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Apple Platform Lock-Ins, A 3rd Party Dev's Opinion
Iftekhar writes "Wil Shipley, of Delicious Monster fame, has written a very candid essay on what he perceives as Apple's growing trend toward platform lock-ins. He writes: 'Why is the iPhone locked to a single carrier, so I can't travel internationally with it? There's really only one viable reason: Apple wanted a share of the carrier's profits, which meant giving AT&T an exclusive deal. Which meant, we get screwed so Apple can make more money. It's that simple. [...] As Apple gets more and more of its revenue from non-Mac devices, they are also getting more and more of their revenue from devices that simply exclude third parties. Consumers suffer from this. We suffer from increased prices and decreased competition and innovation. We suffer so Apple can make a few more bucks, when Apple is clearly not hurting for money.'"
Apple is a company that's trying to maximize its profits? Wha????
What an astute essay! Of course, it's about 20 years late, but hey, better late than never, huh?
Apple has been actively engaging in hardware/software lock-in for 20+ years. Nothing has changed other than this one particular person has started to remove his head from his ass. Yippee.
I don't respond to AC's.
You know what? I'm sick of this sort of thing. Guess what guys, Apple is in it for the money! They're not running a charity here. Yes, they locked in with another company, it's their prerogative. When you create a product you get to decide if someone is going to exclusively sell it, that's the way it works. No one is forcing you to buy the iPhone. Yeah, it's a create phone, but other phones get the job done just fine.
Apple when dealing with third parties loses some control over the experience of using their devices.
They want to minimize this. It's bad enough they have people perceiving the iphone to have problems because of cell service outages, ridiculous billing from at&t, awful customer support at AT&T, etc. Imagine if they were having to fight that battle on more than one front?
It's silly, because it's not apples fault, but everyone (average consumer) will relate the bad experience to apple even if they are one of the more clear thinking ones.
Since their inception, they've kept control of their hardware, ensuring a consistent and good experience on their computer. This is their strength over microsoft. This is their strength over Dell. They can give you a good experience and manage it. They don't have anyone else to blame!
'Nuff said.
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
Oh, Lord. Please point out to me the place in the U.S. where it's easy to buy an unlocked phone and take it from carrier to carrier, cause I'd like to live there. Then maybe I could cancel my contract without an early termination fee and sign up to another carrier without signing a contract. Look, Apple does some stupid shit, but blaming them for the terrible and non-competitive state of the U.S. cel phone industry is just plain stupid. We have, IMO, a de facto telecommunications monopoly in this country, and the reasons for that are a whole lot more complicate than 'Apple is teh sux0r!' The whole essay reads like someone who lives a fair distance from logic. And then there's this:
No, the view among a small percentage of Slashdot posters and some people with blogs is that Apple's screwing up. The view of most rational people is they're doing just fine. Why didn't he just call the essay "I Hate Apple"?
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
As Apple gets more and more of its revenue from non-Mac devices, they are also getting more and more of their revenue from devices that simply exclude third parties. Consumers suffer from this.
I wouldn't refer to anyone that can afford a $600 phone as "suffering".
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Wow! Apple ... lock in? That's news to me.. lets see. I can run OSX on... a mac only. I can *legally* use an iPod with.... iTunes only... Where are the Mac Clones? Gone... Apple... Locked... No shit, Sherlock.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
There's really only one viable reason: Apple wanted a share of the carrier's profits, which meant giving AT&T an exclusive deal.
How does Shipley know this? It could just as easily have been that no mobile carrier would agree to allow the iPhone on its network (and to incorporate features like visual voice mail) unless it was under an exclusive license.
I'm not saying that's necessarily how it went down, but it's well known that Jobs cares little for the mobile carriers.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Luckily for Apple however, there's enough idiots in the world to pay for their over-priced, under-featured, low quality products.
The amount of defects in Apple is quite astonishing and the software aint much better, yet people flock back to them again and again. Hell, the new iPods don't even look good - one of the few things usually going for Apple products and yet I bet they'll still sell like hotcakes.
