Dude....read my post again.

I do think it is a good thing. You are basically saying exactly what I said except saying that it is bad, while I am saying that it is good.When I evaluate whether a company should do something I evaluate whether the net gain to their stakeholders -- and that by and large INCLUDES THEIR OWN EXECUTIVES AND EMPLOYEES -- is positive. If it isn't then it is not the right thing for them to do. Why would anybody act irrationally?



There can be more than one reason for doing something. The fact that Apple would like to discourage competition from Adobe and is actively trying to do that is true does not mean that their actions can't also be motivated by the things they cite. These things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one is a by-product of the other (and that is probably why they are taking this stance).



Of course Apple would only want open standards when it works out best for them. There is nothing wrong with that.

I do disagree that they don't care if consumers and developers lose, because quite simply, it is impossible for them to come out "smelling like roses" in the long run if consumers and developers lose. This idea that evil corporations can do things in greedy self-interest to screw the consumer and must be stop is absurd, because the reality is that if Apple did that, they would be digging their own grave. The reason Jobs put out this letter is because he recognizes that he can't piss off people by just doing whatever he wants. Apple's whole brand image -- regardless of whether or not they in reality act on it -- is crafted around creating the perfectly-considered experience for the customer. So, Apple cares very much about what the consumer and developer think. Do not take this as me claiming that Apple is looking out for the consumer and that they are the "good guy". That is not what I am claiming. What I am saying it that it is definitely inaccurate to say that they "don't care" if consumers and developers lose because that would ensure that they do NOT come out "smelling like roses".

My bad Dash, my bad

How would you switch between having a pointer and using touch gestures? Would the pointer be able to scroll out of a page/view? Would the mouse scrolling be kinetic?

It sounds like a simple idea, except for the fact it completely changes the way you interact with the device.

"Why can't I click that?"

"Oh, you need to be in mouse mode"

"How was I supposed to know that?"

"Well .... er ...."

"How do I switch to mouse mode? And how do I switch back? Why can't it just work with my finger like EVERYTHING ELSE"

It's stupid.

My wording wasn't the best.

Because in the long run it will not be good for their stakeholders or employees. Generally when one has bad business practices, one pays for it down the line. They'll do just fine now, but they've already pissed off a lot of developers, to the point where they've abandoned the platform entirely.



They are mutually exclusive for the simple fact that most of them are made up.



If you can't see what's wrong with a company being hypocritical, there's no helping you in this debate.



Hint: they are digging their own grave, it's been a trend that's getting worse and worse with every Apple announcement.


No, they're avoiding the problem in the short term. They don't care, and it's evident in the way they do business. Flash isn't the first thing Apple's done to screw over developers (and thus consumers). It's just another thing in a long, long list of problems.

A. App submission is a joke and a gamble. The rules are defined but widely interpreted. The time for review is extremely long, often upwards of a month.
B. Apps can be rejected after their acceptance, and all refunds must be paid in full by the developer. Apple does not refund the 30% take. Basically for many small-time developers, this means if Apple decides they don't like your app, they can put you out of business.
C. Apple uses private APIs in their paid software that competes directly with other third-party developer software. In short, Apple can do things no one else can, simply because they're Apple. This becomes even more of a problem as consumers blame developers for their app lacking features compared to Apple's software, when in reality the developers have absolutely no control over it.
D. Other frameworks, including Adobe's own Flash compiler for apps, are now no longer allowed, despite earlier frameworks being just fine for years. Apple made up that rule simply to block Adobe, not because they're worried about their platform.
E. Apple says h264 is the future in HTML5, screw flash! Too bad he never paid attention when the two largest browsers on the web, Firefox and IE, do not support it. And Firefox likely never will. This means big problems for smaller web developers, who now must produce two versions of their videos to work with the iPad/iPhone.

That's just off the top of my head. These are not problems that are going away, they are getting worse, and they have already had an impact.

That hasn't seemed to stop 200,000 applications from coming out. Sounds like a pretty safe gamble to me.

The way you make it sound is as if these 200,000 applications got through the process because of "luck". Clearly the numbers indicate Apple is being RUTHLESS in its app approval :rolleyes:. Just counting the # of apps rejected on the iPhone Graveyard site (which I'm sure doesn't list all of them), I get to 30. I'll be generous and add another 500 to that. That's less than 1%. RUTHLESS APPLE. GAMBLE!

