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.'"

Comments

So let me get this straight...

[ZipR]

Apple is a company that's trying to maximize its profits? Wha????

Re:So let me get this straight...

[weirdcrashingnoises]

It could be argued that alternatives (some being less "harmful" to consumer) would actually be better at maximizing profits, than using lock-ins.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Divebus]

Customers are suffering? I've been suffering under Apple for many years and intend to continue, if you call that suffering.

iPod: Show me another company that develops an enormously popular product then continuously replaces it with major functional extensions and increasingly sexy devices in the face of almost no competition.

Show me another company with this kind of popular product that doesn't try to leverage the RIAA against its customers. If it was up to any other company, we'd be paying between $2.50 and $4.50 for legal music downloads and be able to listen to them three times - just like the RIAA wants. Oh... wait... no, we'd be getting music from all the torrent sites instead. All of it.

If anything, Apple is holding the prices down for mainstream music and allowing fair use of music like no other company - and at the same time showing the music industry how to keep EVERYONE from stealing from them. Apple is helping the artists in spite of the RIAA "cut open the golden goose" business model. They even host buckets of indie labels on ITMS.

However, the original model of encrypted music downloads is now harming the ability to move directly to other music playing devices. That's changing too - if only the record labels would lift the contractual requirement of encryption. Meanwhile, exercise your ability to move the music around with the pathways supplied by Apple in spite of the RIAA protests.

Even sticking to their guns in the computer industry, Apple is slowly getting noticed as a better choice than Windows. They could have sold out to the mainstream Lemmings but OS X users are almost universally much happier with their machines than Windows users. It's all about principal.

Customers suffering indeed.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[drcagn]

Note: I am a huge Apple user; my music player is an iPod, my laptop is a MacBook, and I've stopped building custom PCs so I could buy Apple hardware.

The iPod is a great mp3 player, but the reason Apple continues to innovate (which it hardly has, except in the case of the iPhone) is not from the kindness of The Steve's heart. Apple does have competition: itself, and if Apple wants to keep selling iPods, it has to innovate against its last generation of players. Oh, and trust me, if we were still stuck in iPod generations of the past, such as before the photo/video support and color screen, there would have been a real "iPod Killer" already.

Apple has kept prices down and the MAFIAA at bay because its in their advantage if they do. They would prefer to sell a lot of cheap music and make less money per song than they would to sell expensive music, make a little money, pay off the MAFIAA, and then have their music store bomb because of the prices.

Apple in my opinion is a much better choice than Windows or Linux. I've been on Windows since 3.11, I switched to Mandrake Linux and Gentoo Linux for months, and I had used OS X for months. I eventually switched to OS X and I think OS X makes it worthwhile to stick around with Apple's little annoyances. Yes, Apple is expensive, but if you pay, it Just Works, and that's something I haven't seen anywhere else. But I'm not going to defend some of the shifty shit that they do to make us pay more or lock us in.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I suffered through your (possibly anti-Apple) ramblings which had a premise that Apple makes inferior products and therefore must lock-in their current market share while trying to attract new converts. I digested your made up statistics and your conspiracy theories, but quite frankly you keep contradicting yourself. Either Apple has a lock with iTunes OR there are alternatives that are available. You even mention Zune which is another alternative to use.

So just when I thought that you are a person that thinks Apple products are junk, you blow me away with the following:

While I do agree that Apple computers are of great quality, the fact that I went with something else rather than a Mac should speak volumes about the way this competition is shaping up.

So basically you like the "great quality" of an Apple computer, but you are too cheap to spend money on one and you disregard Apple's growing market share and assume everybody is as cheap as you are.

So let me try to decode your comments above:

1. You are happy with your current MP3 player, and see no need for any of the bells and whistles that an iPod may have.

2. Since you have no need for those additional features, you assume no one else desires them either.

3. You have the personal opinion that Apple makes an inferior product or at least imply that Apple products are inferior.

4. People other than you buy an iPod and are happy with them, but since you question the quality of an iPod, you assume some lock-in or at least mind control exists.

5. Price per song is important to you, and you feel comfortable with the fact that price is important to everyone else.

6. You acknowledge that Apple knows that price is important to everyone, since this is why they try to keep prices at $0.99 per song.

7. You acknowledge that Apple is not alone with its iTunes services. There are alternatives for independent musicians and you even mention Microsoft Zune.

8. You discovered that, just like iTunes, Microsoft Media Player allows you to burn CD tracks.

9. That Apple has a market share inverse proportional to Microsoft. Being that Apple has great market share of music players and a small but growing market share for desktops, and Microsoft has a great market share of desktop machines and a small market share for music players.