People say it's Apple's UIs that do it for them, but anyone able to talk in an even slightly non-biased manner will realise that iTunes, one of Apple's primary products is pretty damn atrocious.
Because.... ???
Look. Go whine somewhere else. You've made your bed, go lie in it.
Deleted
If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you're a 3rd party developer, then don't develop applications for it. Vote with your wallet. Nobody is forcing you to buy the iPhone. Go buy a different smartphone that allows 3rd-party apps.
"Consumers suffer from this. We suffer from increased prices and decreased competition and innovation."
This might actually make sense if this were a necessity of life, but this is a luxury item we're talking about. I give this a big fat "SO WHAT?" What Apple decided to do with the iPhone was a business decision. Business decisions are made based on the potential to make the company money, either in the short- or long-term. Making customers happy is only important to a company when doing so will help the company make money. If a company makes its customers happy but doesn't make a profit, its competitors will drive it into the ground. This is the whole basis for capitalism: if you don't like one company's product, take your money elsewhere. Besides, everyone was warned well in advance that the iPhone would be closed to third-party apps. There was no surprise. Now, if the iPhone had originally allowed 3rd party apps, and then through an update removed that ability, then you would have a cause to complain.
But the whining I hear day after day about "oh no, the iPhone doesn't do [insert pet feature]! Woe is me!" has long passed the point of "annoying". Face it, even if all the current complaints about the iPhone were resolved, we'd find something else to complain about.
The instant I heard "We suffer so Apple can make a few more bucks, when Apple is clearly not hurting for money," the article lost all credibility. Nobody is making you suffer. And so what if they have money? Do you know where that money goes? Let's see...it goes to paying all the people who work for the company. It pays the CEO a big fat paycheck, which he then spends on yacht, which creates jobs. Or he invests it, which means that the money goes to fund some other project or initiative which gives other people jobs. Money sitting in a pile does a company no good.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
As an iPhone owner, you are not Apple's customer. You are the product. The iPhone is a device that uses a shiny interface to deliver subscribers to AT&T, who is Apple's true customer in this deal. I've been an Apple user since 1986, but this time I think I'll pass.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
that it is Microsoft. A soon as they get more than 15% market share in anything (got forbid higher like with the Ipods), they start pulling stunts and tricks to lock-in people, hardware, devs.. Steve Jobs makes Bill Gates and Ballmer look like open source zealots.
Holy super atomic hyperbole batman! The iPhone has been out for four months and hasn't come close to 1% of the phone market, so it's a wee bit early to be calling them monopolists. Would your ass like to speak up and make any other predictions while you are at it?
I have never heard Microsoft ever preventing you from running some other company's browser or media player on a Windows machine, yet Microsoft is evil because they give you a free browser and media player with Windows. I have never heard Microsoft ever insist that you had to buy your PC from them, yet Microsoft is evil because most PCs are sold with Windows pre-loaded.
Apple is in every way more restrictive, but is the force of goodness and light.
I'll never understand fanboys.
Yes, I too believed the endless Apple hype. Even twenty years ago before knowing anything about computers and electronics (they are the same thing, in reality).
Then when I was an electronics student, the original Mac came out. What a media shitstorm! You would have thought that the sun danced in front of Dan Rather and cast of thousands in a sleepy little Portuguese village. Then people started exiting the Jobs reality-distortion field and real reports started circulating (but not being published as most computer magazines were dependent on computer company ad purchases and wouldn't report anything dispiriting about anybody's computer. Plus,there was no WWW then).
Well this little box was an earth shattering copy of a Xerox Star and somewhat cheaper, but it had one problem. It couldn't, well,..uh.. do..anything actually. I mean after you wiggled the mouse around and clicked on some menu bars, well that was about it. That's what you got for your $2000. It even took five swaps to copy a floppy disk.
The problem was that the machine had no memory. It had two banks of 64K chips to run the whole show. But there were holes and traces on the circuit board to hold the new 256K RAM chips. It wasn't long before hardware hackers (and there were many then) realized that by carefully removing the 64K chips and replacing them with 256K chips, the new Mac could perform almost as well as a CPM machine or even a RadioShack Trash-80. Apple would upgrade your new machine, but they charged two to three times as much as the cost of the 256K RAM chips themselves. And basically all they did was pop the top, unscrew the main circuit board from the box, pull some easy-on,easy-off connectors, put in the new board with the 256K RAM chips and slap everything back together. It took about 15 minutes, maybe, if the store was busy. But Apple charged many hundreds of dollars for this, uh, service.