If it was THAT much of a gamble, people wouldn't develop the applications. Maybe instead of making an app that might break the rules and taking a gamble, develop for another platform which clearly exists? Sounds like a pretty sound idea to me. Jon'C will point that due to the economies of scale it's obviously more profitable to develop for Apple, which he is most assuredly right. But I would say, so what? That's what happens when you design hardware and software that is the basis of a product that millions of people are buying. You get full control over whatever that hardware and software can do. Seems like millions of people don't give a ****, or else they'd buy a phone that supports Flash / other format that other phone supports.

You know, it really sounds like you guys should be more sore at the people that buy the iPhone, not Apple itself.

I don't disagree that Apple is pissing off developers but it seems to me that there's almost an infinite supply of developers that are also ready & willing to develop for Apple despite that. I think that almost everything you bring up is valid as far as your list of heartaches that developers have to endure but the popularity of the products seem to outweigh the hesitation & irritation for many of developers. There's certainly no shortage of development taking place currently. I suppose that only time will tell if competing devices that don't have so many hurdles will cause an avalanche of developers to stop developing for Apple products. I personally think that Apple marketing is just too good to allow that to happen. Google's strategy so far seems to just be "you can do on our device what you can do on an Apple device" but I think that they'll eventually have to turn that in to "you can do things on this device that you can't do on an Apple device". The developers & geeks may think this already but they have to prove the case in their marketing. Also, I doubt that Steve Jobs would be dumb enough to not reverse a few of his decisions if it came to that. We saw how criticism caused them to make changes w/ the new iPhone OS 4. These changes may not be good enough for you but they're probably good enough to keep a lot of developers on-board as well as customers. An example of this would be multi-tasking. There are obvious problems w/ this that you've pointed out before but it's probably enough to bring in new developers, retain many of their existing developers & even bring in new customers as well as retaining customers. You make valid points about IRC & things like that but there's not a large enough audience for that type of thing for most people to care. Almost all of the problems that you say aren't going away could in theory go away if Apple was scared in to doing so. I don't think it'll happen soon but I disagree w/ you in your certainty that it'll never happen, if Apple finds itself in a slump that can be linked to such issues.

Who cares if the company might be running themselves into the ground? Who is anyone to say how Steve Jobs runs his company? CoolMatty, why the **** do you care? Simply don't buy their products if you disagree with them!

Makes you wonder what that number would be otherwise.



I'd project that the actual app rejection count, including app updates, stands closer to 100,000.



Developers already are doing that. But not all of them can afford to abandon the largest market right now. They're forced to develop for a platform they would rather not develop for.

Oh, and let's not forget that Apple is locking their platform down so tightly that if you DO develop something in it, it becomes exceedingly hard to port it to another device. I'm sure one of these days they'll make it so that you have to completely rewrite the entire codebase.




When they start trying to enforce their standards on stuff outside of their own little world, it get's a tad bit annoying. See also: HTML5.

While Steve Jobs makes some good points, none of them come close to the truth. I would respect him more if he just said it was about the MONEY.

Whatever.

Apple's platform is a sad joke and miserable to develop for, their license is draconian and the market isn't worth the effort. 2 or 3 people made a million bucks on their software, and everybody else would have made more money working for a bank or for McDonalds. Suck it up, Mactards.

1. I guess AppShopper says ~100 apps a day on average are removed, which would mean that since the opening of the app store ~60,000 have been removed. However, you then must separate those that were removed for content control, and those that were removed for duplication of functionality, or private API use, which I'm guessing are the ones you are most concerned with. It appears with the evidence on the other websites, like AppShopper and AppRejections.com that the # of relevant apps in that case is quite small. No where near 60,000 obviously, and I'd argue no where even near 10,000. It is clear that most apps that have been removed have been in the "junk" category (the I'm Rich! app that cost $999.00, etc). The huge spikes in apps removal were content-related removals.

Personally I don't want to see ANY apps removed, especially the ones that duplicate functionality/private API use like Google Voice. If people are stupid enough to buy I'm Rich for $999.99, they should be allowed to do it. However, I fully respect Apple's use of removing apps for content control. If they don't want "overtly sexual" apps on their app store, even though Safari is the gateway to Porn central, they have every single right to deny it. It's their hardware, their operating system, and their phone, and their app store. People CHOOSE to submit themselves to apple when they submit an app. That is something you know right from the start when you purchase a dev kit. It says it right ****ing there in the agreement that Apple can do basically WHATEVER they want. Content requirements, API requirements, boom, laid out. It's only 28 pages. They can remove and revoke apps and your dev license at their sole discretion. Is it right? Maybe not? Is it your fault if you didn't read the dev agreement and chose to tread that line? Most assuredly it is. Perhaps the manner in which they removed the "bikini babes" app was not right, for example and that I can agree with, but that is another argument completely. If you want a bikini babes app, go buy an Android phone? In these content cases, this is not Apple being "anti-competitive". It is not like they are putting out their own bikini apps to compete. This is them stupid and ignorant that the internet exists for all your porn delights, but that's not anti-competitive.

