Serving at the Pleasure of the King • Hacker News Board

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#81

Post by cageface » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 7:32 PM UTC

gbog wrote: post #16

programminggeek wrote: post #7

He's right and certainly more levelheaded about these kinds of issues than most, but what most don't realize is that many of the software platforms we love have had worse policies for years. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega all have/had extremely rigorous review process that was even worse than Apple's if you want to be on their game platform. Phone companies had all these build processes if you wanted to write Ja…

> Phone companies had all these build processes Well, yes, and that's why we had crappy phones for years before iPhone and Android arrived, as noted by Jeff Atwood. I think it shows again that, not unlike the first PCs and their open slots for third-party cards, openness is the right move. Many people here seem to renounce to this, mostly because Apple's walled garden is currently at a pinnacle, but in my opinion it…

some forget that the future is not built on closed formats, closed markets, etc

We are still in the early history of popular computing. It may be that openness tends to win in the end but I think this is far from established as fact at this point. I think you put this in unnecessarily black and white terms too. The future may favor hybrids of open data models and closed, native clients.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#82

Post by simonbrown » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 7:47 PM UTC

troels wrote: post #10

Vivtek wrote: post #6

1. Windows has always done this. Occasionally people complain; usually they don't. Honestly, I normally consider it a good thing - the Windows functionality is usually bland and relatively feature-free, but works perfectly. There was a time when TCP/IP support was a purchased add-on, after all. I think we all agree that's better to have built in from the get-go and consistent on every aged uncle's machine we're asked…

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.

WP7 apps have to be approved.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#83

Post by jpxxx » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 8:06 PM UTC

Androsynth wrote: post #77

jpxxx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is absurdly limited thinking. Ponder that iCloud was invented to ensure the following scenario: that a typical user could not, in any reasonable scenario, irrevocably lose the user-state associated with their purchased applications. Apple is gunning hard for a market worth one trillion dollars, not Marco Arment. He is inconsequential collateral damage in Apple's race to a 100% managed computing experience.

Thats no different than Microsoft in the 90's. The business goals are different but the strategy of getting there is the same.

I don't feel this situation is the same.

Microsoft didn't win for two decades by nibbling small potatoes off of everyone else's plate, they won by persecuting swallowing entire industries that were evolving rapidly. Word processing, fileserving, WWW access, telephony, video gaming, SQL, e-mail, ad infinitum...

Instapaper is not an industry of this scope - it's a single webbrowsing feature.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#84

Post by adabsurdo » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 8:10 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #64

It strikes me that this is exactly the position every web developer has with google. Google can arbitrarily and capriciously exclude them from their index. When google excludes you from the index, there is no appeal, there is no explanation, and, unlike Apple, google will not publish a set of (reliable) rules. (It gives a lot of advice but is inconsistent.) Also, like Apple, if you are not able to get in the big leag…

no, not all. the web is fully open. google is not the exclusive gateway to the internet. if google were to become wildly inaccurate,, or start to willingly leave out relevant results, other search engines (hello bing!) would take over pretty fast. remember, the cost of switching search engines is approximately zero. this is precisely why the market leader in search does not behave this way.

and obviously, there are other, extremely simple and effective ways to reach a website: typing in the address bar, links by email, facebook, twitter, etc., etc.

the app store is the one and only gateway to the iOS platform.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#85

Post by Gormo » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 8:25 PM UTC

gbog wrote: post #16

programminggeek wrote: post #7

He's right and certainly more levelheaded about these kinds of issues than most, but what most don't realize is that many of the software platforms we love have had worse policies for years. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega all have/had extremely rigorous review process that was even worse than Apple's if you want to be on their game platform. Phone companies had all these build processes if you wanted to write Ja…

> Phone companies had all these build processes Well, yes, and that's why we had crappy phones for years before iPhone and Android arrived, as noted by Jeff Atwood. I think it shows again that, not unlike the first PCs and their open slots for third-party cards, openness is the right move. Many people here seem to renounce to this, mostly because Apple's walled garden is currently at a pinnacle, but in my opinion it…

Apple is in the same place with the iOS platform as it was with the Mac in the second half of the '80s.

Back then, they had a huge lead over other platforms due to the then-revolutionary GUI environment on the Mac. Then Jobs was forced out of Apple, and their marketing and product design couldn't keep up with what was being developed in the more open and more chaotic corners of the industry. It's no coincidence that the most open hardware architecture won, and that the company that developed the most successful OS for that platform became the dominant software company for over a decade.