So lots of people, (first customers, the ones who took a chance and paid the big bucks for Apple's new machine) simply did this procedure themselves. Word filtered back to this asshole Steve Jobs that about this and he decided that: "Anyone who did a non-Apple upgrade of the Mac RAM could NOT be allowed to purchase upgrade ROMs that fixed all the little bugs in version 1.0". This was a big thing: ROM chip swap was the only way to upgrade the Mac OS and, back then, almost everybody was a hardware hacker. Popular computer magazines published schematics and code to home-build copies of the latest equipment and peripherals that were being reviewed and sold.
Not long after that Jobs was thrown out of the company for being a greedy megalomaniac and pissing off the entire Apple community. But he never lost the uncanny ability to take people's money, give them second-rate equipment, and convince them that they were part of some 'insanely great' movement of which he was the guru through which the divine light of technology and coolness passed.
So it comes as no surprise that one by one, millions of people come to learn what a greedy vicious little fraud this guy is. Do yourself a favor; don't buy stuff from this guy. You can always get the same functionality in better and much cheaper equipment elsewhere.
MacOS was very proprietary, and Apple went to court protecting whatever proprietary aspects of it could.
OS X may use some open source components and command line UNIX interface, but the administration tools, graphics libraries, development tools, primary scripting language, and user interface are entirely proprietary.
Apple likes to create the impression that this is because their tools are better, but there is little concrete evidence that Quartz, Cocoa, AppleScript, Xcode, or Objective C are better than their open source equivalents. The main areas where Apple clearly wins are design, marketing, and out-of-box experience.
Apple's strategy seems to always have been, and continue to be, to be as proprietary as they can get away with. Nothing wrong with that--they are a for profit company. But don't you forget that they are a company and do what maximizes their profit, not what maximizes your benefit. And don't you forget that companies are very effective at marketing and creating addictive products--Apple products feel good, but so do lots of things that aren't good for you.
He who owns the road sets the rules. If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you want to play in Steve's sandbox, you better do what Steve says, or he just might smite you. If your business model depends on the whims of a tyrant, you'd better have some cash on hand to weather the storm.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Back in the good old days of mainframes, people (companies) used to invest a large chunk of cash into a single powerful mainframe system. They were then obliged to spend even more cash to buy peripherals for that system, which usually were only available from the original vendor. Some folks grumbled about this, but those were mostly bean counters and management (who listened to the bean counters far more often than their technical staff).
The technical staff generally were happy with this arrangement. Part of the cash going to the vendor usually also paid for a nice fat service contract which meant if your disk drive walked a bit too far and bent the pins on the connector, they'd happily wander out and fix it for you. Sure, it might take them a little time, but generally speaking they'd eventually get it right and things would work properly.
It also meant that the developers could learn how the system worked in a few months and then be productive for many years to come. No need to relearn the OS every few years because an update was just that, an update -- not a whole wad of new stuff lumped in and a big chunk of old stuff ripped out. No need to write code to handle 5 billion possible combinations of hardware from vendors who can't even read an English spec sheet when they design their chipsets. You wrote code, it worked.
Then the microcomputer arrived and the PC got the attention of the bean counters. Not only could you buy dozens of these little boxes for a fraction of the cost of that big lump of iron in the basement, but there were no service contracts to sign... and no need for super-specialized support staff. The company could hire the VP's grandma to do tech support.
Thus the industry went through a total reversal of operating standards. We went from having single-source products which were well tested, reliable, and backed by support from the folks who built and designed the systems, to cobbled together bits of duct tape and bailing wire that needed to be kicked every few hours to keep it running. But, it's cheaper.
So, you'll forgive me if I don't take you guys very seriously when you say how much you love Apple because it just works, and because everything meshes together nicely, but you hate Apple because you can't add anything you want onto it and make it into the kind of frankenbox a typical PC is.