Your argument however definitley has merit with things that duplicate functionality/use private APIs. Although personally I believe that Apple has made it abundantly clear that they have no intention of competing within the app store marketplace (I'm using the fact that they have a grand total of 8 apps, of which I think only 3 are paid and appear to do nothing special that other apps can't do), you are correct that their use of private APIs does give them an edge. Who knows, those apps might not even use any of them just based on how clunky file transfer still is with their Office suites. But this comes down to personal opinion about whether you think Apple is competing in the app store marketplace or not.

2. You believe that a person/company smart enough to develop an iPhone app, DOESNT know that it can't be ported/is incredibly hard to port? Good god, you must think developers are more stupid and short-sighted than I thought.

And you obviously have ZERO experience working in the software industry.

It's not always clear cut. It isn't always up to the developers. Sometimes the developers are great programmers but lack common sense. Sometimes it's above their heads, a decision made by some idiot in management. There are market selection pressures, etc etc etc. Software development is a complicated industry. In all these discussions you've taken everything out of context and honestly, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Eh, I know some "iPhone developers", and yes, I actually would call them pretty short-sighted. These people quit their stable jobs when they started making decent money at the very beginning of the App Store boom. Now their revenue has dried up considerably, and they're basically unemployed and not making nearly what they were at their old jobs. "Developer" != Smart

I should elaborate. These people made lame puzzle games, crosswords, sudoku, stuff like that for the iPhone and sold them for $.99. They got in early and got some decent revenue right as the app store opened because there weren't many apps like that. Now that they can't push out a simple app that took no creativity and a couple of days to write and make tens of thousands of dollars on it, they're not making money anymore.

I remember you making that claim before. My retort is that you know what, developers are just doing what they are being paid to do. Go take it up with that idiot in management for making a boneheaded call. The people doing the ACTUAL coding I'm sure are well aware of the paramaters of the language that they are using to build an app. If the idiots in management wont' listen to them, that's their own ****ing fault. Go take it up with the jackass in management. How is this at all Apple's fault?

And re: "lack of common sense". If it's true that the developers might not know about this limitation, let's blame Apple then? It's clearly Apple's fault that the developer has lack of common sense?

And if you say it is Apple's fault because of their control of the marketplace, then maybe you should blame the people that BUY THEIR PRODUCTS? If it weren't for people buying INTO the app store and the iPhone, it wouldn't exist in the first place. Companies don't gain market power with the flick of a switch. There is the whole "demand" side to things as well. If you are arguing about market pressure, then there is probably a host of HUNDREDS of companies you should start complaining about as well.

It's Apple's fault because they are specifically making it so that porting is difficult. Their entire purpose for many changes is exactly that. It's not like it's some side effect, it is the main reason.

Also, yes, the paid Apple apps use private APIs that no other app in the app store is allowed to use.

Finally, I find issue with ANY app being removed from the app store AFTER it's accepted, unless it has some sort of interaction which causes it to suddenly act differently than it did when it was submitted. As long as the app is the same as when it went into the app store, there should be no reason for Apple to be pulling it. Yet they do, on a consistent basis, at the cost of developers. The whole purpose of the review process is to ensure that it's okay for the app store. One would think once you've passed review, you shouldn't have to worry about being revoked!

Personally, I agree with that entirely. Like I said before, i wish that NO apps were removed at all. While I still hold by that it says clearly that they can do whatever they want in terms of app removal, I definitely stand with you there and think the manner in which they did remove all those "overtly sexual" apps was extremely dick-ish. I remember I believe they said the reason was that they were receiving complaints from parents, etc, which I guess you could interpret was a response to consumer demand. I personally didn't agree with it though, but they CAN do it.

http://kotaku.com/5528169/you-cannot-club-seals-on-the-iphone

Can't kill seals on the iPhone.

Yet another problem. You have no idea if it's going to be rejected beforehand, so you spend all your development time, submit, just for Apple to say "haha, no. Only violent/inappropriate games made by Rockstar are allowed on the app store".