Android is to iOS in 2011 what Windows was to MacOS in 1990, and in 2025, Apple will probably look a lot like it did in 1995.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#86

Post by mekoka » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 8:35 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #80

derleth wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would rather have someone make sure (for free) that the app that I download isn't buggy, or crash-y, or other stuff. Hello, apt-get and yum. Curated software doesn't have to lead to locked-down systems you can only use at the sufferance of the curators. For example, look at the processes behind Linux distros. The people who put Linux distros together have been doing this for nigh on twenty years now, with the big…

To be fair though, the quality of almost all of the end-user software available via apt-get is far below that of the iOS or Mac app store. Developers and users have voted with their wallets for Apple's model. Ideologically I'd prefer that this were not the case but it's hard to argue with the numbers.

As a Linux end-user installing most of my software through apt-get, I think it is your opinion and there is nothing fair about it.

Apple didn't invent this model, they put stricter control, nicely marketed and then monetized on something that's been the primary model of software distribution in Unix for quite a few years now.

Regardless of how nice the app store is, the argument remains that the process doesn't need to be so dictatorial to be successful.

Most Linux distros have their own repositories of software they've reviewed and approved. They each have their own requirements for apps submitted to them, most of the software is free (as in beer and freedom), but I'm willing to bet that if they started pushing for an app marketplace, the element of fairness would not be lost in the process.

One thing that bemuses me about Apple and the trick for which I really raise my hat to them, is how they manage to screw people and still have them rationalize and even advocate for the scam.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#87

Post by Derbasti » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 8:35 PM UTC

mcantelon wrote: post #72

programminggeek wrote: post #7

He's right and certainly more levelheaded about these kinds of issues than most, but what most don't realize is that many of the software platforms we love have had worse policies for years. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega all have/had extremely rigorous review process that was even worse than Apple's if you want to be on their game platform. Phone companies had all these build processes if you wanted to write Ja…

>We are like children who grew up with a silver spoon in our mouth and we've been asked to endure plastic. Sure, it's still a spoon, but it's not silver and that pisses us off. No, we're like adults used to being able to do what we want with our own hardware. Being able to do what you want with hardware is the historical computing norm (gaming consoles being the exception). Android-based devices carry on this traditi…

Really, you are paying for the privilege to be listed in the App Store and to be distributed to customers.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#88

Post by mcantelon » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 8:37 PM UTC

Derbasti wrote: post #87

mcantelon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We are like children who grew up with a silver spoon in our mouth and we've been asked to endure plastic. Sure, it's still a spoon, but it's not silver and that pisses us off. No, we're like adults used to being able to do what we want with our own hardware. Being able to do what you want with hardware is the historical computing norm (gaming consoles being the exception). Android-based devices carry on this traditi…

Really, you are paying for the privilege to be listed in the App Store and to be distributed to customers.

Unless you jailbreak, you can't even make your own app and have it run on your own phone without paying $99/year.

And as far as paying for the privilege of being including in the App Store, seems like the 30% cut Apple takes should more than cover that.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#89

Post by msbarnett » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 9:02 PM UTC

blahedo wrote: post #51

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…

> The "correct" place to put user data on iOS 5+ is any place that syncs with iCloud. Um? My understanding is that Apple has forbidden developers from storing in cloud-sync areas anything that is re-downloadable or temporary. Instapaper pages are almost by definition re-downloadable; and there's no need for permanence or even synchronisation with the cloud, just a need for the system not to silently delete the files.…

> Is my understanding of Apple's policy flawed?

Yeah. They're encouraging devs to minimize the amount of data that needs to be backed up, for obvious reasons, but there's nothing forbidding Marco from storing the articles in the Documents folder instead of the cache, and indeed that's probably what he should have been doing all along.

His insistence on keeping them in tmp has caused me to lose a number of articles over the years when I've had to do a clean wipe and the original site has long since disappeared.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#90

Post by DanielBMarkham » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 9:04 PM UTC

It's tragically ironic that the very thing Microsoft would have been very happy to do -- lock down windows and control all apps on it -- is what is taken for normality everywhere else but windows.

I'm not trying to defend Microsoft. It's all too clear they have been very anti-competitive. But if windows had the controls on it that apps on iOS had we'd be hearing folks call for criminal prosecutions.

I understand the gee whiz factor of Apple. I own a bunch of Apple stuff and I love their design. I also understand that if you don't control your garden, all kinds of weeds grow in there. But geesh, folks, Jeff is correct. Perhaps this is the best future we could hope for, but it is an extremely sub-optimal destination compared to where we thought we were going.