Apple made the decision to sign a deal with AT&T for the money. Duh, they're a company trying to make a profit. They probably ALSO figured if they only had to deal with ONE vendor, they wouldn't have to worry if their new iPhone gizmo looked horrible when Bob's Budget Cellz decided to write their own GUI to slap on it for their customers.
In short... make up your mind folks. You can have it done cheap, done right, or done quick... choose two.
I mean, just because Apple makes a product, that doesn't mean you need to get one. If the iPhone provides what you need better than the alternatives, and you don't need what it doesn't provide... go for it. If it doesn't... get something else.
There's no "platform lock-in" to the iPhone. If there was an iPhone SDK, there would be, but as it is if you don't have an iPhone you can get another phone that can still use all the same third-party content you could if you had one, and if you do you aren't locked into it. This is a different kind of lockin-in, and it's got nothing to do with developers.
On the iPod...
Now we see that iPod owners who upgrade to a newer iPod must re-buy the games they've already bought, because the new iPods are incompatible with the old. No credit given for having already bought an identical game.
Is he talking about games produced by Apple, or games produced by third parties? I don't know, I never bought games for my iPod. I never even considered buying games for my iPod. Why? Because it was obviously a closed system from the start.
But I did buy some software for my Palm, and had to re-buy some of it when I got a newer PalmOS device, because the older games didn't handle the new screen size. That's not Palm's fault, and I don't blame them for that (and not just because there's enough well-earned blame landing on them as it is).
And I'm certainly not going to *create* a platform lock-in for them by buying an iPhone and crack into it.
What should Steve do? Well, for starters, give up on trying to control everything.
Oh, I can only agree, but Steve isn't going to do that, so my recommendation is to stick to the Mac, ignore the 'appliance' products, and have an exit strategy so you can jump ship if Apple decides they're going to get serious about making the Mac an appliance again. That way we'll never have to put up with 1984 being just like 1984.
In the meantime, be picky.
Apple needs to be able to say, "Look, NBC, you want to be dumb-asses and try to sell people crap they don't want, fine -- we're still going to sell iPods that'll play your programs, we just won't sell your programs on the nicest internet store in the world. Your loss, suckers, call us when you change your mind."
I don't think Apple can say that. Because you will only be able to download those videos to your iPod on Windows: We're Sorry the requested download is unavailable. Downloads are only available to users located in the United States that have a Microsoft operating system and Internet Explorer web browser. Please check back soon for other offers.
Now *there* is your *platform* lock in.
I don't write programs for Apple because I worship Apple. I write programs for them because they have the best development environment
Don't write programs for Apple. Write programs for Macintosh. You can't write programs for Apple's appliances.
I agree with you, they should make it possible, it wouldn't even be that hard... it'd just be another target option for XCode.
But Apple's decided they're not interested in selling iAppliances to me, so I'm not going to get one.
Apple's just Microsoft in cooler clothes. Where does the personification of Linux fit in those clever commercials? Oh, right -- it doesn't fit in a 'commercial' at all.
The problem is that people think Apple is their friend. This is no doubt a testament to their marketing skills, but the fanboy crowd really needs to get their collective head out of their collective ass about this. Apple is a publicly-traded corporation, with all the financial responsibilities that entails (i.e. they are obligated by law to act in the best interest of their profits). The sooner people get it through their head that Steve Jobs isn't going to stop by their house and do a couple bong hits with them, the sooner they'll stop whining.
How many OS-X machines have you built with cheap parts you can get at Frys? How many run on low price/bulk volume Dell or Gateway hardware?
If you want to use OS-X, general* consensus is that you pay several hundred bucks more for your locked in Apple hardware than you would for a comparable third party's hardware. (*note: Yes, there are arguments against this but it's still a very, very common belief)
Have you ever installed the superior iPod interface software on a cheaper MP3 player? OK, so that's trickier than an OS install... So how many non-Apple MP3 players have you bought that have licensed the iPod interface, plug in to iTunes and can read your iTunes store purchases?