Yeah, if you read the guy's blog, he actually says he contacted Apple before he started working on the game to see if they would approve the idea before he wasted all of his time working on it. Of course they wouldn't respond to him.

How is that being hypocritical? They aren't saying one thing and doing another. They're doing exactly what they're saying. If you mean their actions inconsistent or contradictory because they support open standards sometimes but not other times -- well, there's nothing wrong with that because they don't claim to support open standards all the time -- that's why, as you pointed out, Jobs was careful to say "open standards for the WEB" and not just "open standards".

As for your other points -- I agree with your logic but think the facts lead to a different conclusion, but that's just a difference in analysis for which time will show which is more correct. If Apple is in fact doing all these things wrong as you say, then I completely agree that in the long run they will be screwed. I am of the opinion, though, that from a strategy point of view the (high-level) benefits outweigh the (detail-level) costs.

Edit: also


The rest of your post more or less made logical sense but this doesn't el oh el. First of all, how do two things being made up make them mutually exclusive?

Suppose I invented these two claims:
- I like pie
- I like cake

This doesn't mean that it is impossible for anyone to like both pie and cake. There's no correlation between making several things up and those things being mutually exclusive.

Secondly, it is not a fact that they are made up. Some of them are factually true regardless of whether or not they are a real reason or motivation for Apple's actions. Whether or not something is an actual motivation for Apple's actions is only known by Apple, so speculating on that isn't of much use.


Just to make my own opinion on things clear, since I have been playing devil's advocate on a number of things:

• I dislike Apple as a consumer
• From a business perspective, I think Apple is spot-on for most parts of their high-level strategy
• I think that as a business practice, Apple's obsessive desire to control everything associated with their brand is a good thing and consistent with their high-level strategy
• As a consumer I am not bothered by the lack of openness in their ecosystem
• I think that Apple has thus far done a good job of segmenting its target consumers to agree with its decisions; i.e. its customers would agree with it w/ regards to its stances on openness, etc.
• If Apple ever upsets these customers or fails to segment properly, the market will ensure that their performance drops. I.e., whether or not they are making the right decisions will be reflected upon in their near- and long-term performance.

Except that you ignored the most important part which makes it applicable: if they're made up they can't really be using them as motivation.

A thing is true, a couple more are extremely stretched "truths" to make their case, and the rest are false. I believe I've already gone over them. Also, even I'm not looking down on Apple so much to honestly believe that they don't realize this as well. This is their press statement, not a statement of what they know and use as motivation. They're a big enough company, they do know the facts. They just don't want anyone else to know them.

Short-term success does not guarantee long-term success. They've started a downward trend that, without some really big changes, are going to drag them down. We're merely seeing the start. It's taken time for Apple to piss off the developers, but they're figuring it out, as one by one each of them is screwed over by Apple. Consumers in general unfortunately won't see the effects of this until that trend starts to really hit rock bottom, and the teetering tower of rules Apple uses to maintain its app store topples.

Apple's had big success with their iPhone, there's no doubt about that, but the rest of the market has not been sitting idly by. Android is growing rapidly, and Microsoft has a plan to really reboot their phones as well. Competition is finally going to heat up for Apple, and I have no doubt that in the next couple years, we're going to see the tides change.

What Apple needs is serious competition in the eyes of consumers. Once consumers see that the iPhone isn't the only phone with a lot of quality apps, and an extremely simple yet beautiful UI, Apple is going to be hurting.

It's better than merely wasting your development time! If you write an iPhone app using the SDK, and if Apple doesn't approve it, you aren't allowed to distribute your app through any other channel. iPhone dev agreement, section 7.3*.
That means no jailbroken iPhones. By the letter of the license, you aren't even allowed to port your work to a platform made by a company whose CEO doesn't have a stolen liver.

(* Note: If you have agreed to the iPhone SDK licensing agreement you are not allowed to discuss the terms of the license. I have not, and never will. This is the most terrifying license I have ever read, it is illegal or unenforceable in most countries, and Steve Jobs would feel utterly ashamed of himself if that ****ing sociopath were capable of feeling shame. **** Jobs, **** the Apple apologists in this thread, and **** anybody who puts up with this ****.)

People keep asking me, "Is that the ipad?"

NO. It's not a ****ing ipad. It's a REAL tablet, *******. Look, it runs flash. **** you.

I keep getting asked if my phone is the new "iPad Mini".

