blackberry-net-neutralit...

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#34

Post by droope » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 6:43 PM UTC

declan wrote: post #31

kabdib wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, it's probably cheaper to buy a congressman or senator than it is to pay a developer to port an app.

Exactly right. I noticed this many times when living in DC. There's even a study that puts numbers on the ROI for politician-purchasing: "In a recent study, researchers Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz calculated the total amount the corporations saved from the lower tax rate. They compared the taxes saved to the amount the firms spent lobbying for the law. Their research showed the return on lobbying for those mult…

holy shit

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#35

Post by nextw33k » Fri, Jan 23, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

Initially my reaction was the same as the herd, however on reflection I see that he's trying to address a problem in the mobile space.

Really the mobile phone market is currently a duopoly and that's bad for consumers. We are now getting past the initial innovation part of the curve and starting to see level growth in terms of the number of devices in the market place and platform changes.

What we need to start thinking about is perhaps a standard on which Apps are built. Right now its like the 90s where you'd build a site for IE and one for Netscape.