Again, for access to Apple's prized world, they lock you to their hardware and then bill you $50-$100 more than the equivalent MP3 player from Creative, Sandisk or whoever.
In short, Apple has always increased revenue by refusing to even consider competitors, meaning there's decreased competition and increased prices.
The only difference this time is they've partnered with someone to do it because there's an area they have no existing business strength in. It's still the same basic premise... they just have funkier TV ads now that have made most of us think they're our cool friend and not the same business that's always wanted to maximise profits from us through a model of non-competition.
On the flipside, they do get to keep using the [somewhat arguable] phrase, "It Just Works" because, unlike Microsoft's open approach to other hardware vendors, they don't get a reputation for putting out buggy systems when product X completely fails to work with product Y and product Z was never tested properly in the first place.
By that rationale, they could equally argue, "Had we openned it up, we'd have to rely on carriers for testing as we couldn't test with every one of them. The moment Sprint or T-Mobile had a glitch where everyone's emails disappeared or a virus got in to the system that we couldn't lock out by forced updates, news stories would tar the iPhone's name as well as just the guilty vendor, people would see the iPhone as buggy and we'd lose our market share through something that wasn't our fault. We'd rather stay locked to something we can control, sell a few less but maintain our reputation."
Whether for profits or for quality, it hardly matters. One has always been the claim against Apple, the other has always been their defense. Nothing's changed in far longer than the iPhone's lifetime.
Seems missing 2 or 3 channels out of 13 or 14 is unlikely to be a problem. I doubt Apple can allow a product sold in the U.S. to be used on unauthorized channels. The FCC would not approve the product for sale here if Apple did.
Actually, I think it's the exact opposite. 99% of the population would be better off using Apple products, because they simply work better than the alternatives. Your perceived "lack of functionality" (which I would dispute, but that's another story..) doesn't bother Joe consumer because he's not an uber-geek. The very real lack of Windows headaches alone, makes the Mac a better choice for almost everyone out there.
That would only leave the very confused Geek Squad-style geeks (you know the ones, who think they are computer geniuses because they work in the helpdesk) to muck in the registry.
His complaint is that developers are locked out, and thus customers are locked in to whatever Apple deigns to produce. Perhaps that's not quite the same as lock-in to Windows, but it has the same effect - a slow erosion of rights until you realise you don't even own your device. The same can not be said for OS X on the desktop.
The real fear here (and this is voiced in the article), is that in 10 years, when the OS X platform is mostly about mobile devices, and there are 10 million iPhones to each 1 million macs (this day will come), only Apple will control everything about these phones, and all the 3rd party developers will have to find some other platform to use, and customers will have to take what they're given, or look elsewhere. That would be a real shame, and a disappointment for many mac users. People would desert the platform in droves. Apple has done a good job up to now of balancing their need for control with the needs of their customers, but the iPhone, with no promise of being open at all, isn't looking good.
All it would take from Apple would be a simple statement that the SDK is coming next year, and people should be patient till then. That would calm a lot of nerves. As it is it's starting to look like hubris on the part of Apple, perhaps the thought that they can do it all themselves so much better (when they patently can't). The iPhone is the future of the mac, it *is* the future mac, and Shipley doesn't like what he sees, as far as software support goes. This is what Jobs said before he came back, I believe he meant it
I think Shipley rightly feels if no-one speaks out, then Jobs will think it's fine to continue down this path - perhaps even try to switch the entire OS X platform to a closed one like the iPhone, and to hell with the developers (they've said that enough times : ). I disagree that Apple has necessarily made an irreversible decision on this, and feel with enough pressure they could be encouraged to change their mind. Pressure from people like Wil Shipley and potential customers.
The main problem is - there is no device like this out there, and no prospect of one in the near future, so we have nowhere to jump ship to if Apple gets worse.
So for those who see this as a great device with huge potential, the attempt by Apple to lock this down so that they control it completely is foolish, disappointing, and short-sighted. Apple have not tried this on the desktop, so why do it on the phone? That's what he's asking. In short, this is a new departure for Apple (contrary to most of the comments on this thread), and as potential customers, we should speak up if we don't like what we see - it could be a defining moment for Apple.