10. Despite your feelings expressed in #3, you really think Apple computers are great but you are too cheap to buy one.

11. You have the opinion that others are as cheap as you are.

Did I interpret everything correctly?

Duh

[DogDude]

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.

Re:Duh

[Leftist Troll]

I feel that my OS X coexists with Linux quite happily. [snip] The world would be a better place if there was 6+ apple like companies that all supported the open formats.

If only Apple would start supporting open formats like ogg and odf, and stop wasting their time trying to sabotage their devices to break Linux compatibility, I would agree with you.

Same reason as hardware lock in

[Oz0ne]

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!

Re:Same reason as hardware lock in

[Bill_the_Engineer]

It's *definitedly* Apple's fault because they locked the iPhone with AT&T!

Apple did not want to go into the phone business, but Apple wanted to make the iPhone experience as good as it could get with easy activation with iTunes and some neat features. If Apple wanted to make a phone that was unlocked and maintain a good user experience, they would have to put out a phone with a reduced feature set.

While I personally would think an iTouch with a generic GSM phone would be a killer product, Apple wanted more. I can't blame them since there was already a failed attempt for an iTune compatible phone from Motorola and nay-sayers would be complaining that Apple didn't innovate enough.

So Apple was damned if they did and damned if they didn't... If I was going to be damned anyway, I would do what Apple did. Which was to make a product that everyone wants with features that only going with a single carrier can provide.

Personally, I think that Apple believes that after 2 years, they would have sufficiently proven demand for services to the point that other carriers would have no choice but to make their networks iPhone and iTunes friendly.

So don't buy it.

[forsetti]

'Nuff said.

Oh, for the love of Jebus

[noewun]

There's really only one viable reason: Apple wanted a share of the carrier's profits, which meant giving AT&T an exclusive deal.

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:

But recently, well... the generous view would be that Apple's screwing up. . .

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"?

keep it in perspective....

[User 956]

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".

Re:Sounds like Microsoft

[aristotle-dude]

Didn't some judge say that kind of behavior was illegal? Apple has a monopoly on a key business device? Really? Is Apple trying to keep out other cell phone makers out of the market? Are they trying to control a hardware platform/device they did not create? No. Just as with consoles, the maker of the device makes the rules and if you don't like those rules then don't buy the device.

And you're still using Apple

[Colin Smith]

Because.... ???

Look. Go whine somewhere else. You've made your bed, go lie in it.

If you don't like it

[LehiNephi]

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.

Re:You know what?

[astrashe]

That was pretty much my reaction to it as well.

If you want freedom, go with open source. Write code for linux phones, support that ecosystem, make them better. But don't whine about Apple being what it is.

AT&T is the customer here.

[CharAznable]

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.

Re:You know what?

[TheRaven64]

It's not about Apple making money. We all know Apple is a company, and companies like money, and I don't think many here would claim that's a bad thing. The point is how Apple is going about it. I use a Mac, and a large part of the reason for that is code written by Wil Shipley and his former employees. Without OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, I would have a lot less reason to use a Mac. OS X is nice, but it's third party software that makes it really superb. Take that away, and you have a much less useful platform. The more Apple locks down their devices, the less useful they are. My Nokia phone lacks a few features, but I've been able to get third party software that makes up for that. If I replaced it with an iPhone and found it lacked features I need (actually, the iPhone lacks pretty much all of the features I actually use on a phone beyond making phone calls, but that's not the point), then I have no way of adding them. This means that I will not be buying an iPhone, irrespective of how shiny it is. This means that Apple has lost a potential sale due to their lock-in policy.

You could always, you know, NOT get an iPhone...

[argent]

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.

Re:You know what?

[p0tat03]

I'll support Linux phones as soon as FOSS figures out how to design a good UI. I'm serious, instead of getting some halfway-decent Photoshoppers to make your icons, why don't you involve some real usability specialists? I really despise the attitude that some FOSS supporters have - the whole "well, the button's right there, n00b" mentality is what keeps Linux an arcade black box that no mainstream user will voluntarily touch.

Linux needs to stop being feature upgrades and start becoming more cohesive. Why is it called "Synaptic" when it can be called "Package Installer"? In every distro I've used the OS has always felt like components glued together. This doesn't help Linux marketing, especially when a mainstream new user is supposed to magically supposed to figure out that "GIMP" = "Image Editor", and every freaking app has a "K" attached to its name. While I appreciate the need to allow developer freedom for each component, Linux will not be usable until there is a unifying body that can dictate UI design guidelines, icon design guidelines, etc, etc, for all parts of the OS.