rc3.org Strong opinions weakly held
The hidden costs of Apple’s app store
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 on the iPhone antenna issue
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.
Actual antenna engineer discusses the iPhone 4
The fact that a blog exists on the topic of antenna engineering is proof that we live in marvelous times. AntennaSys weighs in on the much-discussed iPhone 4 antenna issue. I come away with the impression that it’s a flaw that users will have to live with, but that it’s one they’ll be able to live with. If you want to learn more about the iPhone’s display, check out this post by retinal neuroscientist Bryan Jones. Like I said, marvelous times.
How Android is like Windows
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.
Apple goes beyond what’s necessary
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.
How to get Flash onto the iPhone
In a blog post that I agree with in parts and disagree with in parts, Louis Gerbarg explains how Adobe can get Apple to support Flash:
If Adobe actually wants to persuade Apple to support Flash on iPhone (either as a plugin or compiled to native apps), I know how they can do it. They can get an awesome, high performance, Flash environment working on Android, and get a bunch of great Flash apps running on Android phones. As much as Apple wants to control iPhone, I am willing to bet they want to beat Android more.
That, I agree with. The argument that Apple has decided to restrict developers from using translation or compatibility layers because if one of them became particularly successful, it would give that vendor veto power over features and schedules in subsequent iPhone OS releases, I don’t really agree with. It’s a rationale, but a flimsy one.
Dan Grigsby on the iPhone platform
Ask permission environments crush creativity and innovation. In healthy environments, when would-be innovators/creators identify opportunities the only thing that stands between the idea and its realization is work. In the iPhone OS environment when you see an opportunity, you put in work first, ask Apple’s permission and then, only after gaining their approval, your idea can be realized.
That’s the introduction to his post explaining why he’s shutting down is iPhone development blog. I still believe that this is going to hurt Apple in the end.
In other news, Section 3.3.9 of the developer agreement, which bans third-party analytics in iPhone applications, may be an even bigger deal than the ban on cross-compilers.
Apple hates cross-compilers
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.
The secret of the iPhone app store
In an Ars Technica article on the Palm Pre, Jon Stokes explains the benefit the app store provides for the iPhone platform as well as I’ve ever seen:
Even so, you might think 1,000 apps should be plenty to fit everyone’s needs, but then you misunderstand how the iPhone’s App Store contributes to Apple’s success. In short, 100,000 apps is a really, really long tail, and in that tail everyone can find one or two goofy, niche apps that they really like. And when they find those apps—my dad loves the bubble wrap and the Bible translations, my wife loves the koi pond and the kiddie apps that entertain my daughter, and I like the IRC clients—they show it off to friends and family. And when one of my dad’s non-iPhone friends sees the bubble wrap and the six different Bible translations, that person doesn’t say to himself, “my God, it has bubble wrap and Bibles. I must buy this phone.” Rather, he says, “if it has bubble wrap and Bibles, I bet it has something really cool for me, too. I must buy this phone.”
The power of the long tail for app stores is that everyone can find and share a handful of quirky little apps that really excite them for whatever reason. And when they share those apps, they’re essentially shilling for the platform, not the specific apps. Every time two people pull out their iPhones in a crowd and start trading recommendations for incredibly niche apps that fit their specific interests, everyone who doesn’t have an iPhone feels like they’re missing out.
I also learned that the Palm Pre has a mirror on the back. I had no idea.
Photo by Flickr user Ryan Orr.
Apple’s restrictive platform
Here’s Tim Bray (now officially part of the loyal opposition) on the iPhone:
The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.
I hate it.
I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom’s not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient.
I love using the iPhone, but to a growing degree I’m starting to hate the fact that I love using the iPhone.
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