2 thoughts on “The iPhone rules. The App Store sucks.”
This is a very odd piece of analysis. I believe the reason there are so many apps is because of Apple’s generous revenue split. All of the sudden because Apple still does not have and never did have open source they are going to lose out? Now I am not privy to the standards and review process on submitting apps, but I have several apps that have bi-weekly updates and some that have had bugs with updates that were released in days not weeks. Maybe the store is getting too big? But what I read in this is that some developers just don’t think having their stuff in the app store is cool anymore, because they don’t like working for the man. pout, stamp feet, cross arms.
Man, you’re way off base here. This is a little inside-baseball, I admit, so it may come as news to people who aren’t in software, but Graham really is completely correct. This has nothing to do with the revenue split, or the whole idea of open source (there’s nothing OS about the iPhone, and nobody cares), or even the App Store itself; it’s not about the Store itself. The problem is Apple insisting on controlling the whole market for iPhone software. This is unprecedented.
In the general case, there is NO successful general use (or even mobile) platform where a gatekeeper stands between developers and customers, and takes a big bite of the revenues to boot.
So issue one is the whole “we decide what you can make and sell” situation. That doesn’t exist for any other computer. Anyone with a compiler can make software for Windows, for the Mac, for Palm, for Windows Mobile, for Blackberries, for Symbian, and for Android, and for Linux. (Sometimes you have to pay for a developer’s kit, but that’s all.) Nobody gets to say “this app can live, but not that one.” With the iPhone, this isn’t true. Apple decides which apps live and die, and Apple decides whether or not your new patch release is available to customers, and when that happens. This is unsustainable, and is a HUGE HUGE problem. Several prominent Apple dev shops have publicly stated they’re done with the platform because they can’t know if Apple will allow their products through before investing in the dev process. That’s fucked up.
Since you bring up the so-called “generous revenue split,” I agree it’s generous — to APPLE. It’s insane that Apple insists on getting any revenue split at all. That’s bullshit; my company doesn’t pay a revenue split to Microsoft for making our tools. It’s just not done, and there’s a good reason: platforms are only as valuable as the software that runs on them. Software companies do not split their sales with platform companies for any other major computing platform, Edgar; software companies are the ones helping create value for the platform. As Graham points out, it was Visicalc that made the market for the Apple ][.
Make it hard to write for a platform, annoy the developer community, and you get marginalized.
Right now Apple is getting away with it because the Pre is essentially stillborn, Android isn’t mature yet, and somehow Redmond can’t make a phone that isn’t a piece of shit despite having a mountain of cash on hand. Apple will compromise on this point; they’ll have to. But right now, they’re behaving like assholes just because they can, and this is bad business in the long term. That’s Graham’s ultimate point.
This is a very odd piece of analysis. I believe the reason there are so many apps is because of Apple’s generous revenue split. All of the sudden because Apple still does not have and never did have open source they are going to lose out? Now I am not privy to the standards and review process on submitting apps, but I have several apps that have bi-weekly updates and some that have had bugs with updates that were released in days not weeks. Maybe the store is getting too big? But what I read in this is that some developers just don’t think having their stuff in the app store is cool anymore, because they don’t like working for the man. pout, stamp feet, cross arms.
Man, you’re way off base here. This is a little inside-baseball, I admit, so it may come as news to people who aren’t in software, but Graham really is completely correct. This has nothing to do with the revenue split, or the whole idea of open source (there’s nothing OS about the iPhone, and nobody cares), or even the App Store itself; it’s not about the Store itself. The problem is Apple insisting on controlling the whole market for iPhone software. This is unprecedented.
In the general case, there is NO successful general use (or even mobile) platform where a gatekeeper stands between developers and customers, and takes a big bite of the revenues to boot.
So issue one is the whole “we decide what you can make and sell” situation. That doesn’t exist for any other computer. Anyone with a compiler can make software for Windows, for the Mac, for Palm, for Windows Mobile, for Blackberries, for Symbian, and for Android, and for Linux. (Sometimes you have to pay for a developer’s kit, but that’s all.) Nobody gets to say “this app can live, but not that one.” With the iPhone, this isn’t true. Apple decides which apps live and die, and Apple decides whether or not your new patch release is available to customers, and when that happens. This is unsustainable, and is a HUGE HUGE problem. Several prominent Apple dev shops have publicly stated they’re done with the platform because they can’t know if Apple will allow their products through before investing in the dev process. That’s fucked up.
Since you bring up the so-called “generous revenue split,” I agree it’s generous — to APPLE. It’s insane that Apple insists on getting any revenue split at all. That’s bullshit; my company doesn’t pay a revenue split to Microsoft for making our tools. It’s just not done, and there’s a good reason: platforms are only as valuable as the software that runs on them. Software companies do not split their sales with platform companies for any other major computing platform, Edgar; software companies are the ones helping create value for the platform. As Graham points out, it was Visicalc that made the market for the Apple ][.
Make it hard to write for a platform, annoy the developer community, and you get marginalized.
Right now Apple is getting away with it because the Pre is essentially stillborn, Android isn’t mature yet, and somehow Redmond can’t make a phone that isn’t a piece of shit despite having a mountain of cash on hand. Apple will compromise on this point; they’ll have to. But right now, they’re behaving like assholes just because they can, and this is bad business in the long term. That’s Graham’s ultimate point.