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Apple Rejects iPhone App As Competitive To iTunes
DaveyJJ sends news of yet another rejection of an iPhone app by Apple, with perhaps a chilling twist for potential developers of productivity or utility apps. John Gruber of Daring Fireball writes: "Let's be clear: forbidding 'duplication of functionality' is forbidding competition. The point of competition is to do the same thing, but better." Paul Kafasis (co-founder of Rogue Amoeba Software) makes the point that this action by Apple will scare talented developers away from the iPhone platform. And Dave Weiner argues that the iPhone isn't a "platform" at all: "The idea that it's a platform should mean no individual or company has the power to turn you off."
Apple won't give a shit, and neither will the general public! I hear Richard Stallman could use some more wackos tho. Give him an email.
Apple has noted that people who want to distribute apps to a small group are directed as to how to go about it.
What's being done here is that Apple is stating they will not aid in the proliferation of a competitive piece of software by marketing, promoting and distributing it through THEIR store... which is not the only possible channel of distribution, strictly speaking, but certainly the most convenient.
Do we talk, however, about the flipside of this? Where is the integrity in a developer knowingly creating an application to do something a product already does? You mean to tell me that in the marketplace of ideas that developers are so bereft of creativity that they cannot think of something unique?
I know that even Apple doesn't originate ideas... but it's a bit different when you go buy a company making something you think you can integrate better versus simply writing an app that does roughly what another one does and then pissing and moaning that the distributor refuses to help you cannibalize their own apps.
Are we complaining that Bose stores refuse to sell anything but Bose, or that Dell stores refuse to sell computers other than Dells, or that Ford opts not to distribute Daewoo parts at its stores?
Apple will scare talented developers? If they were truly talented would they have attempted less than surreptitiously to ask a distributor to promote a competing product rather than writing any number of applications that haven't been thought of yet?
> "Let's be clear: forbidding 'duplication of functionality' is forbidding
> competition. The point of competition is to do the same thing, but better."
Yes - indeed.
It's not a "platform" - it's a CELLPHONE!
If you wish to create a better cellphone, then feel free to do so.
Meanwhile, apple can quite rightly manage what extensions can be added to its own mobile phone(s).
Can these three guys actually convince anyone that they are about openness? It doesn't look like Mr. Kafasis' software is open. Why doesn't he butch the fuck up and make his software open source so that the consumer benefits from the competition? Why doesn't Mr. Gruber open up his blog so that anyone can change the main postings and collect some of the ad revenue? Is he afraid of competition? I don't see the public control of Mr. Winer's blog either. Nor do I see the public API that would make his blog a platform. Why is that? Afraid of putting some investment into it and then having the GNAAers come along and trashing his efforts?
Why is Apple's investment of hundreds of millions of dollars, engineering, and negotiations less than the investments that these "pundits" have made in building their brands, products and reputations. Until they can show why they should be allowed to be closed and Apple isn't, I think I'll skip the righteousness.
Somebody call me when Daring Fireball becomes community controlled, Rogue Amoeba is open source and revenue sharing, and Scripting News is anything except a third rate political blog.
do you also prefer slavery to freedom? Neither the iPhone nor and Windows platform gives you the freedom of open source.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Microsoft got almost split up (in addition to paying huge fines here and especially in the EU) for doing the much more harmless thing of preferential bundling of several of their products (notably the various combos of Win, IE, and WMP). Here we have a company which, forget BUNDLING their products together and giving it preferential treatment, but actually ACTIVELY BLOCKING competitors from using their platform.
Hello? WTF? Can you imagine what would happen if MS decided to block Firefox or VNC from any Windows platform, and allow only 1 web browser and only 1 media player? But Apple is doing exactly that, yet they are getting away with it and everyone turns a blind eye.
Apple is long due for the chopping procedure. Split Apple hardware (including MAC/Iphone platforms) and Apple software (OSX, iTunes) into different companies, and prohibit them from merging again. Because what they are doing is anticompetitive in pretty much every legal meaning of the term.
when I bought my iphone, I had the option of buying a blackberry, a motorola device, or a windows mobile device.
People aren't having guns shoved in their faces being told YOU MUST BUY AN IPHONE OR DIE. seriously, it's just a phone. It's not THE phone, it's not like there are other options.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It's imaginable that the reason they reject another media player is that they simply don't want people to get confused; my work consists of usability-related stuff and trust me, this is exactly the kind of thinking Apple would be having there.
With their paranoid usability perfectionism, it's odd enough that they allow any third party apps under OS X or the iPhone at all.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
OMG it's not a 'platform' for denvelopers who want to write better software and make some profit for themselfs, it's an Apple asset made to make money for Apple, selling little specific apps that they won't put coders on. Apple can decide what can be installed and what not, and takes a profit on each app sold: if you write an app for one of those i-thing and it's good for Apple business you may get something back, as long as Apple is good with it, then if the tide changes at Cupertino you are screwed, and you knew it.
That's the problem with language. Once Apple sells the phone, it is no longer Apple's phone - it is the customer's.
Since WHEN has apple ever allowed people to own their own equipment? Apple has never been about freedom (as in beer, or choice apparently), it has been more like a mortgage company.. Leasing you the use of your home/equipment until such time as they see fit to no longer support it. It was a great frustration to me, when I use to service Apple computers (eons ago... Back before the last ice age..) to not be able to order a replacement part from a 3rd party source with ease. Apple, for as long as I can remember, has focused on proprietary rights.. THEIR rights. It's shown in past computers, it's shown in their software, and now it's showing in this. Quite frustrating and has kept me from even considering owning a Mac. How can I pay money to a company that has only recently started loosening their stranglehold on where their product can be used, and how? When allowing freedom of software choice because financially lucrative and trendy... THEN apple will endorse it. Not a moment before.
How many of you Microsoft Linux employees get paid to spend all day on tech sites? The garbage you spew as fact is surpassing Mt. Ranier.
...is one of the key tongues up Apple's ass. When he bites the bullet and admits their behavior is problematic, you just know you should have sunk your time into reading other Apple-centric blogs instead.
How about Windows Mobile 5 taking up to 5 seconds to change screen orientation, while interrupting an ongoing call on a stock TyTN II when you slide the keyboard in or out? Don't give me that "it's all the third-party applications'" crap, you Microsoft weenie. We got those damn WM phones as part of our corporate contract, and by the time we renewed that, we went with Nokia for a reason. At least Nokia is a phone manufacturer primarily, not a 2-bit bunch of hackers trying to push a sub-par OS places where it is not supposed to go.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?