The big question everyone is asking is whether the Mac App Store is a step toward the closing of the Mac platform, making it a walled garden like iOS where you can only install applications by way of the App Store. This was the big worry when the iPad was originally released — is the closed model the future of personal computing? Migrating the App Store model to the Mac platform isn’t very comforting to those of us who like to be able to install and run any software we like on our computers.
Today the App Store Review Guidelines have been leaked, answering one of my big questions, which is whether Apple is going to exercise control over which Mac applications can be distributed via the store. The answer is yes, they will.
The next question is whether Apple is moving toward the App Store being the only way to distribute Mac applications and the only way to install them. I think the answer that is that Apple is not headed in that direction. Here’s one reason why:
Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected
Apple is stating flat out that Java applications will not be allowed in the app store. This is important because developers in general, and Java developers in particular, make up a substantial part of the market for Apple computers. Many people migrated to the Mac specifically because it was a nice place to set up a full Web development environment that mirrors what you might use in production — you can install Eclipse (or your favorite Java IDE), Tomcat, MySQL, and Apache and get work done. It doesn’t seem like you’ll be able to install any of those applications in the App Store.
So the question is, will Apple turn its back on developers who use OS X completely? That seems highly unlikely to me.
My sense is that we’re going to see people using App Store apps and traditionally installed apps side by side for a long time. The review requirements make it clear that users will be unable to install the kinds of applications they need for many kinds of work by way of the App Store, so the Mac will need to remain an open platform in order to accommodate those users.
Oddly enough, this gives me some hope for future opening of the iOS platform. The Mac platform is going to be an experiment in running App Store-style managed applications alongside applications that require open access to the operating system to install. If the combination works out very well, it seems like Apple may decide to further open iOS.
I can see a future where a sizable percentage of Mac users only use applications that they installed through the Mac App Store. But I don’t see a future where the Mac App Store becomes the only way to distribute OS X applications. Apple is foreclosing that possibility itself with its review policy.
Derek Powazek talks about the burden that the app store approval process puts on iOS developers:
Apple’s App Store was a constant source of stress in the development process. Every time another story of Apple randomly booting an app from the store came out, the whole team quaked. The idea that we could do all this work and then Apple could deny the app, or even keep it in limbo forever, made us second- or third-guess every design decision. “Will this pixel hurt our chances of getting accepted?”
Consumer Reports cannot recommend the iPhone 4 due to the antenna issue:
It’s official. Consumer Reports’ engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.
We reached this conclusion after testing all three of our iPhone 4s (purchased at three separate retailers in the New York area) in the controlled environment of CU’s radio frequency (RF) isolation chamber. In this room, which is impervious to outside radio signals, our test engineers connected the phones to our base-station emulator, a device that simulates carrier cell towers (see video: IPhone 4 Design Defect Confirmed). We also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.
Aside from that, it’s their highest scoring app phone. Apple’s claim that the problem is the signal strength indicator isn’t going to cut it.
I’ve been saying for some time that in the smart phone market, Google is Microsoft and Apple is, well, Apple. Apple was never going to be the dominant player in this market in terms of market share, simply because they only have one or two phone models at any given time, are only on one carrier in the US, and won’t license the operating system to any other handset makers. They want to sell enough high margin products that people love to be extremely profitable, and are very successful with that strategy.
Google, on the other hand, gives Android away to anyone who wants to put it on their handset, and have been rewarded with rapid growth. But I don’t think that Android’s user experience will ever match the iPhone’s. For one thing, because Android is used on so many different kinds of hardware, it will be difficult to achieve the level of integration that Apple has with the iPhone. And for another, the carriers and handset makers are guaranteed to make the Android worse, just as the PC makers have consistently made Windows worse over the years.
This is from Eric Burke’s review of the HTC EVO:
Android makes vendor customizations possible and this phone demonstrates just how poorly that can be done.
He has a list of examples. That’s just not something you have to settle for when the iPhone is out there.
I’ve been following Google’s announcements from Google I/O with interest. Google announced version 2.2 of Android and a new set-top box, GoogleTV. The main takeaway from today’s events is that the competition between Apple and Google is heating up.
I think all of this is fantastic. Google and Apple both build great stuff, espouse completely different philosophies, and are scary in different ways. And they’re going to be fighting tooth and nail in a number of still unclaimed markets for every dollar of profit that’s available. There is no underdog here. Both operate from positions of strength and both have huge war chests they can bring to bear. Apple has $41.7 billion in cash. Google has $26.5 billion in cash. Microsoft wants to be a player in these markets as well, and they have $39.7 billion as well. So they have plenty of money to hire developers, build data centers, and buy up companies that look interesting. Nobody has market leverage of the kind Microsoft did in the desktop computing market during the browser wars of the nineties.
So right now we’re looking at a contest where the main weapons are quality of experience and openness. It’s going to be fun, and the competition is going to be incredibly beneficial to users.
Marco Arment discusses the rumored 960×640 display in the forthcoming iPhone, and argues that the tradeoffs involved with including the display probably aren’t worth it. Here’s his conclusion:
I’m sure I’ll fall in love with the high-density iPhone display as soon as I see it. But on paper, I’m still unconvinced that it’s necessary.
If I had to pick one aspect of Apple’s strategy that has led to its great success over the past decade, it has been the company’s unwillingness to stop at what is necessary. It’s why I still love Apple’s products, even though the company irritates me a lot of the time.