Adobe to Steve Jobs: Screw you.

Heh, that's pretty :XD::awesome::neckbeard:

I am genuinely interested to see how a phone with Flash handles things like Newgrounds/Kongregate with a touchscreen. No doubt if they pull it off well, everyone except Apple will copy it (because they've pretty much made their bed).

I just don't see how it will work, which isn't to say IT'S IMPOSSIBLE, because hey, I'm no programmer, but I really can't see it being done elegantly. In much the same way my N95 could technically do more things than my iPhone (apps aside), but it did them pretty poorly.

Apart from taking photos.

It was ****ing ace at taking photos.

The N95 was a pretty terrible phone overall though. Everyone expected it to be amazing, then Nokia gave it a resistive touchscreen and a horrible, horrible OS.

There are a few phones with Flash already, but they have an older Flash Lite version that has almost no hardware acceleration features.

Also, don't see what would be hard about Newgrounds? Unless you mean the games. In any case, they've already demoed video and some minor games already, they seemed to work well enough.

I think the problem comes in that obviously, Adobe has no control over the websites/games. In order for the Flash on Android to be successful, it BETTER run pretty much everything well. I was watching some of the demos, and even the demo-er said that certain games will need to be optimized for the mobile experience and that they "hope" the developers will have an active interest in making that possible. I watched one in particular from a while ago where a flash video just chugged, and chugged, and chugged, and then watched a video where they feature BBC and Warner Brothers movie trailers and it worked just fine. I don't blame Android/Adobe at all for this, a large burden is on the developers of the flash app itself to make sure it works well. But rest assured, if Flash is only working on "minor games" and certain websites that might have the resources to make sure this stuff runs well, that's not great because we have seen some pretty advanced flash games, and it would be awesome for those to be able to run flawlessly on the phone. If they are making this big a stink about Flash, hopefully it'll actually run to our standards.

Well you can't expect everything to run on the phones. There are HTML5/CSS/JS designed sites that can't run in the phone either, defeating Apple's argument about performance issues. In fact, Flash has a one-up on that, because CSS/JS is not hardware accelerated in any means whatsoever.

Also, there are a lot of flash games that don't run on most PCs, much less phones, so it's not like we should expect the impossible.

I agree on both fronts, but just because **** doesn't work on the iPhone doesn't give the excuse that it shouldn't have to work well on the other phones either. In fact, I would hope that would give them an incentive to make sure it works even better (but they have no control over it, so I'm sure Adobe and such are crossing their fingers)

And regarding the second point, I DEFINITLEY agree, and is one of the reasons that I wish Flash could be banished from existence (personally, just my own opinion). I have seen it mercilessly destroy computers, especially laptops. I am so sick of Flash on Youtube. Switching to HTML5 (once they fix layout bugs in the beta and this strange bug where I can't skip ahead/backwards in videos) was the greatest thing that happened to me. I can actually watch HD video now without stuttering. Again, just my opinion, maybe it's my slow computers (but I don't think that is it). I'm unsure how much of it is Flash's fault, and how much of it might be the websites fault, but in Youtubes case, there is a startling difference for me in HTML5 vs. Flash

You need to start using the Flash 10.1 beta. Youtube suddenly doesn't suck anymore.

Also, I'd love to use the HTML5 video, if, you know, it worked in the two most popular browsers.

↑→↓←▲►▼◄

By Newgrounds I did mean the games, yeah.

But really, if it's done badly (and it might) it will just cause Apple to say in no uncertain terms I told you so.

It's negative, it's *****y, it's not particularly professional but if Android doesn't carry it off at least they'll be right.

Oh, and phone wise, the N95 didn't have a touch screen - it's way older than the one you're thinking of.

They're just both whining at each other, trying to look like the do-gooders.

I don't see how it can fail in any capacity. It might not be as good as hoped, but I think any level of flash capability is better than no flash capability.

Yeah, great, the management doesn't always care. The customers don't care. They want apps on multiple platforms, not excuses. Apple makes it too hard to do that.

Edit: Also, even if all parties are aware of lock in restrictions, it can STILL be an issue. Maybe today, some company is making an app to sell or an app for a client and they are exclusively targeting the iPhone. Great, everyone's happy. In the future, competing operating systems become more popular, the target audience changes or the OS of choice of the target audience changes, etc etc. For some reason now they want to port their app to some other OS. Oops!

It isn't really "Apple's fault" in that they don't OWE it to anyone. It's their fault for being pricks, though.