Today TUAW published an interview with Ambrosia Software president Andrew Welch on their iToner product (which the iPhone 1.1.1 update killed), and what it’s like to develop for a closed platform in general. Welch is pretty clear on his role on the iPhone ecosystem, but the way Apple has treated his product still stinks.

I think he’s right on the money with these remarks:

So I take it your position is basically that the user area of the phone should belong to the user and it’s not really fair for Apple to artificially restrict what you can put there?

Absolutely. Apple should no more be controlling what ringtones I want to use than they should be controlling what music I can listen to, or what photos I can look at.

Here’s a good analogy, I think. Apple came out with their online store, and they charged for music. They said “We know you can get music from elsewhere, but we’re going to make the user experience so good that you’ll want to get it from us.” And guess what? They were right, it worked!

The tack they are taking with the ringtones, though, is not “We’ll provide such great ringtones that you’ll want to buy from us” but rather “This is all you’re ever going to be able to use, too bad if you want to use something else.” I think they took a winning formula, and got it entirely backwards.

I fully understand that much of Apple’s behavior is the result of signing deals with multiple “devils” in terms of AT&T and the various music labels. So to an extent, I think some of the choices that Apple is making now are not their own. But I find it amazing that they’d take the exact opposite approach of providing fantastic content and a fantastic user experience to make you want to buy music from them.

I hope that this is not the attitude they are going to take going forward, because if they no longer focus on delivering the best possible content in the best way – and using that as a selling point – and instead try to sell things by restricting what you can buy, well. I think it’s really sad.

J Alex Halderman notes that MP3s downloaded from Amazon.com do not include watermarks that tie the files to the customer who downloaded them. That’s an important difference from the DRM-free tracks available from the iTunes Music Store. Here are the downsides of watermarking:

Individualized watermarks give purchasers an incentive not to share the files they buy, or so the theory goes, but, like DRM, even if watermarking does reduce copyright infringement, that doesn’t necessarily mean it makes business sense. Watermarks create legal risks even for customers who don’t engage in file sharing, because the files might still become publicly available due to software misconfigurations or other security breaches. These risks add to the effective cost of buying music for legitimate purchasers, who will buy less as a result.

It has been widely reported that Burmese soldiers raided the monasteries that housed the monks who instigated the widespread street protests in Rangoon last week. A government official from Burma who is attempting to defect to Norway claims that the Burmese government executed thousands of the monks and dumped the bodies in the jungle and that he fled the country rather than participate in the execution program.

It strikes me that “that’s stupid” is just about the most self-defeating thing you can say if your goal is to analyze, well, anything. I’m seeing “that’s stupid” a lot lately with regard to Apple’s iPhone. Unlocked iPhones being rendered useless by the 1.1.1 upgrade is stupid. Charging extra for ringtones is stupid. Locking out third party applications is stupid. Not selling an unlocked version of the phone is stupid. Not supporting 3G data networking is stupid. I could go on.

The thing is, while all of those things may be stupid, that’s not analysis. People, companies, and countries do things for a reason. Analysis is figuring out the reasons for behavior in the absence of transparency or in the presence of dishonesty.

Let’s take one example. Why are iPhones being “bricked” when people try to upgrade them to version 1.1.1? Perhaps Apple wrote their software maliciously so that it would kill phones that customers have unlocked. I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve read that some iPhones were bricked by the upgrade even though they had not been unlocked. The rumor is that the bricking happened when phones were connected to the computer through a third device like a hub or a keyboard with a USB port.

What this indicates to me is that Apple’s upgrade procedure can brick iPhones, and Apple was unwilling or unable to test all the cases where phones can be bricked, or to fix all of the issues that cause the phone bricking. So they made the decision to go live with the update knowing that some phones would be bricked and that they would have to replace them under warranty. That’s a pretty standard sort of business decision. What’s cheaper, spending the time and money to catch all the edge cases or going live and dealing with the consequences in support?

To save themselves money, they made it clear that bricked phones that had been unlocked would not be covered.

That may have been the wrong decision on Apple’s part, or perhaps that’s not even how things went, but it is a form of analysis. Rendering expensive gadgets purchased by your most loyal customers completely useless with a regular software upgrade is bad business and bad public relations. Announcing that no remedy would be offered to affected customers in advance was a PR disaster. Figuring out the reasons why Apple went that route requires more thinking than just dismissing the company as stupid.