I’ve been transfixed by Apple’s announcement yesterday that applications developed using translation or compatibility layers need not apply for inclusion on the App Store. My first thought was that this was an obvious stab at Adobe, and my second thought was that this was an attempt to insure that other companies don’t abstract away the iPhone OS.
I am reminded of Microsoft’s reaction to Java, specifically the early hype about Java. We all think of Java as a boring server-side language now, but the initial idea behind Java was that software developers could write applications in Java rather than writing them for Windows, and that those applications would work everywhere, thus defanging Microsoft’s desktop OS monopoly. Microsoft took various steps to prevent that from happening, but they lacked a tool like App Store that would enable them to just ban Java. Apple has that card to play, so they’re playing it.
Yesterday, John Gruber posted Why Apple Changed Section 3.3.1, and I think he nails the reasoning behind the move, but he declines to analyze whether this move is really good strategy for Apple. I would argue that it’s not.
Apple already has very wide latitude in deciding which apps will be approved for the store. If apps are low quality, they can be declined. And Apple can always issue more guidelines to application developers based on the content of the apps rather than on which tools were used to build them, requiring companies who create libraries to help produce iPhone applications to meet certain standards in terms of look, feel, and functionality in order to be included. It’s not necessary to cut everyone off.
Secondly, Gruber points out that most applications built using these kinds of intermediate layers suck. That’s the real reason why Java desktop applications were never incredibly successful. It had little to do with Microsoft’s anti-competitive moves and a lot to do with the fact that Java applications were slow, had their own user interface widgets which were different than those of the native platforms, and just looked ungainly. It wasn’t easy to write great applications in Java. That alone assured that Sun wasn’t going to abstract away Windows or the Mac OS.
Thirdly, this announcement is freaking out independent iPhone developers in a big way. Nearly all developers use third party libraries to save time when building applications, and every user of third party libraries now has to ask themselves whether these libraries fall into the new prohibited category. What happens if the iPhone application you’ve based a business on is found to depend on a library that is forbidden with iPhone OS 4? Do you start over or give up? A lot of developers are asking themselves that question today.
I have no idea whether there’s anything that will run afoul of the law in these license terms, but they should bother people, and Apple should suffer in the court of public opinion for them. This is a paranoid move and a defensive one. Apple’s mobile products are the most popular in their class right now, and they have the best community of developers of any platform vendor. Given their position of strength, they don’t need to act out of insecurity. And yet this is the second big defensive move they’ve made recently, the first being their offensive patent lawsuit against HTC last month.
Apple’s innovation impresses me, but their business practices are chilling. Customers need to let them know that they expect more from the company. Apple has shown in the past that it listens to this kind of feedback. Starting in 2003, Greenpeace put pressure on Apple over its environmental practices. Today Apple is regarded as one of the most environmentally responsible electronics makers in the world. I hold out hope that similar pressure over Apple’s ugly business practices can encourage the company to be more responsible on that front as well.
A lot of people have taken note of the following passage in the iPhone 4 developer agreement:
Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited.
It’s clear that Apple isn’t going to allow Flash to run on the iPhone, so Adobe came up with a creative alternative — a tool that lets you convert Flash into a native iPhone application. Packager for iPhone is to be included with Flash Professional CS5. Now Apple has made it known that applications created in this manner will not be approved for inclusion in the iPhone App Store.
Why would Apple make this rule? Perhaps there’s a technical reason, but my guess is this is pure cutthroat business. To create applications for the iPhone, you have to use Objective C. If you want to port the same application to Android, you have to rewrite it in Java. If Adobe and other tools vendors come up with applications that translate from ActionScript to Objective C and to Android’s flavor of Java, suddenly it’s much easier for developers to maintain their applications on multiple platforms. It looks like Apple wants to make sure that being multi-platform stays expensive, and that people just stick with building applications for today’s dominant platform — iPhone.
If you (like me) don’t own and haven’t used an iPad, you may enjoy John Gruber’s lengthy review.
I think this bit is exactly right:
Kindle has a better chance of long-term success as a software platform than a hardware one.
From day one I have wondered whether Amazon.com intended to make money on the Kindle or whether it was a proof-of-concept designed to spur the market for e-books. They’ve been aggressive about porting the Kindle reader to other platforms, and Amazon.com seems to be doing quite well selling digital music even though they don’t sell a music player. I imagine their margins are very good on e-books, regardless of whether or not the buyer purchased a Kindle.
People are going to start receiving their iPads tomorrow, and to mark the occasion we’re seeing one more spasm of iPad punditry. Tomorrow the hypothetical iPad dies and the real life iPad arrives, probably dashing the hopes of dozens of media companies who think that the iPad is their one way ticket to massive subscription revenue. (Danny O’Brien has a good post on that.)
Cory Doctorow took one more shot at the iPad today, making some good points in an argument that didn’t hold together particularly well. His strongest arguments are those meant to deter people from building native iPhone applications. And I do think that if you care about ubiquity and openness, you should avoid the iPhone platform and stick with building Web applications. Everything seems to indicate that they’ll run beautifully on the iPad, just as they run beautifully on your Netbook, or your Mac, or your Windows PC.
The piece I really wanted to link to, though, is Greg Knauss writing about the iPad future. Or, more generally, a future that involves simpler devices that require less expertise and maintenance than today’s personal computer. Greg argues that this future is inevitable, and that furthermore, it’s a pretty great future. I think that’s probably the best way to look at it.
As I write in my earlier piece on the iPad, we’re going to have to look somewhere other than our desktop for open platforms in the future.
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