Hard? Since when is a Mac hard to use? If you've been doing it the Microsoft Way for years then I can see where things might seem backwards to you at first. I've been using MS products since DOS 4.0. So when I "switched" to MacOS X there were a few things that I thought were strange. Looking back on it now I actually prefer the Apple way of doing most things. I keep a PC around to run MS products on though (of course I have to, my job is supporting the MS Windows). So I haven't completely switched, I just prefer to do things on my Mac.
This isn't to say I have always agreed with Apple's products. While the interface of MacOS has always intrigued me, the underpinnings of the OS were lackluster in the Classic OS. That was one of the things to keep me from switching for a long time. MacOS X changed that (for the better) for me. I get a UNIX layer underneath a very usable GUI, and plenty of software at my disposal.
Apple is "trying" to charge them (third party manufacturers) a "Made for iPod" sticker tax for adding no value? First off, it isn't trying, it *is*charging, and secondly, no value? The value is that the accessory will actually work with your iPod. That's value. And again, when everybody and their goddamned dog does the same thing for thoroughly ridiculous reasons (makers of vanilla power bars that are "Windows Certified") exactly what is the complaint here? That Apple makes a bit of money making sure that third party device stick to Apple's guidelines and the products behave in a consistent fashion? How fucking evil of Apple.
Seriously now. People that pointed out where Microsoft's market dominance would lead were for decades derided as haters and sour grapes types. Now that Apple has committed the crime of surviving into this Millennium and is again producing innovative cutting edge products and services that people actually go out of their way to buy, Apple is in the wrong and is somehow worse than Microsoft? Please. Shove all this whining up your ass.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
99% of the population would be better off using Apple products, because they simply work better than the alternatives. Your perceived "lack of functionality" (which I would dispute, but that's another story..) doesn't bother Joe consumer because he's not an uber-geek.
The 99% who aren't uber-geeks would not be better off - they simply wouldn't care, and would do fine on any platform, for that reason. A BeBox would do the job. Of course, then you take into account other factors, such as cost.
(My parents recently bought their first laptop - supposedly I should have urged them to spend a few hundred pounds more to get a machine that I knew nothing about and couldn't help them with, because if they got Windows, I'd be swamped with trying to help them out with problems. And you know what? Not a problem. OTOH, I know they would've complained everytime someone gave them some software, and it wouldn't work on their machine...)
Apple took a risk with the iphone by releasing an expensive device with extra features that not everyone would consider essential.
Apple took a risk with the iphone by releasing an expensive device lacking features that most people would consider essential.
There, fixed that for you.
Da Blog
"That was awesome how you completely dodged the question of locked-up iPhones and iPod touches."
Well let's see, by partnering with AT&T Apple gained immediate access to AT&T's customers through an agreement that let them upgrade existing accounts immediately, regardless of contract. They also gained a marketing partner, and an additional 2,000 or so outlets for the phone. They also got AT&T to do some custom software support, in part due to the exclusive deal. They also convinced them not to rape their customers with overly expensive data plans.
They also convinced AT&T to support Apple's iTunes store for downloadable music (against their Mobile Music offering), and also in regard to downloadable ring tones (also against AT&T's offerings). And they also managed (mostly) to convince AT&T not to screw with the phone's interface or software or syncing services (like Sprint requiring a Vision plan to get photos off one of their phones). AND they got a cut of the service plan.
Without an arrangement, I suspect Apple would have had a difficult time getting their phone offered by AT&T and T-Mobile, especially in terms of it having a competing music service offering.
Translated, AT&T got to offer Apple's latest and greatest to their customers, and Apple got a Titanic-sized boatload of concessions. Concessions that I think tend to vastly outweigh the minor inconvenience of having an "unlocked" phone. But that's just me.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"Personal insults, the last defense of a poor argument."
I suppose if I was trying to make any argument at all, you'd have something
Since my point was to tell you that both you and your joke were dumb, there's really nothing to argue over.
See, it was a s-t-a-t-e-m-e-n-t not an argument.
But you can't tell that your joke was awful, so why would I expect you to see there's no argument in process.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.