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Apple's App Store Mistake

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zridling:
Paul Graham's latest essay on how Apple is treating the programmers who develop Apps for the iPhone/iTouch is characteristically on target. Here's how it begins:

I don't think Apple realizes how badly the App Store approval process is broken. Or rather, I don't think they realize how much it matters that it's broken.... The way Apple runs the App Store has harmed their reputation with programmers more than anything else they've ever done. Their reputation with programmers used to be great. It used to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. The App Store has changed that. Now a lot of programmers have started to see Apple as evil.... How much of the goodwill Apple once had with programmers have they lost over the App Store? A third? Half? And that's just so far. The App Store is an ongoing karma leak.



Find time to read the whole thing if you can.

The only way to break Apple’s stranglehold on the "App Store" business is to find a way of making the Android platform attractive to developers. Maybe a smart strategy would be for Google (or Motorola or other handset manufacturers who aim to offer Android phones) to identify developers and offer them free Android phones.

Innuendo:
I don't see how the article's author can say the process is broken. It's absolutely, positively working as Apple intended. Apple wants to control completely the process in which applications and data interface with their hardware.

Remember when the first iPods were released? One could just hook it up to one's computer & it'd appear on your desktop as another storage device which you could copy & move music & non-music files freely. That freedom didn't last long & that's what Apple wants. If you want to use their hardware you have to play by their rules.

I'm not going to get into jailbreaking as that's a cat and mouse game as Apple is always trying to take control of your devices again once you've wrested control away from them.

Darwin:
I"ve found the solution - avoid Apple products and Apple software like the plague! OK, admittedly, I do have an old iBook running OSX 10.4.11 but I don't use it for anything, really, other than to play around with Quicksilver every so often. On my Windows machines, though, APPLE free zones  :Thmbsup:

superboyac:
Very interesting.  Apple does demand control, that's mostly why I avoid their products no matter how cool I think they are.  I have not once bought an apple product in my life, yet I think they are super cool.  I don't think I can say that for any other company.

After reading that article, I have a couple of questions that may or may not be related:
--I've never understood why other companies never challenge the Apple products even though they have the time AND resources to do so.  For example, in the article, they say the RIM doesn't have a chance to compete with iphone apps despite their market share in that industry.  I don't get that, why not?  How come there aren't a lot of Blackberry apps?  What is it about the Blackberry that makes people not want or not want to create apps for it?  I don't understand, because just as many people have Blackberry's as iphones.

--The same goes for other Apple innovations.  The nice, new touchpad on their new laptops is really nice.  But why didn't any of the PC companies (Dell, HP, Toshiba) come up with a new idea for the touchpads in all those years?  Same goes for the ipod.  Other companies were years ahead of Apple in the portable mp3 player market (ahem...Sony) yet they could never get a hold of it.

It's always the same for me for all the Apple stuff.  I always ask myself, why don't these other companies just use their brains and compete with Apple?  They sit on their asses taking their sweet ass time doing nothing really interesting, then Apple comes along and completely takes over, despite coming late in the game.

Stoic Joker:
Very interesting.  Apple does demand control, that's mostly why I avoid their products no matter how cool I think they are.  I have not once bought an apple product in my life, yet I think they are super cool.  I don't think I can say that for any other company.-superboyac (November 22, 2009, 05:02 AM)
--- End quote ---
While I realize that terms have a tendency to change meaning over time, Apple does not qualify for any meaning of cool that I'm familiar with. Ultra Trendy... Yes.

Being cool requires a more of a laid back attitude which avoids the micro-management of every little nitypicky detail.

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